Can Someone Learn to Love 2D20?

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Cowboy Duck

Formerly MattyHelms
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2D20 rules make my head hurt - too many meta currencies that all just try to formalize and limit what me and my players always do, too much weirdness in figuring out what too roll against. Honestly, I tried with John Carter, one of my favorite series. We agreed to part as friends.

One of my friends REALLY wants to run 2D20 Star Trek. I can't even make it through the quickstart. I've given him the polite brush off for a few years, but he refuses to run it without my involvement.

This past weekend, he bought me copies of the rule and the players guide. For the sake of our friendship, I clearly need to go along with this.

Has anyone else survived a brush with 2D20? Mankcam Mankcam - you seem sane, what can I do here?
 
If you're not going to GM it, you're trying way too hard. Let your friend run his game. You make decisions for your character, including whether or not to burn the meta-currency or not. Roll the dice when the GM says to roll. Give it an honest to God college try. If you still don't dig it after the session, offer feedback.

In short, be a player. Some of us would kill to get to take off the GM hat for once.
 
I dunno man, but then again, I had to CAPSLOCK to get the capital "i"s in this sentence. 2d20 makes people unhappy. It's like learning to love getting your tattoos sanded off by a power-sander called Brock. It's possible; but is Brock really your friend?
 
I know people on this forum are vocal about their dislike of the system, but you're not going to know if it makes you "unhappy" or not unless you, you know, actually try playing the game. And, frankly, even you do end up disliking it, you make still have a good time. Nobody's asked you, OP, to run the game. So where's the harm, here?
 
It's like I tell my wife when she complains that I won't try a new restaurant - I've been eating for decades and I know my tastes without having to subject myself to the new crowded restaurant that I won't like.

I'm known in the area for running Synnibarr multiple times. Without irony. I know my limits, and this feels a bridge too far.
 
It's like I tell my wife when she complains that I won't try a new restaurant - I've been eating for decades and I know my tastes without having to subject myself to the new crowded restaurant that I won't like.

I'm known in the area for running Synnibarr multiple times. Without irony. I know my limits, and this feels a bridge too far.
Or, hey. Go ahead and tell your buddy to fuck off because you've got your preconceived notions and by God you're sticking to them. No skin off my back.
 
Or, hey. Go ahead and tell your buddy to fuck off because you've got your preconceived notions and by God you're sticking to them. No skin off my back.
I was hoping this was obvious, but my posts were meant to be tongue in cheek and looking to share stories about the games you play with friends because they are your friends.
 
I was hoping this was obvious, but this my posts were meant to be tongue in cheek and looking to share stories about the games you play with friends because they are your friends.
No. That wasn't remotely obvious. Your OP read like someone who needed to be "sold" on the idea of trying a game for the sake of your friendship. It still reads that way.
 
I think 2D20 is an awful system. I'm not bothered by the meta-currencies (although I'm not a fan of having more than one as a general rule) but by the fact that everything feels like it's kludged together. I bought Fallout 2D20 and I tried so hard to like it but it fights me at every turn. So many unintuitive parts. It feels like they went to a game design forum and tried to combine as many "cool" ideas from there as possible without any thought to whether they fit together. I also tend to really dislike games where people tell me that if I just play it for 6/12/18 months that it all becomes second nature. Well, yes, I'm sure it does but I shouldn't have to play a game for months to decide if it's worth playing!

Anyway, rant over...

I think it's worth giving any game (within reason and, yes, even 2D20 is within reason) a shot for a session or two if someone else is running it. You might like it in the end. Okay, you probably won't. If it doesn't click, then just thank the friend for running it but tell them, politely, that the game isn't for you.
 
I was really intimidated by both Conan and Fallout but once we started playing we were all using the rules like veterans within 30 minutes. Fallout plays better than it reads. We had a blast with it and its almost given me the courage to try Conan.
 
Well, there is always Stockholm syndrome.

I'm actually playing in a 2d20 Trek game right now. The GM has ditched three prior attempts. My current character is an Arakeen captain who is a bitof a squeemish detail freak. Before that I was a perky Starfleet Ensign (I'm soo happy we're going to get to work together on this assignment, I'm sure we're going to be best friends!) Before that I was an amoral rogue scientist who was more than happy to kill people to get results. Before that I was a Gorn Star Fleet captain who's parents were smugglers and became captain because he was last surving officer on his ship during a Romulan attack. His specialties were yelling at people and barking orders. If the GM pulls the plug on me again I swear I'm gonna strangle him.
 
2D20 rules make my head hurt - too many meta currencies...

I started with 2d20 on DUNE. And it was super abstract. Still can't figure out how to actually *kill* someone in that system.

I bought Homeworld because I love the series but I struggle to figure out what story to actually tell. So I haven't even read it.

But...with the new announcement I bought Achtung! Cthulhu. I previously had the 7thEdCoC and SW rules but I got the 2d20 books and the system is actually making sense. I mean, to the point where I'm seriously considering bringing an Indie World I'd thought up to A!C/2d20 first.

The Currency of Momentum/Threat is cool - though with the latter I struggle with what to do with Threat. My current rule is to use Threat like this

1 Threat = 1 Mook
10 Threat = 1 Big Bad (plus assorted mooks)

I'm not keen on GM metacurrencies like Threat as a rule. The use of Hate in TOR is sometimes just frustrating as hell as you watch the Troll you've just beaten down to low stress, heal instantly. So I'm super interested in how people use Threat effectively without annoying the shit out of your players.
 
No. That wasn't remotely obvious. Your OP read like someone who needed to be "sold" on the idea of trying a game for the sake of your friendship. It still reads that way.
Well, I guess I missed my mark. That's the tricky part about written communications with strangers on the Internet.

Anyway, my friend is well aware that I don't like the system AND that I have confidence he'll run something fun.

At the end of the day, it's hanging out with a friend, making him happy doing what he wants.
 
2D20 rules make my head hurt - too many meta currencies that all just try to formalize and limit what me and my players always do, too much weirdness in figuring out what too roll against. Honestly, I tried with John Carter, one of my favorite series. We agreed to part as friends.

One of my friends REALLY wants to run 2D20 Star Trek. I can't even make it through the quickstart. I've given him the polite brush off for a few years, but he refuses to run it without my involvement.

This past weekend, he bought me copies of the rule and the players guide. For the sake of our friendship, I clearly need to go along with this.

Has anyone else survived a brush with 2D20? Mankcam Mankcam - you seem sane, what can I do here?
I think we are alike in many ways. I bought John Carter and Star Trek and Conan, all in 2d20 format, because of a love of the IP. Reading the rules makes me want to pull my hair out. I just don't get it.

However, a guy ran a game of Conan 2d20 at a local game store and I had a blast. A lot of the metagame stuff didn't seem that important when he ran it, and maybe as a player you will have a similar experience. I still can't stomach the rulebooks, but if he ran another game I would sign up. I'm thinking that if I ever get to play this a lot I might grow to like the rules. Maybe.

To put this in perspective, the same guy ran a Savage Worlds game that was outstanding and I have a similar issue reading SW rulebooks. I think in the right hands any rules system can be palatable.
 
2D20 rules make my head hurt - too many meta currencies that all just try to formalize and limit what me and my players always do, too much weirdness in figuring out what too roll against. Honestly, I tried with John Carter, one of my favorite series. We agreed to part as friends.

One of my friends REALLY wants to run 2D20 Star Trek. I can't even make it through the quickstart. I've given him the polite brush off for a few years, but he refuses to run it without my involvement.

This past weekend, he bought me copies of the rule and the players guide. For the sake of our friendship, I clearly need to go along with this.

Has anyone else survived a brush with 2D20? Mankcam Mankcam - you seem sane, what can I do here?
I really tried hard to make Conan 2D20 work, but in the end it wasn't my thing.

I was quite let down by Modiphius 2D20 as a game engine.

The positive side first:

The books are beautiful, and character gen is reasonably immersive.

Setting lore quite good (although possibly too detailed at times for a Conan game)

I quite like the idea of Momentum Pts to portray success levels in a pulpy game, and from the outset they were a fun part of the system.

However the negatives outweigh everything:

Where I felt the system didn't work was first off it gives you a general table broadly describing the scope of Momentum Spends (including examples) - by itself this is a great idea that encourages GM handwaving and gives the PCs an idea what they can attempt.

Then the rulebook goes on to dismantle the table's effectiveness by presenting Momentum Spend tables for every skill and spell, promoting everyone to keep looking up these specific tables to see what they can and cannot do. It really destroyed the previous loose nature of the rules, and I hope this is not repeated in other 2D20 games.

The next thing that ruined the game for me as a GM was having Doom Pts. I felt quite straightjacketed by this, as with most other rpgs I have run I have never needed a game currency to fuel GM narration and NPC actions. It also felt like the GM was playing against the PCs at times, which is not my style.
The whole Doom Pts economy did not work for me at all.

I remember the PCs can take a fair bit of damage right from the start. This initially seemed great for pulpy sword & sorcery characters, but as they advanced it just felt like they were not threatened by anything. I tbink the players liked it, but I felt this made it hard as a GM to portray any tension, or to maintain any excitement.

There were other issues we had with some of the ranged attack rules and zones, but I cannot remember the specifics

We enjoyed our mini campaign of Conan 2D20, but if we ever return to these characters, then I am converting them to BRP (BGB or Mythras) and using it to run future Hyborian Age sessions. Mythras just hums so much better in all aspects.

So that was my experience with 2D20, and I never got around to testing out John Carter, but I don't really want to after all my efforts with Conan 2D20.

I don't have Star Trek, but in terms of lore and atmosphere it looks really good.

It will have some version of the Momentum/Doom economy, but from a PC perspective I think it's fine.

I will not willingly run 2D20 as a GM ever again, but as a PC I would be happy to play in someone else's game, (especially if it is not Conan).

If I was asked to run Star Trek I would use the Modiphius book purely as a resource and setting inspiration, and I would run the game using Mythras M-Space game mechanics.

My advice for you is to jump enthusiastically into Star Trek as a PC, and leave all the 2D20 headaches to the GM.
 
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Love? No, probably not. It's the Marmite of rules systems.

Tolerate? Just about...

2D20 is the most frustratingly bad system I've seen clinging like a limpet to one valuable IP after another. I've played it. I'd play it again if I absolutely had to. I will never referee with it. I really only put up with it because one of my players loves Dune and Star Trek and 2D20 is where these franchises dwell right now.

I'd be fascinated to know how many groups successfully get more than a few sessions out of these games compared to how many buy them because it's 'Trek, Dune, whatever.
 
Love? No, probably not. It's the Marmite of rules systems.

Tolerate? Just about...

2D20 is the most frustratingly bad system I've seen clinging like a limpet to one valuable IP after another. I've played it. I'd play it again if I absolutely had to. I will never referee with it. I really only put up with it because one of my players loves Dune and Star Trek and 2D20 is where these franchises dwell right now.

I'd be fascinated to know how many groups successfully get more than a few sessions out of these games compared to how many buy them because it's 'Trek, Dune, whatever.
I can totally understand why it wouldn’t work for some groups, but our group (including me) actually really likes the 2d20 system (heresy on this site I know). I’m currently playing in a Star Trek game and have run a couple of successful Conan campaigns and an A!C game (that we put on hiatus when the war in Ukraine broke out). The meta currency’s work for us and we’ve not found it to be adversarial in play.

Edit: For reference, we play a wide variety of games - currently also playing in a Con-X 2.0 game and running Vaesen.
 
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You probably have to reward them with one or more kinds of vague metacurrency for that to happen.
Snideness aside, I think it's consent and narrative focused.

I don't know why people think there are a lot of metacurrencies in the game. There's no more than TOR. Really no more than FASERIP. I mean it's just Momentum and Threat. And they're the same thing. Just like Hope/Hate. And Karma.

A!C is good - though I'm not really liking the effects-based stuff (attacks with Drain, Stun, Piercing qualities) as it reminds me too much of GURPS. It took A!C to get me into understanding the Challenge Dice as DUNE doesn't have them.

The use of Threat is a different way to play. I usually sketch out the plot in-situ and the idea of modifying the plot as it unravels with the amount of stakes the players have decided to take along the way is new.
 
I had the same experience.

I had no trouble teaching Conan 2d20 or Star Trek Adventures to my players within a single session.

I should probably note that one of those players is fucking awful at learning and remembering RPG rules - he ran a few sessions of Wushu and I don't think he ever got the dice system rules right (might as well have just done it freeform). He could only handle running Savage Worlds when no powers or firearms were in use. These days he mostly sticks to GMing Forged in the Dark games after I successfully taught him the Blades in the Dark rules.
 
I don't know why people think there are a lot of metacurrencies in the game. There's no more than TOR. Really no more than FASERIP. I mean it's just Momentum and Threat. And they're the same thing. Just like Hope/Hate. And Karma.
I will note that more might be added or changed depending on the system. In Dishonored, Threat doesn't exist. You have Momentum, Void, and Chaos. In Conan, you have Momentum, Doom, and Fortune. In A!C you have Momentum and Threat. In Infinity you have Heat, Momentum, and Infinity. In Mutant Chronicles, you have Momentum, Chronicle Points, and Dark Symmetry points. And so on.

In general, they behave the same way, though I get why they tried to name them according to the setting. But it can make it seem like there are a lot of different metacurrencies.
 
I own the entire Conan and Infinity lines, and since I’m the GM 90% of the time, I would be the person running them if they got to the table.

I love the Infinity setting for the RPG (I’m unfamiliar with the minis game so don’t know if there are differences). But I’m not a fan of the rules so far.

However, in your place, I would definitely give it a try, and even learn enough of the rules to play my character without constantly having to ask what to role and so forth. You never know.

This reminds me of a friend I had a couple decades ago who LOVED Shadowrun and always wanted to run it. But the rules have always sucked (IMHO), and most of the published adventures were utterly terrible. Unfortunately, he would only run published adventures, and didn’t have the GMing skills to smooth out all the stupidity in the rules, so his games always sucked. I was the only one of his friends who willingly played his game anyway.

Hmmm, maybe that story is more of an encouragement to NOT give 2d20 a chance… oops :closed: !
 
I know EXACTLY what you mean, being in a JCoM campaign. No, I have been unable to love the 2d20 system or even like it due to the same reasons you mentioned. But the GM has been my best friend forever, and I did enjoy the Barsoom novels as a kid, and ... I'm the one who gave him the darn game! So I just have fun sharing the time with friends and try not to think about the mechanics too much. I'd rather play a bad game with good people than vice versa.
 
Gah, I want to love it, but it's a freaking mess. They need a great editor to go through it hardcore. Not an editor, not a good editor but a great one to make it workable. I own all the Conan material, I own all the Mutant Chronicles material (pdf and hardcopy on both) and a lot of the pdfs for John Carter, Star Trek and Infinity.

I'd say others advice including Mankam and just play it. Playing is easy, mastering it enough to run it? Fuck me stupid no. Just a nightmare. Beautiful books though and Chris Birch seems like a nice guy, even good about emails.
 
I can totally understand why it wouldn’t work for some groups, but our group (including me) actually really likes the 2d20 system (heresy on this site I know).
Heresy? Only when we want to post a 40k meme...:grin:

A relatively uncommon experience is more like it:shade:.
 
Love? No. But one can have enough recreational pharmaceuticals for a perfunctory affair. I cannot promise a steamy one, at best tawdry. To have your presence, but not your passion. Will that do for your friend? :hehe:
 
I remember a time of chaos, ruined publishers, this wasted industry. But most of all, I remember the message board poster, the poster we called Cowboy Duck Cowboy Duck .

To understand who he was, you have to go back to another time, when the industry was powered by the d20, and there was 5e material as far as the eye could see. Gone now, swept away. For reasons long forgotten, a corporation decided to spaz out and touched off a blaze which consumed all. Without D&D, they were nothing. They built a house of straw. The Open Gaming movement sputtered and stopped. The largest 3PPs talked and talked, but nothing could stem the avalanche. Their world crumbled. Human sacrifice. Cats and dogs living together. Mass hysteria.

On the fora, it was a punctuation nightmare. Only the OSR mobile enough to scavenge, brutal enough to pillage would survive. Grognards took over the community, ready to wage war for a fragment of Gygaxian text. And in this maelstrom of decay, ordinary gamers were battered and smashed. Men like Cowboy Duck. The warrior Duck. In the flash of a press release, he lost everything, and became a shell of a man, a burnt out desolate man, a man with no game system, a man who wandered out into the wasteland of 2d20.

And it was here, in this blighted 2d20-scape, that he learned to live again.
 
I think 2d20 works okay for Star Trek. I've run it a bit and it works fine.

(All IMHO, of course) I was worried that usually rolling 2d20 would make it hard to get 3+ successes and would leave characters looking less than competent. In practice, it's not as bad as I was afraid of, especially with teamwork and specialties, and, you know, not constantly requiring 4 successes as a default. Character generation is fun and produces characters that are reasonably competent in their fields of expertise. Combat is interesting. It was actually difficult to put someone down with ranged weapons, and players wound up resorting to punching out opponents. Which felt very Star Trek, especially TOS. I haven't used the system to generate a one-off specialist to send on the away team yet but just that it's there is good, it shows GMs and players that you don't absolutely have to work in every PC into every scene or risk leaving a player just sitting around. There's a lot of great setting material in the books, of course. We just need a Romulan sourcebook!

I'm not at all sure how well the system would work for something like Conan, but it meshes okay with Star Trek - competent professional characters working together, and the main issue isn't whether or not they'll succeed but rather how they'll succeed and what melodramatic philosophical questions the GM wants to pose along the way. Frankly, I'm not sure I'd want something more detailed for Star Trek, and I'm way too lazy to go through any work converting it to another system when there's all this material for it already.

Of course, while Star Trek isn't up there with Conan, the licence has passed through a few hands. Give it a year or two and there will probably be a new Star Trek game anyway!
 
Well, I'm glad it works better for Star Trek than it does for Conan or Dune...:thumbsup:
 
I remember a time of chaos, ruined publishers, this wasted industry. But most of all, I remember the message board poster, the poster we called Cowboy Duck Cowboy Duck .

To understand who he was, you have to go back to another time, when the industry was powered by the d20, and there was 5e material as far as the eye could see. Gone now, swept away. For reasons long forgotten, a corporation decided to spaz out and touched off a blaze which consumed all. Without D&D, they were nothing. They built a house of straw. The Open Gaming movement sputtered and stopped. The largest 3PPs talked and talked, but nothing could stem the avalanche. Their world crumbled. Human sacrifice. Cats and dogs living together. Mass hysteria.

On the fora, it was a punctuation nightmare. Only the OSR mobile enough to scavenge, brutal enough to pillage would survive. Grognards took over the community, ready to wage war for a fragment of Gygaxian text. And in this maelstrom of decay, ordinary gamers were battered and smashed. Men like Cowboy Duck. The warrior Duck. In the flash of a press release, he lost everything, and became a shell of a man, a burnt out desolate man, a man with no game system, a man who wandered out into the wasteland of 2d20.

And it was here, in this blighted 2d20-scape, that he learned to live again.
This post is a work of art. I'd read that book, see that movie, play that game.
 
I'll add to the spare number of heretics and say I really like 2D20, generally.

The Actung Cthulhu version especially, and the Star Trek and JCoM versions are both serviceable and "good enough" for their respective IPs.

The game, at it's heart, is a dice pool attribute and skill game. At the tables where I've run it, it runs remarkably like any old Storyteller system game (VtM, MtA etc), or like the One Roll Engine, or like Free League's "Year Zero Engine" (e.g. Forbidden Lands). As a (typically implemented) attribute + skills, I'll say it reminds me of BRP games in play (a statement that might get me flamed into oblivion here at the pub, if not outright banned :grin:).

There aren't a lot of meta currencies, as stated above, no more than in The One Ring or in Marvel or in Burning Wheel - and certainly, the meta currencies in 2D20 are way less fiddly than the ones in Burning Wheel.

I've run 2 ~12 session Star Trek campaigns, a dozen or so Conan 1-shots, and few JCoM one shots. I'd like to run A!C 2D20 (I've run the FATE and the Savage Worlds version of A!C, for context, a long campaign of both and a few one shots of both).

I think the Conan implementation is the most "confusing" and fiddly of the bunch. I don't love the system in that incarnation, I tolerate it there. The lore in the books is fantastic, as is the art.

The STA and JCoM implementations reliably, in my experience, deliver sessions that feel like they belong naturally within their respective IPs. JCoM plays quite a bit like B/X D&D in my experience, in fact. It's just attributes and talents, basically.

I own Dishonored (I wanted to check out the void powers, never played the video game, never ran this at the table). I own Dune - it is too abstract for my tastes, but I can see how it'd work with the right players to produce a good Dune like experience in play. I don't own, and haven't read or played any of the other implementations.

I could easily run a spur of the moment one-shot with less than an hours notice cobbling together some stuff and using JCoM as a kind of base.

It's not my favorite system, but it's one I have in rotation, and it's quite fun and serviceable at the table.

On the downside, while the books' production values are great, the text across the whole line could benefit from (at least) another editing pass.

None of that means anyone has to love it, or run it, or play it. :thumbsup:
 
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