Makers of Award-winning Role Playing Games › Forums › Legends of Arcanis Organized Play Campaign › Legends of Arcanis Campaign › So this system ARPG, its not your old D20 system
- This topic has 24 replies, 12 voices, and was last updated 12 years, 7 months ago by Anonymous.
- AuthorPosts
- October 23, 2013 at 11:58 am #251616AnonymousInactive
Just to be a voice on the other side, my group of Arcanis players probably would not still be playing if the game was a d20 or a D&D 3.5 system. Then again, we *enjoy* and *seek out* new game systems to try because they all offer something different. In general we have played
7th Sea
Call of Cthulhu (d100)
Savage Worlds
Fate
Star Wars (Funky Dice / d6)
Rogue Trader
D&D 4e
D&D Next
ArcanisJohn
October 23, 2013 at 3:17 pm #251624AnonymousInactiveI agree with John. I did not try Arcanis until it was its own system and, if it was a d20 setting, I would not have looked at it. I know some of the local players have been playing for a long time while I’m pretty sure others are like me and did not try it until relatively recently (though I don’t know if they would have tried it if it was d20 or not).
October 23, 2013 at 11:37 pm #251643AnonymousInactiveThe biggest problem I seem to be running into right now is that it is a new unfamiliar system from a small company.
The other issue would be it’s another system – period. d20 ‘worked’ because everybody used it. I can play Forgotten Realms, Star Wars, Dragonstar, Arcanis — all with the same basic ruleset. There were only a few notable outliers, like Shadowrun and Rokugan. After the break-up, every campaign had it’s own rule-set.
Not only is it a vast increase in buy rulebooks and such, it’s also a huge barrier to simple portability of books in convention. There is rule confusion; in my gaming group we’re constantly mixing up mechanics.
This isn’t a complaint; I’m just identifying areas that may have players opt out. I’ve already done that elsewhere, with other campaigns, with the idea that I simply don’t want to invest in a new system, in both time (to understand the rules and mechanics) and money. This will get magnified once edition updates start hitting the streets (every 5-7 years, it seems).
Also, the Arcanis system IS pretty complex. That alone bothers some people (not me). But it also causes problems for simple ease of use. For instance, one of my most maddening issues is when I’m flipping through the Talents section. If it has a “Limited” designator, why can’t it have an entry saying what it’s limited to in the description? That leaves one flipping through a 400 page book to guess the areas it might impact. Is it Path, Background, racial, Archetype? Sometimes it seems intuitive (like a Val power or Elorii bloodline), but others its not.
Again, I’m not venting; just one of the by-products of a complex campaign. I tried writing up a character creation cheat-sheet to simplify the process…and broke down after four pages.
Those are just my thoughts. Y’all know I’m still an arcaniac.
MichaelOctober 24, 2013 at 12:33 am #251644AnonymousInactiveI have a pretty decent character creation cheatsheet (basically an Excel spreadsheet with the steps of chargen and tabs for each “thing” compiled from all sources (unredistributable due to quantity of copyright material)). In that same spreadsheet, I also added the Limited information you noted (I found the same issue when I was working on characters – it would be really nice to have that info included in the book).
I tried working on a character generation spreadsheet (as did a friend) but Arcanis is quite complicated to create such a thing. I do think Arcanis would greatly benefit from an official character creation program (either standalone or Hero Lab or similar).
October 24, 2013 at 12:55 am #251646AnonymousInactiveWhat I’d like to see developed, and what I’ve talked to a few people about already, is an official crafting option within the campaign. I don’t expect we’ll be able to churn out magic items like we did under 3/3.5 or get rich off of making exceptional arms/armor but right now, other than for flavor, crafting skills / talents / backgrounds / paths are pretty much useless; there’s little to no incentive to take them. Why take Artisan: Bowyer in order to get the path Bowman (easy way to get an exceptional bow), when after 1 BI I could buy it? What’s the point of having the herbs and what not in Codex of Heroes, if I can’t actually make any of the potions? I understand that the books have to service both home games and campaign and that somethings will work for one and not the other, but given that (right now) the campaign is what’s likely driving most of PCI’s sales on all things Arcanis – shouldn’t we try to have as much as possible in the campaign?
Great post all around. I would also like to see crafting gain value. My wife, for instance, built her character around herbalism/apothecary, but there really isn’t enough there to make it fully viable. I ended up submitting a path and additional herbs to flesh it out a little, but never heard back from PCI (even after several follow-up emails to Pedro which were ignored).I know that in the old campaign it was said that PCs could never craft legendary weapons due to the amount of time required…wouldn’t have had time to adventure.
October 24, 2013 at 1:39 am #251647AnonymousInactiveOne point to remember about Limited Talents is that they simply aren’t available for general taking, not that they (necessarily) have only one source. The reason they are not more exclusive is that PCI has said they reserve the right to use Limited Talents in future Paths and Backgrounds.
October 24, 2013 at 1:47 am #251648AnonymousInactiveYes, but it would be nice if they listed the sources to get the talent from the current and past books. I’d even love to see them “waste” a page or two in future books listing any new sources granting Limited talents.
On the other hand, it’s relatively simple to maintain my spreadsheet going forward…
October 24, 2013 at 11:29 am #251655AnonymousInactiveThe Herbalism Route seems to be fairly well thought out and useful. I have a player/GM who has been gathering herbs in several adventures. There were no ‘hard and fast’ rules for creation amounts that we could find, but depending upon the rarity or power, we were doing generally a 2d4 or something doses per attempt.
As for crafting weapons, armor, or magic, that’s just takes too much time for an adventurer to reliably do without adding in a ton of complicated rules. The system would have to be realistic enough to prevent *everyone* from doing it but easy enough to get something made in a reasonable amount of time.
John
November 6, 2013 at 10:48 pm #251980AnonymousInactiveThe Herbalism Route seems to be fairly well thought out and useful. I have a player/GM who has been gathering herbs in several adventures. There were no ‘hard and fast’ rules for creation amounts that we could find, but depending upon the rarity or power, we were doing generally a 2d4 or something doses per attempt.
Why.. thank you
![\":D\"](\"{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_e_biggrin.gif\" "\\"Very")
November 7, 2013 at 2:23 am #251991AnonymousInactiveThe Herbalism Route seems to be fairly well thought out and useful. I have a player/GM who has been gathering herbs in several adventures. There were no ‘hard and fast’ rules for creation amounts that we could find, but depending upon the rarity or power, we were doing generally a 2d4 or something doses per attempt.
That there are no formal campaign guidelines even is exactly the problem. What you and your group do may not fly at a Con. I can easily seeing some GMs decide “well there’s no actual rules for that, so you don’t have those potions” or “nope, module says nothing about herbs, you search and find nothing useful”. What works at home may not work at the Con, and that defeats the entire point of a ‘living’ campaign. - AuthorPosts
- The forum ‘Legends of Arcanis Campaign’ is closed to new topics and replies.