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WHAT'S WRONG WITH D20?
Those of you who are experienced role-players will say, "Simple answer: nothing, but I still don't like it!" Why, I ask? For the record, I don't like D20, either, or GURPS for that matter, although I feel the need to give these systems a fair shot. For those of you who are not experienced role-players, but have read this far and are trying to find out why this hobby is so fascinating, perhaps even trying to decide if you want to get into it or not, I encourage you to read on, please?

I suppose to answer the question, What's wrong with D20?', a player would first have to understand what D20 is. This is a generic' gaming system, if you will, developed by Wizards of the Coast -yeah, the guys who developed Magic: The Gathering Trading Card Game. This means the game was designed without a specific genre of role-playing in mind, but rather a system and character generation developed to fit into any genre available. Before I get into the pitfalls of this idea, I will try to pump this, and other generic systems, up so you can make a truly wizened decision.

There are many benefits to playing under a generic' system; first, let me explain that I hate this term generic when it is applied to role-playing games. GURPS is the Generic Universal Role-Playing System, by Steve Jackson Games, and the last four words are better than the first one. Systems such as D20, GURPS, Tri-dX, the D6 System, Palladium, Torg: Role-Playing the Possibility Wars, and others within this type of role-playing, are indeed developed around the idea of Universal Role-Playing, meaning fitting the genre of game around the system. This can work very well for switching between role-playing genre's, science fiction to fantasy, science-fantasy to western, modern horror to cyberpunk, etc., because making characters between games becomes a snap after a short time, and the rules of the game are understood well by the GM and all involved players. Every single one of these type of games have rules for translating between genre's with ease, which rules within the system are or are not used in the genre, skills, abilities, powers, magic, etc. are defined within the basic rules.

The best thing about these systems, except for GURPS, Palladium and Torg: Role-Playing the Possibility Wars, is they're free for download or adding to your cart on places such as DriveThruRPG.com. They're easy to learn and they make sense for getting together a fast group of players, building characters, and dropping

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