Legen...wait for it it....

So I was looking over at this Clevinger guy's website and he had nice things to say about this game.

It really is what 4e should have been. I really enjoyed reading it. Its a solid design. The only major thing I disliked was the lack of monsters. I think their idea was for the GM to build monsters kinda how PCs are made. That's a ton of prep work. They got a ton of feedback about it and are working on a Monster collection.

However, I am not convinced the system would not support using 3e or 4e monsters. I think there would be some minor balance issues, but nothing overwhelming. Against 3e monsters, low levels I think the PCs would dominate and at high levels that would taper off. Against 4e monster I think the balance issues would be nominal.

But then, I'm not convinced you can't throw 4e monsters against 3e PCs or 3e monsters against 4e PCs. Yes there are some mechanical and balance issues but I don't think they are as severe as people would make you believe. I've used 4e monsters in a savage worlds game with very little conversion and it worked fairly well.

This lends me to open my doors to lots of crazy ideas. I knew the next time I started the game I was going to just kinda tell the players they could play any race or class they liked from any 3e source they could find. I'll find a way to work it in, I welcome the challenge.

Jedi vs Dragon, sure, why not?

But, after thinking about it I really don't have an issue with people playing classes or races from Pathfinder in an otherwise 3e setting. There are some substantial differences there. If I am okay with that can I be okay with anything that is basically d20? I found that after a quick thought I really didn't have an issue with that.

Wanna play a 4e paladin in an otherwise 3e setting. Sure, I can make that happen. Wanna play a Legend Sage? Sure. Pathfinder Fighter? not an issue. Yes, it means I get to do some on-the-fly conversion stuff to make it happen but that's just not an issue for me. I think I can keep it all moving along without any real issues. I can fiddle the mechanics.

What about balance?

less like this, and...

Let me tell you about how game balance always works when I GM. A system comes out and it seems really balanced and what not. Then, one of my players intentionally or unintentionally smashes the game balance to hell somehow. So, yeah, going into a game thinking you won't have to fiddle with balance is just kidding yourself. It's a great dream, but really not worth the headache.

...more like this.

Which brings me back to letting players off the leash. They are going to wreck any game balance anyway so why try to stop them? Just work on keeping the mess cleaned up and otherwise have fun with it.

Which brings me to the main point of this post. I'm not going to get all hard core about "the game we are playing is D&D, or Pathfinder, or whatever". I wanna play "super awesome imagination fun time" (guitar whine, YEAH!).

So next game I run: Any d20 thing. Race, class, whatever. But, I get to draw from all the same sources. You play a multiclass 3e wizard/4e barbarian (somehow?). Fine. I have 4e Orcus with a machine gun.

Go gettim'.