D20 for dummies [Archive] - Wizards Community

D20 for dummies [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Piuro
07-25-04, 02:37 AM Well, this is all I have so far, think you guys can help?
--------------------

The D20 System for dummies

Hello and welcome to the wonderful world of the D20 System© The following lessons are in the order that follows:

Introduction
Basic premise
Who You Are
Character Creation
The Character Sheet
Equipment and Weapons
How to roleplay
Common terms in roleplaying
Legal

Introduction

The D20 system is the system used by most modern roleplaying games. It first was created by Gary Gygax for Dungeons & Dragons, and since then, the current D&D (now version 3.5) has always served as the base for the D20 system.

The name is the result of the main tool of the system; the twenty sided dice, or D20. The D 20 System is part of the OGL, or Open Gaming License which says that as long as credit is given or royalties or something like that, anyone can create a game using it.

Basic Premise

The D20 system relies on a few key factors; Rules, Players, Dice, and fun. The dice are a very important thing to learn how to handle, and how to understand whet they mean.

The dice have a system of names, with the letter D (for dice) followed by a number, which indicates the number of sides. The normal dice (other weird and fairly useless dice do exist) are the

D4
D6 (Standard dice)
D8
D10
D% (This dice has every other 10 numbers on it, 10, 20, 30, 40, etc. up to 00)
D12
D20 (The most important)
D100 (This usally a D10 and a D% rolled together, with the D% as tens, and the D10 as ones. A Roll of 0/00 is read as 100.)

Those are the only dice the D20 system uses, but occasionally, you have to roll more than one of the same dice at a time, this is written as a number before the D, indicating how many of them to roll. So say you had to roll three six-sided dice, you would say 3d6 etc.

The rules of the Game will all be described in later chapters, there is only one rule that I need to point out that I wont go into detail on later, and that’s called “Rule Zero” The DM can do whatever he wants.

Players are divided into two main groups, PCs and DMs. PCs (Or Player Characters) are where the majority of players lie, these are the people who play the game from there characters point of view. The other people are DMs, or Dungeon Masters, they are the storytellers, they control everything in the game world except the PCs, including how people react to what the PCs do, monsters, and the overall story.

There is no real rule as to who can play which part, but the only rule is you cant be a PC in an adventure you’ve already played in or adventures you’ve DMed, also called running a game.

As for fun, well that’s why its important that everyone get along. 

Who You Are

First and foremost, have a concept.

Whoever you play, along with however, is up to no-one but you, but what your role in the party (Group of adventurers) is, is defined by something called a class. Whether you are a dexterous rogue from Dungeons and Dragons, a Charismatic Hero from D20 modern, or a force wielding Jedi from Star Wars, is how you define your characters base role.

These Classes are called Core classes, and are available from the start of your characters adventuring life. All of the classes have their advantages and disadvantages, but how those are used is not set in stone. Let’s use D&D’s rogue for example, with the same class, you could be a stealthy thief, a master pickpocket, or an expert assassin. (Of course, you could just as easily play a klutzy wanna-be thief. The way you play your role shows the style of your roleplaying.

Classes are divided into categories of where they belong, though some people (like me) enjoy taking these and bending them into totally different categories. The Core Classes of D&D for example, are divided like this:

Tanks (Main fighters)
Support (Need someone else doing a different role to be effective)
Healers (Somebody has to keep you alive)
Arcane Spellcasters (Usually the weakest)
Devine Spellcasters (Use your god to blow up stuff)

The classes themselves are:

Barbarian (As the name says)
Bard (Magical musicians)
Cleric (Armored battle-priests)
Druid (Nature-dwelling animal-friendly spellcasters of the wild)
Fighter (As the name says)
Monk (Use unarmed attacks and certain monk weapons to amazing effect)
Paladin (A holy-crusader and doer of good deeds)
Ranger (Guardians of the forest, and have a few select spells)
Rogue (Stealthy type)
Sorcerer* (Spellcaster from birth)
Wizard* (Spellcaster through training)

*The differences are really in game mechanics and how you play your character.

So when the two tables are added together you get this:

Tanks:
Barbarians
Clerics
Fighters
Paladin
Support:
Bard
Druid
Monk
Ranger
Rogue
Healers:
Cleric
Druid
Paladin
Arcane Spellcasters:
Bard
Sorcerer
Wizard
Devine Spellcasters:
Cleric
Druid
Ranger
Note that repeats in the chart show that a character can fill different roles.

This all leads to the next important thing, alignment (Mostly used in D&D). Are you good? Evil? Maybe good with a little twist of chaos? Well follow the simple chart below and pick where you think you’d be on here:

Lawful Good Neutral Good Chaotic Good
Lawful Neutral True Neutral Chaotic Neutral
Lawful Evil Neutral Evil Chaotic Evil

Notes: Paladins are always lawful good, monks are always lawful, and clerics are always at most one box away from their gods’ alignment, this step cannot be diagonal.

It is worth pointing out that most DMs and the RPGA won’t let you play any of the evils.

I mentioned in the subtext that clerics must be within one box or “Step” of their gods’ alignment, so ill use an example. Say you are a cleric who worships Pholtus, he is lawful good, so you must be one step away, which means you must be one of these:

Lawful Good Neutral Good
Lawful Neutral

So once you have those picked out, the main thing you have to work on, non-mechanics wise, is fleshing out your character. Think of what you have done up-to this point as a skeleton, and now you get to make it into a person.

Will he be Swift? Smart? Strong? A funny guy? Or maybe a great negotiator, this is where you take your earlier concept and turns it into a full fledged character. This is also where it’s a good time to decide your race in the game. In some systems, only humans are available. Check your core rulebook to see what is available to you, but for now, I’ll list the D&D Core Races.

Human (Well balanced, fast learners)
Dwarf (Strong, good with armor, not very charismatic)
Gnome (Good health, not very strong, Small)
Elf (Graceful, low health)
Half Elf (Well balanced, good game mechanics)
Half Orc (Strong and stupid)
Halfling (Dexterous, not very strong)

An Example of a concept

This Is my concept for a character, you should probably create something like this before making a character.

The Concept:
A human assassin in training who a little bit of a klutz, and tends to trip over things while trying to sneak up on a target, because of this, he has never accually assassinated anyone, or got a job for that matter… He likes to carry around around daggers and try and kill people, but when that fails, he’ll resort to his comfy scimitar. Tends to wear assassin black and simple leather armor, and not like daylight. Has a pretty bad sense of direction.

As a note to myself, I’ll make the character better as he grows more experienced, eventually becomes what he aspires.

Mechanics

Human
Rogue
Chaotic Good

The Character Sheet

This section will only cover a little bit of the things found on the character sheet, as most of it is described very well in the books, and its pretty easy to find somebody to help you with it if you get stuck.

I recommend http://wizards.com for character sheets for the various D20 system games it publishes.

The Top

This is where things that describe your character go. Name, looks, class and levels (which I will go into later), as well as a little thing for who you, the real you, are.

The Left Side

This is where you put how good you are in whatever skills you have, these are determined by ranks, as well as any other conditional modifiers.

The AC
AC stands for Armor Class, and is basically a combination of your dodgeing skills and your armor, and in certain cases special things like class abilities or cover. Your opponent must roll this number (and add his modifiers, in order to hit you. Flat footed takes away your DEX bonus, and touch takes away your armor bouns.

The Top Right

Stats. I cannot stress how important these are these define your characters mental and physical attributes, and are broken into six parts,

STR (How strong you are, used for attacking and extra damage in melee)
DEX (How dexterous you are, helps with armor (because of dodging) and in ranged attacks)
CON (Your constitution, helps with your health and fighting off diseases, etc.)
INT (How smart you are, helpful to get more skills)
WIS (How wise you are, mainly useful for knowledge and game mechanics.)
CHA (How charismatic are you, pretty self explanatory)

You determine stats usually by rolling 4D6, subtracting the lowest dice, then use the remaining sum as your stat score (of your choice).

That’s all I really need to go into for character sheets, the rest will explain itself as time goes on.

Equipment and weapons
Equipment can be purchased at the listed cost, and is mainly used as a role playing device. Have a character who has OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder)? By a flask for water, a bar of soap, and a washcloth. And what pyromaniac is complete without matches and gas? Have fun, but don’t forget that even though its not required, you should buy something to put those items in for better roleplaying.

Weapons (And armor) are purchased in the same way, but have various stats of their own; the ones I will address here are damage and criticals.
Damage: Expressed in dice, if you hit, you role the dice it says and that’s how much of your opponents HP gets taken away.
Critical: This is usually expressed as n-20 x2, or as just xn where n is a number.
When you roll a natural (unmodified) 20, (or, in the case as the first one mentioned above, somewhere between those two numbers) you do extra damage as indicated by the xn. So ill use two examples:

Bastard sword: D10 Damage 19-20 x2
If I role a 19 or a 20 on my D20, I do 2D10 damage instead of D10.

Scythe 2D4 Damage x4
If (And only if) I role a 20, then I do 8(!)D4 damage! Ouch!

For either of these, if I roll lower than the critical number (But still hit my opponent) then I just do the normal listed damage.
How to roleplay

Well, onto the final test, how can you roleplay. Well, the best thing I can suggest is, “Look at everything from your characters point of view”. If your character has brainpower to rival a dead rodent, he probably won’t notice small, intricate details, and won’t be much help in figuring out the BBEG (See next chapter) scheme.

So let’s do some practice, ill make a scenario:

You walk into a bar and notice that a man staring at you has a red robe and a tattooed head, signs, or so you’ve heard, of the evil red wizards of Thay. The Man followes your every move, and slowly drinks his beer. You feel nervious at first, but then relax in the comfort that you have a nice big sword. But then you notice, as the man glares at you, that if he is a red wizard, and something did start, that you would probably not even draw your weapon before you hit the floor dead…

That would have been seen by somebody with either a high intelligence, or past experience with the Red Wizards.

Bar have beer. Ugly man staring. Me hit him.

And that would be an intelligence of around 6. Be sure to take stats, skills, and your characters attitude for everything you do. Most people rush in to hit Kobolds, My character strongly likes Kobolds, so I try to talk to them at every chance I get, and try to stop my stab-happy allies from killing them until AFTER they tick me off.
The Vagrant
07-25-04, 06:43 AM In my opinion : Your skimming too much. You describe the less important aspects (the place of each D&D class in a party), and just glaze the critical points (like exactly what the attributes do).

You listed str, dex, con, ect. gave a one liner, then just said basicly "You'll figure it out as you read this." This, in my opinion, is a horrable way to teach some one somthing as complex as the D20 system.

Assume that a complete noob to PnP RPGs read this, do you think they would understand that Charisma gives you bonueses to bluff, cleric spells, and other important things? Because I highly doubt "Pretty self explanitory" says it very well.

You have to remember that people reading this thing won't even know what most game mechanic terms (like touch attacks, and flat footed) mean so: "Flat footed takes away your DEX bonus, and touch takes away your armor bouns." is just feeding them information they don't know yet.

When explaining a gaming system, I'd work from the inside out. Here, that would be the basic attributes.

Expalin what each is, in terms anybody can understand, and hat the game revolves around these stats. Explain that the large number is how powerful that trait is, and that the small number is how much that particular trait helps in every task related to that attribute.

For example: Strength is how physically strong your character is. The higher the number, the more "umph" the character has. Strength increases how much damage your character deals to others with swords, and also helps the character aim his swings. Though if your character's strength is too low, he suffers from that weakness and he can not fight as well, carry as much, and do certain tasks as well. The small number shows exactly how much that higher strength helps.

Also, on much more picky and snobby note on my part: Assasins can not be Good, yours apperantly is. I'd say that in a tutoirual I'd stick hard to the rules, and explain house rules, fudging, and Rule 0 in a much later chapter.

Sorry to sound cranky, but I just sat through to many bad lessons on how to do things before. Ecpessialy when my friend tried teaching another how to play, I basicly had to take over or the poor guy would never had gotten it.

Agian, I'm rambiling now so I'll stop.
Piuro
07-25-04, 11:19 AM Thanks fpr the advice, ill get cracking on fixing those!
blackprinceofmuncie
07-25-04, 04:17 PM Originally posted by Piuro
Introduction

The D20 system is the system used by most modern roleplaying games. It first was created by Gary Gygax for Dungeons & Dragons, and since then, the current D&D (now version 3.5) has always served as the base for the D20 system.

Both of those sentences are wholly and completely inaccurate. You might want to do some more research on the history and current state of the RPG hobby if you're looking to include them in your intro.
GreyLord
07-25-04, 07:58 PM Originally posted by blackprinceofmuncie
Both of those sentences are wholly and completely inaccurate. You might want to do some more research on the history and current state of the RPG hobby if you're looking to include them in your intro.

Hmm, actually, WotC/Hasbro list their histories, or portray it like that basically. According to their history of D20, he's close enough.

Not that I agree with that version or that it's true...but after reading many of the articles authorized by WotC on D&D and it's anniversary...one would think that the current version is the original Grandaddy version just about...

Not that it's correct...just pointing out that it's probably depends on who's relating the history. WotC or others who are telling the unauthorized side...or who get into the technical nitty gritty of it.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Piuro 07-25-04, 02:37 AM	Well, this is all I have so far, think you guys can help? -------------------- The D20 System for dummies Hello and welcome to the wonderful world of the D20 System© The following lessons are in the order that follows: Introduction Basic premise Who You Are Character Creation The Character Sheet Equipment and Weapons How to roleplay Common terms in roleplaying Legal Introduction The D20 system is the system used by most modern roleplaying games. It first was created by Gary Gygax for Dungeons & Dragons, and since then, the current D&D (now version 3.5) has always served as the base for the D20 system. The name is the result of the main tool of the system; the twenty sided dice, or D20. The D 20 System is part of the OGL, or Open Gaming License which says that as long as credit is given or royalties or something like that, anyone can create a game using it. Basic Premise The D20 system relies on a few key factors; Rules, Players, Dice, and fun. The dice are a very important thing to learn how to handle, and how to understand whet they mean. The dice have a system of names, with the letter D (for dice) followed by a number, which indicates the number of sides. The normal dice (other weird and fairly useless dice do exist) are the D4 D6 (Standard dice) D8 D10 D% (This dice has every other 10 numbers on it, 10, 20, 30, 40, etc. up to 00) D12 D20 (The most important) D100 (This usally a D10 and a D% rolled together, with the D% as tens, and the D10 as ones. A Roll of 0/00 is read as 100.) Those are the only dice the D20 system uses, but occasionally, you have to roll more than one of the same dice at a time, this is written as a number before the D, indicating how many of them to roll. So say you had to roll three six-sided dice, you would say 3d6 etc. The rules of the Game will all be described in later chapters, there is only one rule that I need to point out that I wont go into detail on later, and that’s called “Rule Zero” The DM can do whatever he wants. Players are divided into two main groups, PCs and DMs. PCs (Or Player Characters) are where the majority of players lie, these are the people who play the game from there characters point of view. The other people are DMs, or Dungeon Masters, they are the storytellers, they control everything in the game world except the PCs, including how people react to what the PCs do, monsters, and the overall story. There is no real rule as to who can play which part, but the only rule is you cant be a PC in an adventure you’ve already played in or adventures you’ve DMed, also called running a game. As for fun, well that’s why its important that everyone get along.  Who You Are First and foremost, have a concept. Whoever you play, along with however, is up to no-one but you, but what your role in the party (Group of adventurers) is, is defined by something called a class. Whether you are a dexterous rogue from Dungeons and Dragons, a Charismatic Hero from D20 modern, or a force wielding Jedi from Star Wars, is how you define your characters base role. These Classes are called Core classes, and are available from the start of your characters adventuring life. All of the classes have their advantages and disadvantages, but how those are used is not set in stone. Let’s use D&D’s rogue for example, with the same class, you could be a stealthy thief, a master pickpocket, or an expert assassin. (Of course, you could just as easily play a klutzy wanna-be thief. The way you play your role shows the style of your roleplaying. Classes are divided into categories of where they belong, though some people (like me) enjoy taking these and bending them into totally different categories. The Core Classes of D&D for example, are divided like this: Tanks (Main fighters) Support (Need someone else doing a different role to be effective) Healers (Somebody has to keep you alive) Arcane Spellcasters (Usually the weakest) Devine Spellcasters (Use your god to blow up stuff) The classes themselves are: Barbarian (As the name says) Bard (Magical musicians) Cleric (Armored battle-priests) Druid (Nature-dwelling animal-friendly spellcasters of the wild) Fighter (As the name says) Monk (Use unarmed attacks and certain monk weapons to amazing effect) Paladin (A holy-crusader and doer of good deeds) Ranger (Guardians of the forest, and have a few select spells) Rogue (Stealthy type) Sorcerer* (Spellcaster from birth) Wizard* (Spellcaster through training) *The differences are really in game mechanics and how you play your character. So when the two tables are added together you get this: Tanks: Barbarians Clerics Fighters Paladin Support: Bard Druid Monk Ranger Rogue Healers: Cleric Druid Paladin Arcane Spellcasters: Bard Sorcerer Wizard Devine Spellcasters: Cleric Druid Ranger Note that repeats in the chart show that a character can fill different roles. This all leads to the next important thing, alignment (Mostly used in D&D). Are you good? Evil? Maybe good with a little twist of chaos? Well follow the simple chart below and pick where you think you’d be on here: Lawful Good Neutral Good Chaotic Good Lawful Neutral True Neutral Chaotic Neutral Lawful Evil Neutral Evil Chaotic Evil Notes: Paladins are always lawful good, monks are always lawful, and clerics are always at most one box away from their gods’ alignment, this step cannot be diagonal. It is worth pointing out that most DMs and the RPGA won’t let you play any of the evils. I mentioned in the subtext that clerics must be within one box or “Step” of their gods’ alignment, so ill use an example. Say you are a cleric who worships Pholtus, he is lawful good, so you must be one step away, which means you must be one of these: Lawful Good Neutral Good Lawful Neutral So once you have those picked out, the main thing you have to work on, non-mechanics wise, is fleshing out your character. Think of what you have done up-to this point as a skeleton, and now you get to make it into a person. Will he be Swift? Smart? Strong? A funny guy? Or maybe a great negotiator, this is where you take your earlier concept and turns it into a full fledged character. This is also where it’s a good time to decide your race in the game. In some systems, only humans are available. Check your core rulebook to see what is available to you, but for now, I’ll list the D&D Core Races. Human (Well balanced, fast learners) Dwarf (Strong, good with armor, not very charismatic) Gnome (Good health, not very strong, Small) Elf (Graceful, low health) Half Elf (Well balanced, good game mechanics) Half Orc (Strong and stupid) Halfling (Dexterous, not very strong) An Example of a concept This Is my concept for a character, you should probably create something like this before making a character. The Concept: A human assassin in training who a little bit of a klutz, and tends to trip over things while trying to sneak up on a target, because of this, he has never accually assassinated anyone, or got a job for that matter… He likes to carry around around daggers and try and kill people, but when that fails, he’ll resort to his comfy scimitar. Tends to wear assassin black and simple leather armor, and not like daylight. Has a pretty bad sense of direction. As a note to myself, I’ll make the character better as he grows more experienced, eventually becomes what he aspires. Mechanics Human Rogue Chaotic Good The Character Sheet This section will only cover a little bit of the things found on the character sheet, as most of it is described very well in the books, and its pretty easy to find somebody to help you with it if you get stuck. I recommend http://wizards.com for character sheets for the various D20 system games it publishes. The Top This is where things that describe your character go. Name, looks, class and levels (which I will go into later), as well as a little thing for who you, the real you, are. The Left Side This is where you put how good you are in whatever skills you have, these are determined by ranks, as well as any other conditional modifiers. The AC AC stands for Armor Class, and is basically a combination of your dodgeing skills and your armor, and in certain cases special things like class abilities or cover. Your opponent must roll this number (and add his modifiers, in order to hit you. Flat footed takes away your DEX bonus, and touch takes away your armor bouns. The Top Right Stats. I cannot stress how important these are these define your characters mental and physical attributes, and are broken into six parts, STR (How strong you are, used for attacking and extra damage in melee) DEX (How dexterous you are, helps with armor (because of dodging) and in ranged attacks) CON (Your constitution, helps with your health and fighting off diseases, etc.) INT (How smart you are, helpful to get more skills) WIS (How wise you are, mainly useful for knowledge and game mechanics.) CHA (How charismatic are you, pretty self explanatory) You determine stats usually by rolling 4D6, subtracting the lowest dice, then use the remaining sum as your stat score (of your choice). That’s all I really need to go into for character sheets, the rest will explain itself as time goes on. Equipment and weapons Equipment can be purchased at the listed cost, and is mainly used as a role playing device. Have a character who has OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder)? By a flask for water, a bar of soap, and a washcloth. And what pyromaniac is complete without matches and gas? Have fun, but don’t forget that even though its not required, you should buy something to put those items in for better roleplaying. Weapons (And armor) are purchased in the same way, but have various stats of their own; the ones I will address here are damage and criticals. Damage: Expressed in dice, if you hit, you role the dice it says and that’s how much of your opponents HP gets taken away. Critical: This is usually expressed as n-20 x2, or as just xn where n is a number. When you roll a natural (unmodified) 20, (or, in the case as the first one mentioned above, somewhere between those two numbers) you do extra damage as indicated by the xn. So ill use two examples: Bastard sword: D10 Damage 19-20 x2 If I role a 19 or a 20 on my D20, I do 2D10 damage instead of D10. Scythe 2D4 Damage x4 If (And only if) I role a 20, then I do 8(!)D4 damage! Ouch! For either of these, if I roll lower than the critical number (But still hit my opponent) then I just do the normal listed damage. How to roleplay Well, onto the final test, how can you roleplay. Well, the best thing I can suggest is, “Look at everything from your characters point of view”. If your character has brainpower to rival a dead rodent, he probably won’t notice small, intricate details, and won’t be much help in figuring out the BBEG (See next chapter) scheme. So let’s do some practice, ill make a scenario: You walk into a bar and notice that a man staring at you has a red robe and a tattooed head, signs, or so you’ve heard, of the evil red wizards of Thay. The Man followes your every move, and slowly drinks his beer. You feel nervious at first, but then relax in the comfort that you have a nice big sword. But then you notice, as the man glares at you, that if he is a red wizard, and something did start, that you would probably not even draw your weapon before you hit the floor dead… That would have been seen by somebody with either a high intelligence, or past experience with the Red Wizards. Bar have beer. Ugly man staring. Me hit him. And that would be an intelligence of around 6. Be sure to take stats, skills, and your characters attitude for everything you do. Most people rush in to hit Kobolds, My character strongly likes Kobolds, so I try to talk to them at every chance I get, and try to stop my stab-happy allies from killing them until AFTER they tick me off.
The Vagrant 07-25-04, 06:43 AM	In my opinion : Your skimming too much. You describe the less important aspects (the place of each D&D class in a party), and just glaze the critical points (like exactly what the attributes do). You listed str, dex, con, ect. gave a one liner, then just said basicly "You'll figure it out as you read this." This, in my opinion, is a horrable way to teach some one somthing as complex as the D20 system. Assume that a complete noob to PnP RPGs read this, do you think they would understand that Charisma gives you bonueses to bluff, cleric spells, and other important things? Because I highly doubt "Pretty self explanitory" says it very well. You have to remember that people reading this thing won't even know what most game mechanic terms (like touch attacks, and flat footed) mean so: "Flat footed takes away your DEX bonus, and touch takes away your armor bouns." is just feeding them information they don't know yet. When explaining a gaming system, I'd work from the inside out. Here, that would be the basic attributes. Expalin what each is, in terms anybody can understand, and hat the game revolves around these stats. Explain that the large number is how powerful that trait is, and that the small number is how much that particular trait helps in every task related to that attribute. For example: Strength is how physically strong your character is. The higher the number, the more "umph" the character has. Strength increases how much damage your character deals to others with swords, and also helps the character aim his swings. Though if your character's strength is too low, he suffers from that weakness and he can not fight as well, carry as much, and do certain tasks as well. The small number shows exactly how much that higher strength helps. Also, on much more picky and snobby note on my part: Assasins can not be Good, yours apperantly is. I'd say that in a tutoirual I'd stick hard to the rules, and explain house rules, fudging, and Rule 0 in a much later chapter. Sorry to sound cranky, but I just sat through to many bad lessons on how to do things before. Ecpessialy when my friend tried teaching another how to play, I basicly had to take over or the poor guy would never had gotten it. Agian, I'm rambiling now so I'll stop.
Piuro 07-25-04, 11:19 AM	Thanks fpr the advice, ill get cracking on fixing those!
blackprinceofmuncie 07-25-04, 04:17 PM	Originally posted by Piuro Introduction The D20 system is the system used by most modern roleplaying games. It first was created by Gary Gygax for Dungeons & Dragons, and since then, the current D&D (now version 3.5) has always served as the base for the D20 system. Both of those sentences are wholly and completely inaccurate. You might want to do some more research on the history and current state of the RPG hobby if you're looking to include them in your intro.
GreyLord 07-25-04, 07:58 PM	Originally posted by blackprinceofmuncie Both of those sentences are wholly and completely inaccurate. You might want to do some more research on the history and current state of the RPG hobby if you're looking to include them in your intro. Hmm, actually, WotC/Hasbro list their histories, or portray it like that basically. According to their history of D20, he's close enough. Not that I agree with that version or that it's true...but after reading many of the articles authorized by WotC on D&D and it's anniversary...one would think that the current version is the original Grandaddy version just about... Not that it's correct...just pointing out that it's probably depends on who's relating the history. WotC or others who are telling the unauthorized side...or who get into the technical nitty gritty of it.