My Spring 2004 RPG Wish List

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Here’s my list of the RPG products I’d like to buy this spring, including Torn Asunder (a critical hits source book for d20), the Conan: The Role-Playing Game, and Gamma World: Out of the Vaults.

Torn Asunder

One of the things that occasionally bugs me about d20 combat is how generic it can be. Sure, you can land critical hits, and cleave men in two, and you can launch whirlwind attacks against a half-dozen foes, but in the end, it’s all just hit points. Do enough damage, and your enemy falls dead. Torn Asunder looks to put a little spice into d20 by locations-specific critical hit and fumble tables. One of the guys in my campaign bought this book, and it worked fairly well during our trial run — it didn’t slow down combat nearly as much as we’d feared. As a result, I’m looking to add this tome to my library, and try it out more extensively.

Conan the Role-Playing Game

A friend of mine picked up this book, and it looks damn good. From what I’ve seen and read about it, the creators of the book have gone out of their way to recreate the feel of Hyboria, bending the d20 rules to Conan’s will. I don’t know if I’d ever run a Conan campaign, but I could certainly see doing a one or three-shot adventure.

Gamma World: Out of the Vaults

Gamma World d20 came up a little short on mutations for my taste, but I’ve found plenty in the Player’s Handbook and Mutants & Machines that I can use in my Stargate campaign (or other future sci-fi games I might run). This book details lost cities and technologies, and strikes me as being as useful as Sword & Sorcery’s earlier releases.

Unearthed Arcana

This book of optional rules for D&D has gotten mixed reviews on Amazon.com, so I’m not sure if I’ll pick it up myself, but I do certainly want to give it a once over in the bookstore. I’ve long thought about using alternative d20 magic and class systems to depict the strangeness of the various planes, and I suspect this book could be useful with that.

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