Over my many years of gaming, one of my favorite games has been Rolemaster, once I discovered it. It allowed me the freedom to make characters I wanted, and how I wanted to make it (within reason). 
Then I started hearing the various additional names that folks called Rolemaster (chartmaster, rulemaster (cause of so many options), etc....). While this was a little irksome, I took it as a good sport (thinking on how I knew what they were missing - the important part being that at least 80% of the folks that derided RM had never tried it in the first place...)
Well, then a few years ago, I became a little disillusioned (i.e. found it hard to find gamers), and turned to d20 as it was getting ready to appear (while not a playtester, I was one of the few who signed the NDAs to get a look at it about a month before it was released). While I really was not fond of thevarious incarnations of D&D, I found that I liked this new version very much. It was a lot more gamer freindly, in offering options to players, and over all, much closer to what I would have liked to see it become. I was in hog heaven, for a while at least.....
Along with d20 came the OGL. A wonderful idea that allows other companies to produce products for the d20 system (thus furthering the spread of the system itself - an excellent bit of marketing and corporate PR).
But now we come to the crux of the problem. Since the release of the d20 system, there have been a virtual tidal wave of products. You have something like 5 different products for almost everyconceivable idea there is, including supers, of all things (to me the genre of superheroes cannot be properly expressed in a system that uses levels). It is statistically impossible that every single product on the market for it is a good product (although most of them are very good), and this is likely to adversely affect consumers opinions of games in general....
And now that brings me to my question....
Many years ago, folks used to call Rolemaster by the derisive name of Rule-master. Has d20 replaced RM in that measure?
Are all these thousands of possible options good for the game?
(Note: one problem that RM2 had was that with all the options available, no two games were alike)
Have things progressed to far? How will new players know what to purchase, when their DM is using rule variants from 12 different books, and the player is then at a disadvantage to the others because he cannot get all twelve?
Pretty much just rambling at this point, but I am serious in this question.... Is there such a thing as having oo much of a good thing (i.e. hundreds of variant rules by dozens of companies)?
Will this help or hurt the industry in the long run?
Then I started hearing the various additional names that folks called Rolemaster (chartmaster, rulemaster (cause of so many options), etc....). While this was a little irksome, I took it as a good sport (thinking on how I knew what they were missing - the important part being that at least 80% of the folks that derided RM had never tried it in the first place...)
Well, then a few years ago, I became a little disillusioned (i.e. found it hard to find gamers), and turned to d20 as it was getting ready to appear (while not a playtester, I was one of the few who signed the NDAs to get a look at it about a month before it was released). While I really was not fond of thevarious incarnations of D&D, I found that I liked this new version very much. It was a lot more gamer freindly, in offering options to players, and over all, much closer to what I would have liked to see it become. I was in hog heaven, for a while at least.....
Along with d20 came the OGL. A wonderful idea that allows other companies to produce products for the d20 system (thus furthering the spread of the system itself - an excellent bit of marketing and corporate PR).
But now we come to the crux of the problem. Since the release of the d20 system, there have been a virtual tidal wave of products. You have something like 5 different products for almost everyconceivable idea there is, including supers, of all things (to me the genre of superheroes cannot be properly expressed in a system that uses levels). It is statistically impossible that every single product on the market for it is a good product (although most of them are very good), and this is likely to adversely affect consumers opinions of games in general....
And now that brings me to my question....
Many years ago, folks used to call Rolemaster by the derisive name of Rule-master. Has d20 replaced RM in that measure?
Are all these thousands of possible options good for the game?
(Note: one problem that RM2 had was that with all the options available, no two games were alike)
Have things progressed to far? How will new players know what to purchase, when their DM is using rule variants from 12 different books, and the player is then at a disadvantage to the others because he cannot get all twelve?
Pretty much just rambling at this point, but I am serious in this question.... Is there such a thing as having oo much of a good thing (i.e. hundreds of variant rules by dozens of companies)?
Will this help or hurt the industry in the long run?
