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Vaynor
2005-12-18, 06:58 PM
I just thought of something, what if there was an RPG based on Xanth. You know, everyone has a talent, puns are everywhere. Sounds like fun!? If you have any thoughts/feelings on this please post.

Also, maybe every PC was a Magician class player, or had really bad talents? I don't know.

Umael
2005-12-18, 08:05 PM
Oh dear God, no!

*cough*

Sorry... what I meant to say was it was truly be a unique and interesting setting with an already rich environment that is familiar and widely supported by a great number of people. That, in combination with its mood of high-end fantasy and light-hearted setting would lead itself to a more relaxed atmosphere of gaming.

However, I am concerned that the inherit imbalance and lack of quantitative measurement would prove problematic for both GMs wishing to undertake this monumentous task and players who desire a game with either a serious outlook or a degree of game balance. Most of the stories center around the Magicians, those people who have talents powerful enough to relate them as being extremely useful. While there is nothing wrong with this, what constitutes Magician-caliber is left somewhat arbitrary and it could simply be that players simply come up with a list of talents, both those found in the game and those that the players brainstorm.

So if you were looking for a way to qualify Xanth in something so structured and hierarchial as the d20 system, I would highly advise against it. If your friends and you are interested in just sitting down together and having an easy chit-chat game without any kind of reference manuals, then this concept might prove satisfactory.

Darkie
2005-12-19, 12:03 AM
I second that. A freeform game would work much better... it's not like the novels have any sort of balance or anything. It's just somewhat chaotic fun.

Edit:
And it's not like there's a lot of real combat.

Vaynor
2005-12-19, 01:35 AM
That's kind of what I meant. I was just asking if anyone could think of some guidelines, or general rules (as in "you cannot be a monkey" rules).

Umael
2005-12-19, 01:51 AM
*sigh*

(Dear lord, am I about to disclose this? What is going through my obviously addled mind?)

Actually, I did play a Xanth-like, based on Xanth, free-form RPG. Once. A lot time ago. When I was just a foolish youngling.

My brother and I went through all the Xanth books he had and made a list for each and every talent we could find in them. We wrote them all down on little scraps of paper, put the pieces in an old tissue box, and would draw them out to see what we got. Everything we did was free-form, everything was just storytelling what came to our minds.

It... was... pathetically geeky.

...

I'm going to go hide in a corner now.

Lysander
2005-12-19, 03:13 AM
GURPS might suit your fancy. It's amazingly unbalanced but you can make literally anything. Or freeform it.

I personally like the idea of a Xanth game. If I was playing though I'd take the talent of making anything punnish explode with my mind. And I would use it all the time.

Whamme
2005-12-19, 04:14 AM
GURPS or Hero (esp. the latter, imo) could work if you wanted to try and balance the Talents and other abilities of the PCs within an existing system - if you have the attention to detail.

I have considered running a Hero System game in Xanth myself, but am too lazy, actually.


THe simple option, however, is as said; pick a freeform system that let's you loosely define what you can do and just roll with it.

Vaynor
2005-12-23, 02:23 PM
Okay, good ideas. Thank you! :P