<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by kafka47:
I don't play either of these games could you clarify?
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White Wolf put forth three basic game design "Features" into the common gaming market:
1: Story over Rules. Where the two conflict, go with the story.
2: Sourcebooks as "point of view" pieces, written from the perspective of a denizen of the setting.
3: Separate game rules for each type of supernatural, and even in some cases, each clan/subtype/tribe. While they were marginally compatible, they were not smoothly so.
And the supplements often cpntradicted each other and the main rules.
AD&D2: The core rules were a framework, which kept gaining more "Bigger better Badder" class feature add-ons to core classes. (See also the Player's Option Series) Every new gameworld added exceptions to the core rules and added new mechanics to handle these exceptions; the exception mechanism was additive. The Dwarven Bard was prohibited by core rules, so dwarven bards from my game world got hit with "You can't be one of those!"
As for D&D3E: It does say the GM should modify rules to fit his milieu, but it also doesn't provide "This class gets special considerations in the rules mechanics" but instead provides a framework for each class having some specials (and many are duplicated in later prestige classes, too). Core 3E/D20 rules are VERY flexible and non-limiting, and very little is exclusive to one class or another. Setting books, for the most part, merely add restrictions. So the "Tailoring" is now subtractive, rather than additive, meaning fewer seting specific rules changes. (For example, in the scarred lands, certain race/class combinations are prohibited. But it doesn't add new core classes.)
As yet, many of the game worlds published aren't terribly divergent; Soverign Stone is a key exception. It is a setting which changes the core classes. But, due to the nature of the rules mechanics, it uses very little space for this. Instead, it focuses mostly on setting and the alternate magic system it uses; one which is very different from 3E, but in line with the non-d20 1st edition Sovereign Stone rules and the novels.
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-aramis
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