d20 Suikoden

[Yontory]

Since the series have a great lore and stuff, is it possible for anyone to develop a d20 rule for Suikoden roleplaying?
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[Shad]

What exactly is a d20 system? It's hard to say whether that would be possible or not as I'm guessing most people won't know what you're referring to.

[Ujitsuna]

I have no idea what it is either, but I found the official site for it here: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/welcome.

[eXistence of Fly]

[HarmonianHiccup]

If I had any spare time I probably could, but as I rarely find time to do minor things like eat or sleep I can't see myself doing it any time soon. O_o

d20, as far as I know, has been used since "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons" which was edition 2.5, I believe. I can't say for sure 'cause I didn't start playing myself until 3.0.
It's basically a set of rules that's all centrally based on the rolls of a 20 sided dice, as has been said above. The nice thing about it is that because it's based on a fairly simple set of numbers it is easy to understand for people who are not "hard-core," and it also can be adapted to alot of different kinds of settings. THere's a d20 Modern campaign setting as well as various Dungeons and Dragons and Forgotten Realms, as well as a slew of others that are all based roughly on the d20 system. It has its limitations, but all-in-all it's a pretty solid system.
All you'd really have to do to make a Suikoden d20 set of rules would be to basically plug in the items and spells--and it wouldn't be all that tough to dump the d20 magic system and make a Rune system either...
Hmmmm...
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[Ley]

I know for a fact that Wataru, Earthquake, Nailo and Scarlet were involved in one at one time, I dunno if they still are, but your best bet would be to contact Wataru of The Nameless Lands.
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Can anyone tell I'm bored?

[Finfreeze]

Well, it would be possible to adapt the basic Suikoden mechanics into the d20 System. but there will be a lot of work involved if you want a feeling of authenticity. One real hiccup would be the runic-spell system. While the basic framework of spell points is similar (both use Vancian magic), most magic in Suikoden requires runes to use. Furthermore, rune slots tend to be extremely limited, and each rune has only a couple of spells to choose from. Spellcasting is far more accessible in Suikoden than in Dungeons and Dragons, as any mook with a rune has what it takes to fire off at least one spell. Pretty much anyone has at least ranger- or paladin-level spellcasting ability, and a good chunk are competent fighters as well as wizards.

Taking this into consideration, a standardized magic growth system might be for the best. Feats could take the place of combat skills. Races would have to be built from scratch. Runes like Fury and Haziness could work like magic items. A fighter-mage class would have to be constructed to handle the sheer number of balanced characters in your typical Suikoden game. Lots of spells would have to be created.

If there's a real problem with the d20 system, it's that it falls apart at higher levels. Everybody is immune to practically everything, mages dominate, and you really start to feel the number bloat. Some people have trouble with the fact that for non-spellcaster classes rely mostly on the strength of their gear to remain competitive. Instant death and stat-drain is extremely common in higher levels, as well.

If you want to familiarize yourself with the basic D&D/d20 game concepts, there's always http://www.d20srd.org/ .

Really, it depends on how closely you want to emulate the Suikoden system and how complex you want the game to play.

[Inko]

I've already actially done this, as I have mentioned on several occasions, the D&D 3.5 system works wonderfully for a game like this. It works better with the system of Big Eyes Small Mouth, which is an Anime based system with so much customization that sometimes you can't really figure out what to do with your characters. The new 3.5 system has actually corrected the problem issues that was very consistant in 2.0(Advanded Dungeons and Dragons). Anyways, using BESM(Big Eyes Small Mouth) I created classes, races and the magic system without a problem. Basically you allot your classes points which you can assign to feats, magic and other class special abilities. so long as all of the classes are balanced in the number of points you used it's not to diffucult to manage. I found it fun and exciting to do and it worked out well with the players, as not one of the classes was more powerful then the other. The races were pretty much built off of the same point system as mentioned above, and were easy to craft considering the customization BESM has left for you to create.

here is a link to the BESM website, where you can get the books for free: http://www.guardiansorder.com/downloads/

The company is no longer around, but they do still have a website along with the books that they made on it.

Concering the fact that magic is easier to access in Suikoden, I'd have to disagree, I think that most "normal" people (those who arn't a SOD, or specifically dedicated themselves to spellcasting) can't use runes, they don't have the magical capacity in order to get one imbued, also the price of the runes is a large detriment, most of the time they even cost more then a house. and then there is a problem with actually getting a rune imbued, which requires a Runemaster, or someone to put a rune into your hand, which not every village has.

[Onimaru]

One could just scrap magic alltogeather and work runes out as "magic items" somehow, it wouldn't take a whole lot of work but you could limit the ability to use certain runes or spell progession with runes via a stat requirement.

i.e.

Holy Rune requires a minimum of a 25 dexterity

While the Pale Gate requires a minimum 30 intellegence (or wisdom)

It's simple enough really, just work tie the spells and their different levels directly to the character - thus, a 4th level character with a Fire Rune would be able to access it's first and possibly 2nd level spells, but would need another 5 levels until he could access the 3rd level spell. It's relativly simple and doesn't require alot of tweeking. Just cut out the spell mechanics used in the games and assign some of the already pre-made spells to each rune - such as;

Fire Rune - 1st level spells - Burning Hands, Fire Sphere, 'etc..

Runes should be used for a variety of functions so each of the 4 spell tiers that a rune has could be a clump of spells that coencide with the type of rune in question.

Other than that there's nothing special about the suikoden world that demands the need for a d20 based game. Remember, the major plot point behind the games are the story and 108 stars - I doubt anyone is going to be able to find 108 players so one could just create them as NPCs and put the character (characters) into a storyline where they are in a similar circumstance as in the suikoden games (country at work, rebellion, whatever). Infact, now thinking about it - one could even draft out a chart with 108 slots that give stat/skill/feat bonus's to characters from a certain Star of Destiny. I.e. if I choose Tenkai star when creating my character, i get +10 to my leadership (just an example).

all in all, it's totally possible but the real need to create system specifically for suikoden isn't really there. It would be useful for about one campaigne, and then no more. As with Suikoden, Dungeons and Dragons is all about the story - so one could use the Suikoden World, exclude Runes - and adapt the setting and history and story to the suikoden world and just play in it like a normal adventure without the need of an improved system.
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[SwissStopwatch]

Wait, wait. Dungeons and Dragons is all about the story? Are you sure we're talking about the same thing, here?

OK, I'm being just a bit unfair here... it's the players and story that make the game more than it is the system that makes the game. And, as such, it would be possible to adapt d20 to a Suikoden setting. Of course... considering the way Suikoden games have tended to work as far as character stats go, d20's heavily structured system of character classes wouldn't be the best fit, in my opinion... especially since a lot of the magic system, along with Wizards, Sorcerers, Druids, Clerics, Bards, Paladins, and Rangers would need to be heavily redone or scrapped. Other systems that would work better are BESM (The stuff that Inko linked to) and GURPS, made by Steve Jackson Games (You can find that by going to the official website from here, including the free Lite version of the system). There are some others, but, this is what I have off the top of my head. Considering that the set of stats from Suikoden games isn't really the same as any of this, though, t'wouldn't be quite the same... then again, I did just say that the story makes the game.

Of course, that's just my opinion. Other people may be able to look past the problems I'd have with running or playing in a game like this under D&D rules. It's not impossible to work around! I haven't been able to test this at all in any case, since, the people I know who game wouldn't have so much appreciation for this.

[HarmonianHiccup]

[SolemnSound]

I like Dungeons in Dragons for the battles for the most part, the story is just an added bonus and basically adds to the battles in my opinion. Currently me and four friends are in the middle of a new dungeons in dragons campaign and the battles are going rather well and we have almost died like five times already O_O thats how hard the dungeon master this time is making the battles. The story he has made is good, but the battles are just way better (especially when my charachters owns up some monsters =P

I love the idea of a d20 suikoden type game. If my dungeon and dragons pal were actually into the suikoden series more I would suggest it, but only one of them has heard of and played suikoden before and he has only played the first one here at my hosue, so I dont think a suikoden d20 game for my group is that likely ;-;
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[Onimaru]

And here we see the two extrems of player types in Dungeons and Dragons. The story based players (myself included) and the combat based players - it's hard to find a good mix, mose people are one or the other and oftentimes having two different player types in the same party will cause friction. I've found that older players who remember AD&D and it's over the top complicated rule system and stricter battle system (Vampires only had 40HP wtf!) tend towards story based play, while the newer generation of players focus on a more Diablo/WoW type stat focused method of playing.

As for a Suikoden based d20 system, anything is possible with a little creativity if that's whats desired. Anyone is more than welcome to draft up their own mod and post the rules and regs online for others to view, heck who knows - you could start a trend. Though I doubt it. Find what works best for you're group and work on this adaption based on that, if a more story driven setting is what you're looking for use skill mods and scrap the over the top uber powerful crap from the game. If you want stats and explosions single handed dragon slaying then spend the time crunching numbers and crank out a few charts and mod lists.
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