Lingua franca.

ConanMK: Would you please explain what do you exactly mean by point 4. ...?

D20 is kind of like the beer that you and your buddies can all drink at the same time and not bitch too much about what it is that you are drinking.

Danger: After my trip to polish part Ciezsyn a would argue about beer that you can dring with your buddies without bitching about what are you drinking... I've never drunk something so terrible that Ciezsynish beer... it was so horrible  it nearly made me puke...

(moral of this story...? Never, ever have beer in polish part of Ciezsyn)

Flexible, easy to use and widely implemented core mechanic.

Role-based design. In a properly designed D20 game, the classes are mapped to the activities of the game, making adventure conception and design unambiguous and creating more opportunities for everyone in the group to contribute.

The classical class style design is counterbalanced with a good deal of character choice and customization via skills and feats.

Multiple resource pools help prevent some obvious abuses.

The release under the OGL is good for hobbyists, not just the industry.

Resources. Anything you could want, there's a D20 book for it out there.

No intrusive "personality mechanics".

As a baseline, does not have "point farm" style disads, which I consider a scourge on game design.

I dislike d20 as a whole, but even I can find things I like about it.

a) The roll over skill/attribute target number mechanic is a great improvement over THACO

b) d20 is a relatively streamlined system without nearly as many complicating subsystems and alternate die resolution schemes found in other games

c) Challenge Ratings (like in 3.x) are cool.

d) Full statistics for NPCs and other antagonists...

e) True20, specifically,  is an improvement over the base system-- Eliminating AoO was a good move, IMHO. I can only hope this train of thought continues into subsequent editions of D&D and whatever becomes of d20.

I like the commonality. D&D is the foundation of so many players' roleplaying experience. It's great to be able to get together with a bunch of strangers who share the same archetypes. Like a jam band, you get to the improv greatness faster when you're all riffing off the same simple & powerful blues progressions.

I like the tradition. This is part of the commonality - a lot of people have been adding to the D&D cathedral for a long time. And the roots of D&D are healthier because they reach back to a time when heroic fantasy literature hadn't been separated from science fiction and served up to a mass audience in ever-longer and less-original slabs. The excellent weirdness of OD&D springs from this soil, and because it's largely the popularity of D&D that made that mass audience for bland fantasy, I think regular trips back to see how it was done in the old-school are necessary to maintain the genius of the game.

That said, it's shaping up to be a pretty sucky time to be a D&D fan, with a seemingly deliberate edition schism ("you can't convert a campaign to 4E, just junk it and like it") and a lack of respect for tradition either literary or in-game (4E values its design conceits over emulating the fantasy reality of even D&D's own literary franchises, absurdly requiring overhauls of the FR world to keep up with the rules, an entirely ass-backward situation).

I don't like much about D&D or d20, their atmosphere and tendencies and goals, but I do like having a universal system, a sort of "write once, read anywhere" system, even if I'm not particularly crazy about that system itself. The idea of having a modular, universal system which functions from stone age to space age and beyond is a very good one, and d20 executes that goal reasonably well.

True20 and Spycraft are my two favourite d20 systems. Other than that I really like the various settings that D&D/d20 have given us. There's always a lot of stuff to steal.

Regards,
David R

I like the part where you go to scary places, fight badguys, and win fabulous treasures.

I'm with Jeff, on why I hearts me some D&D.  If it's d20 specifically, then follow this handy, concise chart:

d20 -> OGL -> Castles & Crusades and Microlite20.

Quote from: jrientsI like the part where you go to scary places, fight badguys, and win fabulous treasures.

In very much agreement  - except you forgot : Get the Girl (or guy) after fighting the badguys.


- Ed C.

Quote from: jrientsI like the part where you go to scary places, fight badguys, and win fabulous treasures.

This part is not specific to Dungeons and Dragons... most of RPGs can do some sort of this... even Nicotine Girls:D

Quote from: FritzsThis part is not specific to Dungeons and Dragons... most of RPGs can do some sort of this... even Nicotine Girls:D

There's a vast conceptual gulf between "most RPGs can do this" and "this is what the game is about".

Quote from: FritzsConanMK: Would you please explain what do you exactly mean by point 4. ...?

Simply put, some RPGs are written and marketed in a pretentious way. Exalted's "graduate your game" ad campaign is one example. Games that bost to support "role play" over "roll play" is another. Indie games that waste space telling me how "cool" and "innovative" their own mechanics are instead of just explaining them is yet another example.

D&D/d20 generally does none of these things. The writing of the game, the markeding and the designers don't try to pretend it is art, or intellectual, or that playing this game makes you better than people playing any other game. They keep sight of the fact that D&D is a game, and thus being fun is far more important than making sense or being intellectual.

Note that lots of mainstream games are unpretentious in this way, which is good. I just get annoyed when a game tries to pretend that it is something more important/intellectual/artsy than just a game.