Silver Age Sentinels Tri-Stat/d20 System...any experience with it?

[Spence]

Guardians of Order (GOO) much like many Canadian based gaming companies went bankrupt in the 2000s.  At the time I looked into it because of all the vitriol that was aimed by what was discovered to be US artists that could not seem to understand that a) once a company goes into bankruptcy they no longer control the money and b) Canada being an actual sovereign nation does not follow US law or the personal feelings of people in the US.  In the list of priorities, non-Canadian independent artists are fairly low on a Canadian courts priority list. The reality is that not everyone gets compensation from a bankruptcy.  From what I understand White Wolf's publishing company acquired Tri-Stat under the provision they made BESM 3rd available, which they did.  I have a copy on my shelf.

 

Years later the old owner of GOO created a different gaming company that produced Anime based boardgames.  He was able to license his own system from WW to make BESM 4th.

 

From what I have read, the difference between 3rd and 4th is more like the difference between Hero 5th and Hero 5th Revised.  Not much.

 

The biggest swing is while all previous BESM was aimed at all anime/manga, 4th is aimed at Shojo, the only genre of anime discussed in detail and the entire book leans that way. I suspect there will be no real issues doing other types, but published material will be written Shojo.

 

 

 

 

[Sketchpad]

I ran some Tri-Stat SAS when it first came it out for a bit, but the group I was with preferred Champions. Funny thing was, they called it Hero-Lite for a while (which is what M&M has been occasionally called as well). BESM 4e was a bit more detailed, but still didn't quite gel with the group I ran. 

[Tech]

I tried the Tri-stat system; even tried some combat to see how it would work out. Seems to me combat is very fast and doesn't allow for any extended combats. Didn't care for it and didn't go back - stuck with Champions.

[tkdguy]

Combat is pretty fast in Tri-Stat. The system itself seems simple compared to HERO, but it runs smoothly. Casual gamers in my group found it a bit more user-friendly than HERO.