>> >*ANYTHING* can fit into d20; to wit--
>> >Tom Clancy's modern military-political setting just needs ...
>> >The Matrix can be expressed ...
>> But the publisher is still going to have to MAKE these
>> changes, right? That requires the expense of them doing design
>> and playtesting (and possibly training). Thus I stand by my above
>> assertion: "if they're going to have to alter D20 or OGL, you're
>> already wasting that 'saved effort'."
>Are you actually proposing that the addition of a few skills and
>feats is equal to the creation of an entire game? Whoa...
I wouldn't know, since I haven't seen the D20 specs. But I
*do* know that just adding skills and stuff to rules is STILL
going to require design work and playtesting, and obeying the
D20 document is going to require editorial effort that a new
game won't. Plus, the effort involved in writing a 200 page book
is massive enough that I honestly can't see it making all that much
a time difference between coming up with a new system or learning
and adapting D20. Yes, if you learn D20 once you can then use it
over, but LUG has done the same thing with their ICON system, WW
with Storyteller, etc. etc. GURPS etc., so I don't see D20
having an advantage there.
>Also, don't forget that d20 rules are OGL'd... which means that
>if modern-world games already exist, all that'd needed to be done
>to write up a "Tom Clancy" d20 game is appling the existing rules
>to his unique world.
Big "if". And here's another if: those modern-world rules
would also have to be good enough that a publisher felt like they'd
work. So the publisher spends time learning a new system which he
or she may not even use? Hmm.
BTW, your "all that'd [sic] needed to be done" certainly
sounds like a lot of effort to me. It's not a simple matter to apply
rules to a world. At least, not if you're trying to make a well-
balanced game.
>>Oh yeah, and they're going to require the D&D player's guide,
>>which makes SO much sense to the consumer for a setting like
>>the Matrix.
>You're forgetting that the audience for a "Matrix RPG" is someone
>who role-plays already, or who is open to the idea. For both of
>these, the PHB is probably a safe bet.
Is it? Ask LUG who the audience for the Star Trek RPG is.
Ask WotC who the audience for the Pokemon RPG is, or if they plan
to sell the Star Wars RPG only to people who already play RPG's.
Mainstream IP licenses are NOT aimed only at current roleplayers,
they market and push themselves to ALL fans of that IP. And for
that expanded market, the requirement of a D&D book could be
confusing and possibly detrimental.
>> Should not be GAME publishers. You're committing a fallacy
>> of definition: I was only speaking of game publishers, NOT all
>> publishers, which I thought was obvious from the outset.
>Game publishers do not have Tom Clancy or The Matrix as IP. I
>wanted to point out the implication I read in your words. Good to
>know that it was a mistake of language, and not of logic.
Not my mistake. Please reread the thread. From my very first
message, I was speaking of game publishers as licensees of
mainstream IP's, or as creators of their own worlds. At no point
did I express or imply any expansion to other publishers.
FWIW, I doubt many mass market publishers have any interest
whatsoever in the low-profit RPG world when they can crank out
fiction with much less editorial effort. I'm aware that there's
some agreement between LUG and a publisher regarding Star Trek,
but only as a reseller of LUG's work, not as an originator. That's
the extent of what I've seen.
>>>> But once again, it's the IP that would drive those
>>>> sales, NOT the D20 system.
>>>And sales would be BETTER if it could be used with D&D.
>> That's your assertion, yes. Mine is that D20 would have
>>little impact on sales, but that the ... IP would have GREAT
>Allrighty. We're in difference over the significance of d20's
>impact--not it's existance. We'll have to wait and see.
I'm afraid I don't follow. Where did I ever imply that
D20 wasn't going to exist??
--
Joseph Cochran
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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