> From: Lizard [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> I am curious, and do not take this as a slam, but -- how well > do you think > this goal has been met over the nearly two years since D&D3e > was released? Better than any rational person could possibly have imagined. > c)No one else has really jumped on the bandwagon. Sword & Sorcery is now such an important part of White Wolf's operation that Steve Wiek stepped aside as WW CEO to run S&S directly. That's a pretty ringing endorsement of the concept from a company that might otherwise have been the last place on earth likely to become a d20 publisher. It will be interesting to see if at some point they take the OGL route with the Storyteller engine. > It's this last point which is interesting. Is D&D the only > game system > popular enough to benefit from an 'open' arrangement? I would > really like > to see other systems follow suit, but it doesn't seem to be happening. If, over time, the distinctive aspects of many game systems appear as Open Game Content, it won't really matter if the original publisher chose to use the OGL itself or not. I suspect that as time goes on, publishers who are interested will fill most of those gaps. Would it really be hard, for example, to take the OLG and write a "Storyteller" clone? I don't suspect that it would. If I wanted to publish a "Storyteller" powered game, I might consider making a OGL version. How about a OGL GURPS derivative? Again, I just don't think that it would be that hard to do so. I suspect that a White Wolf version of "OGL Storyteller" would be better than a 3rd party attempt, because they understand the system better than just about anyone else. Ditto for a SJG version of OGL GURPS. If some 3rd party does take the time to develop either system, it will be interesting to see if either company decides to step into the market premptively with an "official" version. Until recently, the only real work done on cross-system compatibility was a handful of conversion notes, FUZION, the three GURPS Storyteller converions, and the occasional rogue "cap system" book. Now there is a real business in converting between system "x" and d20, and a whole bunch of designers are learning how to do it at Holistic, PEG, Chaosium, Pagan, AEG, etc. As an industry, we're developing a technology of game design that we never had before. I suspect that in the long term, we'll veiw most of the current efforts as substandard compared to what we'll get after we've had a few years to learn how to do it better. Once we learn how to do "system 'X' to d20" conversions effectively there will be nothing other than market forces standing in the way of "OGL Storyteller" or "OGL GURPS". It will be interesting to see Storyteller/d20 hybrids and GURPS/d20 hybrids (and Storyteller/d20/GURPS hybrids). Ryan _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
