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Message: <blockquote data-quote="scourger" data-source="post: 4229063" data-attributes="member: 12328">Short answer: 4.0.  Long answer: it depends on what your business, design and publishing goals are.  If I were in your position, I would look at where the market has been, where it is now, and where it likely will go in the future.  Also, what piece of that market do you want?  It seems pretty intuitive that D&D is the market leader.  So, tying your product to it has the best chance for success.  Many publishers are now in business because they did that successfully with d20.  Now, some of them have the apparent option of continuing their own OGL games.  It remains to be seen if those moves will remain successful in the face of 4.0.  What is observable is that those companies were able to take advantage of the network externalities of d20 (whether 3.0 or 3.5) to position themselves now to decide if they will continue with their own OGL brands or make the switch to 4.0.I do not perceive that you are in that position.  Amethyst is a new product.  6-8 years ago, it may have caught on like wildfire in the d20 boom, but now it comes just as 4.0 launches.  Although Amethyst is an intriguing concept, it is a niche product in a small market.  It changes many of the rules in d20 which makes it less accessible as it prevents players from using their already-acquired mastery over the system to easily play your game.  I like a few d20 niche products, but ones that prsent as few changes as possible to the underlying system to enable the setting.  I think they overall fragment the market, which is why there are fewer and fewer of them around.  I think you will do better going with 4.0 with as few changes as possible.P.S.: If you want a concrete example of the kind of game I'm talking about, see Omega World from the Polyhedron side of Dungeon #94.  OW really takes the d20 system into the great (old) setting of Gamma World in just afew pages--about 40.  (For non-d20, see Savage Worlds.)</blockquote>

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