Covert Ops Feats (Louis Porter Jr. Design)

KeithCrimson

First Post
I'm thinking about ordering this product from the EnWorld store but I can't find any reviews on it. I know its still new but I don't want to buy it if all I get out of it is a few feats I already have in other books.

Anyone else purchased it yet? Getting any use out if it?
 

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I've been wary about purchasing it for the very same reason... I don't want to spend money just to find out. Though, I might "take one for the team" if no news pops up in a week.

I wish Louis Porter jr. had answered that particular inquiry when it was posed to him in the publisher's forum.
 

Y'know, while I am a char-gen junkie and might dig a big feat compendium, something about the practice of just cutting and pasting someone else's work and reselling it rubs me the wrong way.

I don't feel the same about stuff WotC has made open content --- they are the big guys, they made the rules. And if someone took my open content from INFINITE: Epic Modern and really built upon it, I'd be fine with that --- that's the spirit of the OGL.

But just reprinting someone else's work...I dunno...seems unfair.
 

Well, I don't know about unfair ... it's within the bounds of the OGL to do so. I think people should continue to be aware of what a product contains and if they don't like products containing all-reprinted material, then they should vote with their dollar.

I think a collection of feats could be useful, and I could understand wanting to be paid something for the collection, since most products with OGC feats don't have an SRD to copy/paste from, so there's some amount of data entry work to be done.

I'll say that reprint collections aren't tops for what I like about the OGL. I like to see things taken and BUILT upon in OGL ... one product introduces a feat and another product reprints that feat and adds another three or four feats and turns it into a cool feat chain, for instance. I like that better than, say, two or three products with "very similar" feats because the author wants to reinvent the wheel. The OGL is most valuable when authors aren't having to reinvent the wheel all the time.

As a writer, I'd be tempted to buy a product that was a comprehensive collection of d20Modern feats ... especially if that collection were presented in a copy-paste file type with full annotations. Just so that, when writing product myself, I could consult the Feat Metafile and say: "Ah, I see that RPGObjects created a feat just like this one I was going to write. Instead of creating the same feat, only slightly different and with a different name, I will use their feat and credit them in my OGL Statement!" Which, I think, would be fair of me to do and certainly within the letter AND the spirit of the OGL.

--fje
 

HeapThaumaturgist said:
Well, I don't know about unfair ... it's within the bounds of the OGL to do so. I think people should continue to be aware of what a product contains and if they don't like products containing all-reprinted material, then they should vote with their dollar.--fje

Quite right.

This could certainly be a useful product, but I would much prefer something that developed preexisting materials, even if it's just a matter of looking at all of the preexisting feats and making some changes to ensure that they all fit together.
 

JPL said:
Y'know, while I am a char-gen junkie and might dig a big feat compendium, something about the practice of just cutting and pasting someone else's work and reselling it rubs me the wrong way.

I don't feel the same about stuff WotC has made open content --- they are the big guys, they made the rules. And if someone took my open content from INFINITE: Epic Modern and really built upon it, I'd be fine with that --- that's the spirit of the OGL.

But just reprinting someone else's work...I dunno...seems unfair.
It's well within the bounds of the license. Ryan Dancy even surmised that a publisher might do it - like the Pocket Players Handbook.
 

When I tried to make this very point on the WotC boards (as I've seen material from other OGL products make it in to d20 Future, Apocalypse, etc) the thread got mod'ed and all the posts deleted. I thought it was odd that WotC would take offense at being accused of using their own license... But whatever.
 

Just out of curiousity, Masada, could you post some examples of OGC that slipped into WotC's non-open sources? Or even mail them to me.
 

Committed Hero said:
It's well within the bounds of the license. Ryan Dancy even surmised that a publisher might do it - like the Pocket Players Handbook.

I'm not questioning the legality of it...more the propriety, at least where the content at issue was designed by some small potatoes independent publisher. And to the extent that something new and creative is being done with someone else's mechanics, I think it's OK. But just yoinking someone else's stuff and putting it in a PDF and selling it strikes me as a breach of nerd etiquette, I guess.

But then, I'm a good GM and a lousy businessman...
 


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