d20 backlash??

[Monte At Home]

Makes me wonder why WotC didn't order more printings of CoC d20.

Because the license was for one printing (about 30,000 copies, I think--maybe somewhat more). Then it all got turned over to Chaosium.

 

[Krieg]

Because the license was for one printing (about 30,000 copies, I think--maybe somewhat more). Then it all got turned over to Chaosium.

Hey Monte while you're here...after the initial contract was fulfilled did Chaosium have the rights to print additional copies of CoC D20 if they had so chosen?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Monte At Home]

Hey Monte while you're here...after the initial contract was fulfilled did Chaosium have the rights to print additional copies of CoC D20 if they had so chosen?

Thanks in advance.

I believe so. (I'm no legal expert, but that was indeed my understanding.)

 

[Krieg]

I believe so. (I'm no legal expert, but that was indeed my understanding.)

Thanks!

As I'm sure you know, there has been quite a bit of finger pointing among some fans regarding just who was at fault when it came to CoC D20's untimely death. The one really odd rumor that has bandied about is that Chaosium has the rights to print further copies of the book but that WoTC has refused to hand over the master copy making Chaosium unable to do so. And so it goes... lol

I think you guys did an amazing job on CoC and it is very near the top of my list of favorite D20 books. It's a shame that it never got the support it deserved especially when there were fans clamoring for such support.

Unfortunately Chaosium's subsequent mishandling of Pulp Cthulhu was pretty the final nail in the coffin from my standpoint as a customer.

 

[fanboy2000]

Well, this is my golden age of Gaming. I think we owe d20 a lot. I just played a couple of games of Paranoia XP (which makes slapdash exicuation a requirment to game design ) and I doubt that Mongoose would published it (or would even be around to publish it) had it not been for d20.

While there are definitely some properties that don't fit well into d20, I doubt that there is a genre that d20 can't handle. Every genre has archetypes and if there is something the d20 does well, it's archetypes.

The staggering majority of d20 stuff expects you to junk your current campaign, or at least radically change it, or even start playing a new RPG, to make use of it.

Mike, I agree with everything you said. I just want to add that the d20 and OGL licences exist because there is a market for these kinds of games, but WotC is so big that they simply arn't profitable for them. The OGL and d20 licences allow publishers with small overhead to make the less profitable products, and WotC gets to hold onto it's IP.

d20 certatly hasn't stifled creativity. Infact, the explosion has helped a lot of non-d20 stuff. The gaming section of my local comicbook/geek store has increased signifigantly sense d20 hit, and a lot of it isn't d20. (Points to Paranoia XP)

[aside]When Paranoia XP came out, there was a thread in General on these boards about it. It got moved to d20/OGL and me and several others pointed out that Paranoia was neither.[/aside]

 

[Numion]

Both BRP and d20 Cthulhu are both fantasy systems tweaked for horror use. Both have their problems.

I own both - I would personally use the d20 version, since its more streamlined, and it is familiar to my players. Never fancied the RuneQuest system.

ps. New characters are actually more fragile in the d20 version Because my players are familiar with d20 system, I think that could enhance the experience "So, we're basically playing commoners in a game with things that are more powerful than D&D monsters?"

 

[scourger]

Well, this is my golden age of Gaming.

Yes. A friend who is also a long-time gamer described it as "an embarrassment of riches."

 

[pogre]

The reason I like to see systems stray from the d20 model is to use the mechanics to help create flavor. For example I like how the old Deadlands game used card and poker chips or how Fvlminata used tali dice.

 

[Ranger REG]

The reason I like to see systems stray from the d20 model is to use the mechanics to help create flavor. For example I like how the old Deadlands game used card and poker chips or how Fvlminata used tali dice.

Of course, that depends on how far and/or how risky you're wiling to stray or deviate from the archetypal d20 rules format. How does one try and introduce new d20 mechanics toward stubborn D&D gamers/PHB owners?

 

[Garnfellow]

The problem I see now is that WotC is leveraging its advantages to produce designs that are consistently superior on every level to third party stuff. For a time, d20 stuff could compete with WotC. Wizards had the same problem with building up a knowledge base and methods for d20 design. They also produced softcover, black and white books just like d20 companies. Now, neither of those are factors any more.

I think this observation is spot on -- and another advantage WotC has over all other d20 publishers is that every new design widget it produces is "official," meaning that it gets much wider distribution and can be reused again and again in future WotC products.

Design widgets developed by d20 publishers, on the other hand, have a much smaller distribution channel and are unlikely to be reused, even by the same publisher.

So let us say that WotC has a new sourcebook out which has a new feat for Improved Turning Resistance, which allows undead to be turned as higher HD monsters. Any undead in a subsequent WotC sourcebook or Dungeon adventure might have this very useful feat.

Meanwhile, Green Ronin, Fantasy Flight Games, Necromancer, Mystic Eye, and Malhavoc all come up independently with feats that accomplish essentially the same thing. Each company publishes their own variant of this turning resistance feat in a new sourcebook.

Now, there are probably lots of little variations between the different feats. One might give a +2 turning resistance bonus, while another might give a +4 bonus. One might have a Charisma bonus as a prerequisite, while others might have a HD prerequisite. One of these feats might have a significantly superior design over all the other similar feats.

But in the current d20 climate, the one feat that will win out over all others will be not necessarily be the one with the strongest design. At the end of the day, the WotC feat is the one most likely to become the standard because it (a) gets disseminated the furthest, and (b) will most likely be propagated in future books.

You can repeat this theoretical process over and over again with every other sort of d20 mechanic: races, classes, skills, feats, spells, etc.

To my mind, this is exactly the opposite of what should be happening with the d20 license in play. Sure, Wizards is an order of magnitude larger than the largest d20 publisher, and thus has considerably greater resources to draw on in developing a new product. Sure, Wizards has a distinct advantage by being able to publish proprietary material that is directly branded with the Dungeons and Dragons logo.

But to my mind, the d20 license should act to level the field. The license allows each and every publisher to draw on a common body of design material to produce increasingly better and better designs. So, even though Wizards might have 20 designers on staff working on D&D products, the other d20 publishers might collectively have 200 designers working away at the same time. So one would expect the independent d20 publishers to be able to keep pace with or even surpass WotC in terms of the quality of game designs. The independent publishers should have more and better opportunities to advance and propagate their designs. And if anything, Wizards should be at a distinct design disadvantage.

But, as Mike notes, that’s not what we’ve seen. If anything, WotC seems to be pulling ahead of the pack.*

I think part of this is an inevitable inefficiency created by having so many different people working in the same field. Redundancies are natural and to some extent, good. But I also think there has been a glaring failure by the independent d20 publishers to draw on perfectly good existing OGC material. As Ken Hite once put it, “More than once, I've heard Jonathan Tweet muse that he thought a major category of d20 books would essentially replicate the GURPS line -- you'd have two or three d20 Aztecs, a bunch of d20 Vikings, and one d20 17th Century Jesuit Paraguay. Instead, we've mostly gotten two hundred or so d20 Dwarves that don't even do us the favor of stealing the one good open-source dwarf mechanic from whichever one of them came up with it” (http://www.gamingreport.com/modules...Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=116). And so the wheel keeps getting reinvented over and over again.

I think there are a lot of reasons why independent d20 publishers don’t reuse good OGC material more often. I’m sure there are still the usual legal concerns about reusing another company’s material, even with the OGL in place now for, what, five years? Many companies continue to cripple their open content, including even the most forward-leaning companies like Malhavoc. This crippling typically leaves vital things like the names of feats or spells closed while opening all the mechanical content. And almost no company has tried to make their OGC material readily available for other designers to use. To date, I believe Guardians of Order is the only company that has tried to provide online System Reference Documents for their material.

*Certainly the quality of d20 books from most independent publishers has increased dramatically in the last few years, but that’s due more to better editing and MUCH better implementation of d20 mechanics. But the quality of independent design has probably not increased in pace with WotC.