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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pramas" data-source="post: 1570334" data-attributes="member: 995">Or naval rules. Or shaman and witch core classes.While I agree with Phil that there are companies and products that do make good use use of OGC, there are a couple of things that work against an escalation of that trend.1) The very glut of product that thread is talking about. When the d20 thing started, I thought I'd try to pick up every product released so I could see what other companies were doing. That lasted less than a year. There's so many books coming out you can't possibly keep tabs on them all. It could thus very easily be the case that there's OGC that you'd find useful for a particular book, but you don't know it exists.2) Game designers tend to have a certain amount of pride. They want to be lauded for their own innovations, not patted on the back for reusing someone elses. Many d20 companies were founded by folks who looked at what was out there (both before and after 3E) and said, "I can do better than that!" 3) There's still a fear that if you go too far with OGC use, you'll get crap about it. For example, when I commissioned Skip Williams to write the Advanced Player's Manual, my wish list of features included a mass combat system. I found out at that point that Skip was working on one for Malhavoc already (Cry Havoc). I asked Skip if we he could strip that one down some, since it would seem stupid to have two different systems designed by the same guy in print. Even stripped down, Skip's system is 30,000 words (about 48 pages). I want it in the book, but part of me still fears that when the reviews hit, I'm going to hear about how much space was "wasted" reprinting something that's available in another book. On the other hand, Corwyl: Village of the Wood Elves, uses a lot of OGC and that hasn't been a problem for anyone as near as I can tell (though it's also a much shorter book).</blockquote>

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