d20 Hatred near you?

[Psion]

And if it weren't for Mongoose and Atlas, i'd probably have never given *any* D20 System product a chance.

Ah... would have history been different in Macho Women With Guns d20 was the first product you browsed?

 

[woodelf]

Thanks for the replies!

Okay, first of all, for my own clarification. Can I say that OGL = d20 but d20 != OGL?

I ask because I thought that CoC was OGL, not d20, the same as Mutants and Masterminds, because both of them had rules on character creation, which isn't allowed under d20. And don't those have different rules?

Second, does DND = d20? If so, where does the SRD fit? I mean, the SRD does list spells, so if DND = d20, doesn't that mean that the spells are d20? Even if they don't have to be included, aren't they a part of it?

OGL has come to be shorthand for "D20 System, but we're not allowed to say so". However, that isn't really what it means. Anything can be released under the WotC OGL, and so far at least 2 complete game systems (three?) have been: D20 System and Action! Since WotC has not deigned to give us an alternative unique label for their game system, it pretty much has to be called "D20 System". Whether or not it is eligible for the D20STL, and thus has a D20 System logo on it. So there are really 4 things you're talking about here:
1) "OGL": proper meaning is any game or game product released under the WotC OGL, or perhaps any ogl, but colloquially has come to mean "D20 System" (#2 below).
2) "D20 System": name for the otherwise-unnamed ruleset used in products based on the D20SRD and/or D20MSRD, as well as D&D3[.5]E and several other games from WotC, regardless of trademark status.
3) "D20 System": formal tradename for the ruleset used in products based on the D20SRD and/or D20MSRD, as well as D&D3[.5]E and several other games from WotC. Technically, requires acceptance of, and abiding by, the D20STL to make this claim.
4) "D&D3[.5]E": name of a particular game line published by WotC (and a few others, under license), from which the D20SRD is derived, and then released under the WotC OGL.

So, (4) is not open content. And while huge swaths of it are verbatim identical to material released as (2), technically, the material in D&D can't be reused, even if identical material in the D20SRD can be. So, yes, spells are "part of" the D20 System, whether the speaker is talking of (2) or (3) above. However, they are not an *integral* part of D20 System--you can certainly have a D20 System product that doesn't have D&D-style spells in it, or has different spells, or doesn't have magic at all. Much of the confusion comes from the fact that there is no agreed-upon label for (2) above, with some using "OGL", and thus confusing (1) and (2) above, and others using "D20 System" and thus confusnig (2) and (3) above. So, when someone says "D20 System" or "OGL" when describing a game, you really don't know what they mean. The former could mean "uses the D20 System" or the narrower "uses the D20 System in such a way as to conform to the D20STL". Similarly, "OGL" could mean "uses the D20 System" or the much vaguer "is released under the WotC OGL".

My own preference is to recognize that we're not business entities engaged in trade here, and thus not bound by most trademark laws, much less licenses/contracts we're not parties to. We all know that the systems in Arcana Unearthed, D&D3.5E, Spycraft, Mutants & Masterminds, and OGL Horror are the same system, and that that is clearly "the D20 System", whether they sport the logo or not. That leaves (3) above as the category without a label, and i suggest "D20 System logoed", or just "D20 logoed" for shorthand, since that is the most accurate descriptor--the defining difference between (2) and (3) above isn't the content, it's the logo.

 

[woodelf]

d20 actually has a pretty small number of rules. Six ability scores, thirty-some-odd skills and the same number of feats. That's not so much. A half-dozen combat actions are described and a bunch of modifiers are offered.

"half-dozen combat actions"? What're you reading? There're something like a dozen pages of combat actions in the D20SRD.

 

[woodelf]

Maybe not in the same sense, but every game system has "levels", unless your character stays exactly as it was after initial character generation.

Whether they be direct class levels, a point buy system of advancing skills or powers, gaining blood points, or receiving access to new equipment. Different systems may not have the same leveling proceedure, but they all "level" in some way or another.

Some leveling is just not as obvious as others

I disagree. In the context of RPG design, a "level" is a very specific beast--it is a unit of advancement that increments "all" of your abilities at once, regardless of usage or preference. 'All' is in quotes because some of yoru abilities may increment by 0, and because there may be some discretion in how they increment (such as skill point spending in D&D3E). Nonetheless, it is distinct from a non-leveled system, where you increase abilities individually, as chosen.

Now, it's true that almost every rpg has character advancement rules (there're at least a few that don't however--some because they don't expect your character to advance, others because they leave it to ad hoc group rulings), but whether or not they use "levels" is a defining characterization, often used for categorization, and the term "level" has a long-established meaning, with no need to blur it. [That is, there are already terms--such as "advancement"--for what you're describing.] Even if no game on the market displays the platonic ideal of "levels" (even the current version of D&D allows some discretion, frex), it's still useful to continue to reserve the term for the ideal, and simply acknowledge that a game is "almost purely level-based", or somesuch.

 

[woodelf]

Pick nits much? Here's my words "Very few companies out there abandon their original systems when they port over to d20"

Well, there's Sovereign Stone. Which is doubly a shame, because their original system was actually one of the better i've seen in a while--simple, novel, flavorful.

And where do you put all the games that get ported to D20 System before they're released? While i can't name any off the top of my head, there have been at least a few games that were gonna be some other system, and then got switched to D20 System during development.

 

[woodelf]

Interesting note. Buddy of mine works for White Wolf and he told me that the Dirty Secrets of the Black Hand (which is the book that started the whole Vicissitude as intelligent disease) was basically disavowed a year or so after it was published. I believe (I'll have to ask my friend again for clarification) that the author wrote that book and several others in a direct effort to screw with the storyline due to some disputes. Not sure why it was published if that was the case, but oh well. So the guys who have been in charge of the system for Revised didn't pay any attention to that aspect of the power when doing that edition. DIrty Secrets was a 2nd Ed book.

I must just have no taste : Dirty Secrets of the Black Hand is one of only 5 V:tM products i've considered good enough to buy (and no, the V:tM core rulebook, in any iteration, wasn't one of them).

Now the reason why combat is more complex in 3E than in 2E is that you are able to do SO much more. You had things like modifiers and grapple and such in 2E (sometimes multiple versions of the same basic rules), but you didn't have things like feats. I knew many DMs who you would ask if it were possible to do a Spring Attack kind of move and they would say no. WHen questioned as to why they would state it wasn't in the book. I know, bad DMing.

On the flipside, if you had a GM that routinely accepted these sorts of maneuvers, codifying them in reserved special abilities will reduce what your character can't do. Much of the stuff that you now need a feat for, in the games i both ran and played in [of AD&D2], anybody could do. Things like splitting your movement, trading off attack for damage or attack for defense, or getting a bonus at point-blank range.

 

[SSquirrel]

On the flipside, if you had a GM that routinely accepted these sorts of maneuvers, codifying them in reserved special abilities will reduce what your character can't do. Much of the stuff that you now need a feat for, in the games i both ran and played in [of AD&D2], anybody could do. Things like splitting your movement, trading off attack for damage or attack for defense, or getting a bonus at point-blank range.

Agreed. Most of the DMs I knew tho wouldn't allow things like that, so its a bonus from my experience *shrug*

Hagen

 

[woodelf]

It does? How does it do this, exactly? And who is demonstrating belief in this supposed myth, anyway?

Well, the fact that people will buy a book like Backdrops or Seven Strongholds in preference to a book like City Book VII, when the latter is better content, but the former has a D20 System logo on the cover (and, in the case of Backdrops, there isn't a single game stat in the whole book) supports it. Talk to any game company that's been a round for a while, and they'll tell you that generic supplements don't sell. But repackage the same exact sort of content with D20 System stats, and it sells well enough to encourage more of them.

I mean, d20 supplies all sorts of games with all sorts of very different rulesets -- I would say that the popularity of games such as CoC and M&M suggest that this "myth" carries little weight. Obviously d20 doesn't even suggest that supplements need to have the exact same ruleset, since most of them provide different rulesets.

We have different definitions of "same" and "different" in this context. IMHO, CoCD20, M&MM, D&D3E, OGL Horror, Grimm, Virtual, Deeds Not Words, and Stargate D20 all use "the same" ruleset. And so do the producers--the whole selling point of D20 System is "you don't need to learn the rules, because you already know them".

What are the best selling third party d20 products? If the top 10 includes titles that AREN'T perfectly compatible with D&D, I'd say your logic just went south. Well, rpgnow lists "Elements of Magic" and the "d20 Modern Player's Companion" -- neither of which is particularly compatible with D&D (one intending to replace D&D magic and the other not even FOR D&D)

Look at a broader sample than RPGNow--PDF sales are often skewed: things that'd never sell as hardcopy, or for $20 might sell like hotcakes for $8 as a PDF. Go to the local FLGS, and find out, and i bet that you'll mostly find very clearly D&D-compatible books in the topsellers. And, again, differences of definition: i'd consider D20 Modern and D&D3.5E "perfectly compatible"--i wouldn't even blink at grabbing one bit from one, one from the other, and running a game with no effort needed to merge them.

And why exclude WotC products in the comparison?

Or, it looks like a way to make the rules of the game very clear to everyone playing. Like you say, the question used to be quite open to debate. Only a publisher willing to take the risk that the courts would go their way would be willing to publish material using existing rules. And even if it WAS legal, there was nothing to stop TSR or WotC from SUING you just to kill you with legal fees.

Actually, i'd argue that prior to 1999, it wasn't much of a risk, legally. Which is why there were so many companies doing it (like MGI's Role-Aids line, Judges Guild, and others). While it was far from a sure thing, what legal precedent there was looks to me [a non-lawyer] like it was in favor of the USPTO's circular saying that game rules can't be patented. It was precisely the monetary risk (of being buried under legal fees) that stopped it--specifically TSR successfully killing the Role-Aids line, despite a previous court case that had explicitly established that MGI's use of the AD&D trademark was within trademark usage guidelines, i'd wager.

At least now publishers know that's impossible. Sure, they have to acknowledge that the rules have an owner. And it's obvious from what's happened that making that acknowledgement was worth the legal certainty for most of them, and what's more, it's working out pretty well for them.

It's both. It *does* make the "rules" clear, so that everyone is playing by the same ones. And it clearly gives a lot of people what they want. And if it were in a vacuum, i wouldn't have a problem with it. But it's not. It establishes a precedent, and that's what i object to.

The fact that everyone likes it doesn't necessarily mean it's good in all ways. Let's say there's a big kid at school who always has an entire bag of cookies in her lunch. You want one, and she says you can have one, if you let her punch you. You're "happy" with this solution, 'cause you get a cookie. But you're stilling getting punched everyday before lunch--because a cookie is worth more to you than not being punched. But what if the bully then beat you up one day, and used the cookie agreement to argue that you liked being hurt, and so you didn't suffer anything when you were beat up? Now, hopefully the teacher would see right through this. But, of course, an IP matter like whether or not RPG mechanics can be owned, is far less clear-cut, and far less tangible, so there's much more risk of a precedent being extended. I don't want IP to get beat up. [Also, i'm looking at this in the context of IP laws in general, such as copyright extensions, Disney arm-twisting Congress, the RIAA's actions, the DMCA, patenting of genomes, and other trends that're giving corporations ever more power, at the expense of the public good. So for me it's not just one license in isolation, it's part of a larger trend that i see as very bad.]

Microsoft Windows. Trademark for the term "Windows" is certainly under dispute right now, but the mark was definitely granted in 1995. So your statement is not in fact true.

Check the USPTO website circulars. Or check with an IP lawyer: the general rule of thumb is that common terms and pure descriptives can't be trademarks. That's why you see funny spellings (so it's not a common word) and bizarre seemingly-unrelated names, often using made-up words, for companies all the time. And the claim against MS is exactly the one i'm making against WotC: that the USPTO *shouldn't* have granted the Windows trademark, and that they did so because of ignorance of the state of the software industry at the time (or, more specifically, at the time the MS Windows trademark was first claimed).

 

[woodelf]

I think you're the only entity reinforcing this myth. You can read the story hour in my .sig to see an example (among many) of someone bringing disparate d20 products together to create a campaign.

Um, that's not at all what i'm talking about. D20 System products aren't "disparate" IMHO, by definition--they're all working from the same mechanical base. I'm talking about sitting down with, say, ShadowRun 2nd ed, The Book of the Wyrm (for W:tA), and Chromebook 2 (for CP2020) and running a game. I find the amount of prep/effort required to make those products work together no more than using, say, Arcana Unearthed, Midnight, and Book of Exalted Deeds together. It's precisely the fact that you choose D20 System products over non-D20 System products that i consider evidence of the myth in action.

Yeah, that worked great for RoleAids. How long ago did they get sued out of existence?

I dunno. Several years *after* a judge ruled that they could use the AD&D trademark, properly declaimed, and mimic the stats as they always had, without infringing. The suit that killed the Role-Aids line (and, incidentally, got the last few books in the line published by TSR, instead of MGI) was over some niggling contract element, not trademark infringement per se.

 

[Garlak]

Nintendo was an inferior product but they let ANYONE make games for it even if those games were crap pushed out just to stock up the shelves. Sega had a better system but wouldn't let anyone else make games for them.

Nintendo an inferior product? That is silly. Download a SEGA emulator and a NES one and tell me which one's games look the best.

As for D20: The problem I have with it is simple. It it used as a universal system even though it was clearly designed for high powered fantasy.
It simply is not designed as a universal system.

It is good if you like high powered fantasy where humans can kill a dragon.
It sucks if you want big monsters (ogres or trolls) to be rare and scary things.
It does not fit my style of playing in it's basic form.