How is this legal?

[philreed]

" Psionics Handbook Companion A comprehensive one-stop source for fixes to the system presented in Wizards of the Coast's "Psionics Handbook". It also contains a plethora of new powers, abilities, prestige classes, and other extras that have been requetsed by the fans of psionics."

It looks like the above blurb is about as wrong as you can get when it comes to marketing D20 products.

The amazing thing is it's already listed as a "Popular Pick" on RPGNow.

Can anyone tell me what's going on? Can I get some comments or a review?

 

[Aryoche]

I'm not a Publisher (yet!),(or a Lawyer) But based on the thread further down the list, it doesn't appear to be. (This based on other publisher comments and such.)

 

[philreed]

Second Question

Is there really this much demand for such a product or has someone gone in and played the "trick" mentioned in the PDF sales thread from last month? The one where you set a sale price of $0.01, buy 50 or so, and then set the price back to normal.

If there's really this much demand for a product like this I may as well go back to working on print books where I have some idea what the customer wants.

 

[Azure Trance]

" Psionics Handbook Companion A comprehensive one-stop source for fixes to the system presented in Wizards of the Coast's "Psionics Handbook". It also contains a plethora of new powers, abilities, prestige classes, and other extras that have been requetsed by the fans of psionics."

It looks like the above blurb is about as wrong as you can get when it comes to marketing D20 products.

The amazing thing is it's already listed as a "Popular Pick" on RPGNow.

Can anyone tell me what's going on? Can I get some comments or a review?

Have you seen http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33445 ?

 

[philreed]

I wasted $5.00.

I bought a copy. Lots of it is right from the Psionics Handbook. Not the SRD of the Psionics Handbook but non OGC of the Psionics Handbook.

 

[Cheiromancer]

Re: I wasted $5.00.

I bought a copy. Lots of it is right from the Psionics Handbook. Not the SRD of the Psionics Handbook but non OGC of the Psionics Handbook.

It's 110 pages long, isn't it? Even if lots is from the Psionics Handbook, $5 worth of original content could well be present.

Though if it's in gross violation of the OGL (which is what it sounds like), it probably won't be on RPG Now for long.

 

[philreed]

Re: Re: I wasted $5.00.

It's 110 pages long, isn't it? Even if lots is from the Psionics Handbook, $5 worth of original content could well be present.

That's the thing. While you're reading through the Psionics Powers you see things like "(originally detailed in the Psionics Handbook)" over and over.

I'm not sure how much of it is original and how much isn't.

 

[jaerdaph]

Just out of curiosity, what is RPGNow's return policy? I can't find a link to it on the Web site.

Other than the preview, I haven't seen the product in question so I can't comment on it specifically, but I do know that if I got something that made Phil feel the way he did and I couldn't return it, I would be mighty p.o.'d as well, and soured on using the company I bought it from again for anything.

 

[Steve Conan Trustrum]

What's worse is that the second comment reads like a prepared speech posted by a buddy, not a customer. And I can't be certain, but the cover picture looks familiar. It's buzzing at the edge of my memory. Did they take a WotC image and digitally later it or is it an entirely unique image? Anyone know?

 

[Morrus]

Just out of curiosity, what is RPGNow's return policy? I can't find a link to it on the Web site.

Other than the preview, I haven't seen the product in question so I can't comment on it specifically, but I do know that if I got something that made Phil feel the way he did and I couldn't return it, I would be mighty p.o.'d as well, and soured on using the company I bought it from again for anything.

I don't see how you can return a PDF... you could delete it, presumably, but how does RPGNow know that you've deleted it? If people could get refunds after buying a PDF, I think the PDF industry would go out of business very quickly. There are, unfortunately, an awful lot of dishonest people out there.