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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Zappo" data-source="post: 487174" data-attributes="member: 633">I don't think skill-based systems are so niche as described in this thread. All major systems save D20 are skill-based. Ok, so D20 has the majority of the market, but saying that all the rest together isn't worthy of attention... I bet it would make WW fans quite mad. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />That's one of the big points of the problem, I think. If when I say OGL, people immediately think D20, as several people did on this thread and as many people do every time an OGL thread springs up, then clearly someone who developed an OGL skill-based system simply has no hope, no matter how good the product actually is. The target audience - the aforementioned WW fans, for example, or GURPS players - will think it is a hacked up D20 system and won't touch it with a 10-foot pole, even if it is actually a beautiful Storyteller++ game. And the people who actually expect a classless D20 will be disappointed, because they aren't the target audience.I think this is simply horrible. We have a powerful legal tool at our disposal - for OGL is nothing but a legal tool - and it seems irrevocably bound to be used with D20 only and, maybe, some other specialized product.The OGL was undoubtedly a real stroke of genius on WotC's part. Now, RPGs are basically divided between class/level systems (D20 + some niche games) and skill-based (everything else).I don't think an OGL skill-based system is good for the players. As many of you have pointed out, players already have a slew of skill-based systems, and if they want to develop their homebrew setting for GURPS noone from SJG is going to stop them. I am thinking about the authors, the people who want to publish. Making a new system from scratch is a hard task! A very hard task, at least as hard as making a new setting.I don't know about you, but if I were a new author, I would just love to have a premade system, already fully developed and thoroughly playtested, so that I can focus fully on the setting instead of wasting time with probabilities. And currently, I am forced to use D20, and if I want my game to be skill-based I'm screwed.</blockquote>

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