OGL; Is it working?

[Lonely Tylenol]

Shadowspawn's Guide to Sanctuary, which is coming out this week, is a big city book a la Waterdeep or Freeport. It's full of locations, history, and characters--the things that make a city tick. It also includes a whole section on using the book with just the core D&D rules, so if you don't want to implement the material in the Player's Manual, you can still get full use out of the book. That makes the city of Sanctuary even easier to drag and drop into your own campaign if you don't want to run a strictly Thieves' World game.

Yay! Dr. Awkward approves. Another thing to add to my list of "things I might buy with my Xmas money." I do so love drag-and-drop setting material.

 

[Mark CMG]

Well, I can't be mistaken about what I know I'm not buying.

So, you're sticking to that story?

 

[eyebeams]

That is why mistreating would-be customers has no impact in RPG design, unlike every other industry. Only game designers have mystic power.

Never met a bunch of novelists, have you? Or musicians? Or . . . well, lots pf people whose job is to perform or produce, not to be nice.

Me, I feel people should let their opinion of my person influence my work as much as my opinion of them influences my commitment to writing decent stuff.

 

[philreed]

Only game designers have mystic power.

Is there some trick to using them, then? I was never given a manual.

 

[BryonD]

Never met a bunch of novelists, have you? Or musicians? Or . . . well, lots pf people whose job is to perform or produce, not to be nice.

You're wrong.
Again.

Me, I feel people should let their opinion of my person influence my work as much as my opinion of them influences my commitment to writing decent stuff.

That's very nice.

Of course it doesn't speak to the claim that being a jerk doesn't influence the total number of sales. I'm certain that out of 100 people that would buy an item there are going to be quite a few that could not give a flip whether the author is a jerk or not. Let's be extemely charitable and assume that only 10 of the 100 actually care. Is 90 sales less than 100 in your world? It is in mine.

 

[BryonD]

Is there some trick to using them, then? I was never given a manual.

No Phil, I've never seen you use them either.
I guess that is why you seem to be forced to rely on things like being nice and putting out quality products.

101 feats is very nice! Some of them were a little weird. But it is a great collection that will certainly get printed out and added to my on-hand stuff.

 

[philreed]

101 feats is very nice! Some of them were a little weird. But it is a great collection that will certainly get printed out and added to my on-hand stuff.

Thank you. And yes, some of the feats are definitely a bit weird. Most of the unusual ones are best suited to epic or plane-hopping campaigns. I figured the mix was odd enough that throwing the RTF version in would help people to extract only the feats they want to use.

Anyway, back to trying to unlock these mystic powers. Or writing 101 Corpses. Whichever comes easiest, I guess.

 

[JoeGKushner]

The thing is, I don't think I've ever seen a publisher's actions on messageboards impact their sales.

Hell, one publisher was on a "d20 Modern sucks!" kick about three years ago. He then went on to produce d20 Modern PDFs and I didn't once see someone point to his "d20 Modern sucks!" messages.

A lot of times people say things on messageboards, like they'll never buy from a certain company, but then don't follow through on what they say.

And a lot of people don't post on message boards and buy stuff anyway! It's a crazy world.

But yeah, I agree about posters and companies. The market changes, events change, etc... Heck, how many people have clamored for something not European in style and then saw Nyambe, and Mindshadows and said, "Well, that's not what I meant." Poor publishers.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Ain't that the truth!




Seriously, BryonD, thanks for taking the time to write up your thoughts on this. I don't think we're all that far apart on the issue, we're just starting from opposite ends. The TW thing in particular is a bit of a sore spot if only because we tried to make it all about core D&D in every way we could, and inside the company anyway we felt that TW is just about as D&D a setting as you can get, so hearing that the message got lost is a disappointment and a frustration. After 5 years of putting out books, we kinda thought that people understood that a product released from us under the D20 logo = use this in your D&D game while no D20 logo = this is its own thing, but you know its parents so don't be scared. Judging from the comments here, that's obviously not the case for many. (Of course, that gets back to the question of whether this represents a situation that needs to be addressed by us as publishers, or if it's just part of that cacaphony we're talking about.)


Anyway, I'm not trying to shoot the messenger.

Thieves World is great. The guide is great.

They do not fit the standard default of D&D.

1. Magic assumptions: It's much lower. Much.

2. Combat Options: Thieves World assumes a much more dangerous stance on combat. Just as the Black Company does. You can drop it but then you lose a chunk of the material.

3. Monsters: well, that low magic thing comes back. There are a few unique beast and such, but it's mostly a human world.

4. Little Things: Background packages and other elements of culture that effect background skills do not mesh well with D&D. Do they do what they set out to? Yes. Do they mesh with standard play? No. They can change a lot of things on the GMs side, such as PrCs that are generally meant to be taken by multi-class characters by giving access to skill lists that aren't normally associated with that class concept.

These are huge elements to overcome. Thieves World does a great job of modelling the d20 system to capture the setting, but saying that it can be popped into say, Greyhawk or the Forgotten Realms, is assuming a lot of work and effort on the GM. Way more than say your other product, Freeport, which is more or less ground 0 in terms of D&D assumptions (includng it's own bestiary and magical substances in the core book) as wel las fantasy adventurers to support it.

YMMV

 

[philreed]

They do not fit the standard default of D&D.

I think it could be argued that -- these days -- D&D doesn't fit the standard assumptions most people have when they think of D&D. A lot of the elements of the latest rules are heavily inspired by computer games* and don't fit what people think when they think of D&D.


* Which can be fine, with the right group. But a large number of people (much larger that I once thought) prefer a less computer-inspired version of D&D. Decreasing the magic and power level goes a long way toward giving those players what they want. Thus, in my opinion, there is a significant group of people that may see TW as more D&D-like than the current version of D&D.

Dismissing several products because they do not fit your thoughts on what is or is not D&D does a great disservice to those with a different set of assumptions and needs.

A D20 product is, in most instances, a D20 product.