Revised d20 mark?

[Ranger REG]

IOW, Wizards won't force AEG to update their Spycraft engine to 3.5e standard, correct?

 

[Mark]

IOW, Wizards won't force AEG to update their Spycraft engine to 3.5e standard, correct?

I do not know. I am unfamiliar with what AEG has done with Spycraft or that engine. Whether WotC suggests or otherwise moves AEG to update might not be as strong an influence as the general public moving toward the revised d20 System. It may well be that AEG will look on this as an opportunity to make some adjustments on their own, and those adjustments might be best manifested if they parallel the system others will be using.

There is another point that I think will come with the advent of 3.5E that I haven't heard anyone mention thus far. In this past half year we've seen a number of companies once again playing fast and loose with the licenses and if last Gencon is any yardstick to use as measure, I imagine that whoever takes over for AV will be asked to take a few meetings with some of those folks.

There are levels of compatibility, and separately there are levels companies may cite with their products, and I have a feeling that those folks who have been taking liberties are going to find themselves asked some serious questions come July.

Of course, that may just be chunks of sky I am feeling...

 

[woodelf]

Sure, plenty of d20 products are books of variants, or distinct games based on the rule set. What I'm interested in mainly are published adventures and such. In my experience, there's a big enough wheat-vs.-chaff problem there that I don't want another headache to add to it.

Well, yeah--even given no rules variations, it's pretty tricky to design an off-the-shelf scenario that will work with characters you know nothing about. Which is why i almost never use them in the first place--i'd concluded that the effort in adapting generally exceeded that in creating from scratch. Obviously, YMMV.

Though it might be just me--scenarios *do* seem to sell well enough. So you probably have a point that applies to a fair number of people. 'Course, with the shelflife of D20 products these days (<60 days), they should mostly have cleared out, other than people choosing not to match the new SRD, by Halloween.

 

[woodelf]

IOW, Wizards won't force AEG to update their Spycraft engine to 3.5e standard, correct?

Even assuming they could force people (and, i suppose, they could use the terms of the D20STL to do so for those that want a D20 logo), it wouldn't make much sense for Spycraft.

Changes to D&D:
classes--Spycraft doesn't use D&D classes
skills--Spycraft already has its own skill list, and has several similar changes, anyway
spells--no magic in Spycraft
races--no races in Spycraft
feats--spycraft already introduced tons of skill and gear and style and other non-combat feats
combat--no AoO in Spycraft, not much in the way of non-M-sized beings, no multiple attacks from high BAB, lots of feats already are gone or work differently.
DR--no magic, so no "steps" of DR to alter
crits--different system for turning a threat into a crit in Spycraft

IOW, if they started from D&D3.5E, they'de end up with exactly the same thing they did.