Turjan
Explorer
SSquirrel said:This is a nuance really. Both games run on the d20 system and there's no secret about it if you open the book. whol not d20 branded, they are built on the d20 skeleton. Hence I, and I'm sure many other people, consider them a d20 game*.
*Yes OGL games != d20 brand, but so what?
Well, you just have to see it in the context of the question at hand, which is the future of the "Scarred Lands". And here it makes a difference. AU has a similar engine to D&D, yes, but the classes, the magic system and the power progression are very distinctive from D&D, which is part of its special appeal. M&M is a supers game, something completely different, with a very much streamlined version of the d20 engine. That's why they are "only" OGL products.
On the other hand, most d20 products on the market (I said most, not all) are nothing else than D&D supplements. The Scarred Lands fall into this category; they are a somewhat grittier version of the Forgotten Realms, of course with a few very interesting ideas as far as the setting specifics go. However, it's still near vanilla D&D. And it's these near vanilla D&D supplements by other companies than WotC which have a hard time on the market at the moment.