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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Thorin Stoutfoot" data-source="post: 420640" data-attributes="member: 1887">Let me explain what I think Hellbender meant:If I'm at the gaming store with $40 in my pocket, what would I get? Let's see. We have this game called "Godlike", and this game called "Nobilis"... But my chances of getting my D&D players to play either is slim.On the other hand, Monte Cook has this cool new super-adventure called "The BaneWarrens", and the new event book (an entirely new concept) called "Requim for a God." The new issue of Dungeon has a d20 Mecha game, which I'm sure I could get my D&D group to try for at least one evening, and then there's "Spycraft", which a lot of folks have been raving about.So the issue isn't that I have a choice between mediocre d20 products done by hacks or superior, inspired non-d20 products that have been sweated by geniuses with PhDs. The issue is that I have a choice between d20 products sweated on by geniuses, and non-d20 products sweated on by other maybe geniuses that I've never heard about.It's no wonder d20 products outsell the others, given the same amount of design and presentation quality as the non-d20 products. I'm not saying that "Godlike" or "Nobilis" doesn't sell, but I bet that if there had been excellent implementations of such games (Note that I don't know if such a thing is even possible) as d20 games, they'd sell an order of magnitude better, simply because a potential buyer isn't thinking to himself/herself "Would this be a hard sell for my gaming group?". For this reason and this reason alone, I'd consider buying Spycraft, but not Nobilis. I'd consider "Mutants and Masterminds", but not "Godlike", and definitely not "SAS d20", which at this point everyone has agreed is the equivalent of a wolf in sheep's clothing.In other words, my advice to John Nephew, for instance, would be to find someone who loves d20 and is a talented designer and loves Ars Magica (a certain person with the initials JT comes to mind <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />, and get him to write the Ars Magica magic system as an extension to the d20 system. Advertise it as "the best new magic system to have ever been developed" (and if you manage to get JT to write it of course you should market the hell out of that!), and I bet that one new Core Rulebook will pay for 20 Ars Magica supplements!</blockquote>

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