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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pnakotus" data-source="post: 4058752" data-attributes="member: 60426">If you bought this book, email the vendor and ask for a refund.It violates the D20 system license in numerous ways. (Failure to display mandatory trademarks, violation of quality standards, using the trademark 'D20 Modern' in the text of the book and in advertising material while not following the terms of the license.) A poster on the Skortched Urf blog pointed this out; the only answer he got was a claim by the company that this is an OGL book, not a D20 book. This is not true. My copy says clearly that it is released under the D20 license on the first page; furthermore OGL products are not allowed to be advertised as "a D20 Modern setting" by their license, as this one is.RPGnow promptly refunded my money when I mentioned these concerns to them.Beyond the legal issues, the book suffers from a number of other serious problems:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Numerous errors in the text.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Poorly balanced rules. (Example: Impregnate a woman remotely by masturbating with her panties and then mind control her with no save: 3 feats.)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">It's ridiculous. Not erotic, not horrific, just silly. (Example: Feces armour, giving birth to bears as a combat feat.)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Precious little of the material in the book is Japanese. Most of it was invented whole cloth by the American writer. The book does not use common terms that would be familiar to anyone who had researched the subject, or uses them incorrectly, and at times it uses clumsy neoligisms in their place. (Example: Hentai no Judo. Bishonen/Bishojou Hermaph; correct term is Futanari.)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Criticisms of the book's layout and art are responded to by the publishers complaining that they're a small company and cannot produce a professionally illustrated and typeset PDF.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Criticisms of the book's content are responded to by the publishers claiming that the critic is simply offended by sexual material, and that the book is too edgy for them to appreciate. Together with the previous problem, this renders the publisher not only incapable of producing a quality product, but similarly incapable of improving their product in response to customer feedback.</li> </ul>My advice to the writers is this:<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Learn to read your licenses and comply with them.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">No more excuses. All the tools you need to publish a quality PDF are available in open source or free versions. There are plenty of other RPG books you can look at for examples. Everything else is just a matter of taking the time to do the work. I know proofreading is boring, I know you want to publish and get on with the next project. As another poster said, if you want to charge professional prices you have to do professional work.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Either do research or write what you know. There's no excuse for coming up with a bunch of disgusting ideas and then blaming it on the Japanese because they kind of vaguely resemble the stuff you saw in Wicked City.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Your critics are not all prudes. Maybe your decision to devote several pages to the art of poop magic actually deserved all the derisive laughter and mockery it attracted.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Figure out your actual idea before you put pen to paper. If you want a sourcebook for running campaigns where players investigate horrible monsters and villains who violate women in grotesque and fatal ways, maybe you should spend more time on the setting and story ideas than on coming up with a lot of feats and prestige classes which are only suitable for NPCs in the first place.</li> </ol></blockquote>

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