Still waiting for news about the future of d20 Modern

[lmpjr007]

Would you sell your soul and your firstborn daughter for it?

Well since I don't own my soul (You know how that happens) and I don't have a daughter, I might be interested. LOL!

 

[lmpjr007]

What about Top Secret is licensed other than bad German? Do you mean the SI stuff?

I mean the ORIGINAL Top Secret.

 

[lmpjr007]

Yes, that's exactly why I made that suggestion. The market for a modern game is there: the D20 Modern Corebook sold bunches and bunches of copies, and WotC needs to have a product to serve the modern market. I figure we'll see something new for Modern, even if it's only a supplement for the PHB, after the initial print relese of the core books and initial splats for 4th Edition...about the time when they're asking for what books sold well last time. We most likely see support for this new edition outside of the core book, mind you, but I firmly believe we'll see it.

But you have forgotten one thing,

Who said 4th Edition would be part of or even use the Open Game License?

WOTC created the OGL, BEFORE Hasbro bought them. Do you really think Hasbro would keep something like the OGL in place, when they have made TONS of money do variation of Monopoly games? Take one concept and do Marketing Line Extension on it an make tons of money on it. With the OGL in place, that make it impossible for Hasbro to do that. The OGL makes hundreds and hundreds of competitiors for Hasbro. Hasbro releases 4th Ed with no OGL, people who are customers will "upgrade" to 4th Ed because it is OFFICIAL and then drop any 3.5 OGL material since it will not be compatable.

For example: Look how many people STILL support and play 3.0 over 3.5?

4.0 Ed will not SAVE the OGL, it will KILL it.

 

[Ranger REG]

Now that's an interesting observation. I never found d20 Modern hurting in this respect --- so many free adventures on the WotC site, plus campaign models and solid GM advice in the campaign book --- but there are other games like Unknown Armies, Exalted, and Transhuman Space where it's fascinating reading but I just would have no idea how to actually get a game going.

I guess because we have very finicky fans of d20 Modern, and are trying to pull WotC in all directions. The line have experienced some growing pains, the first being Urban Arcana, which some have alleged that WotC is trying to pull d20 Modern to fantasy.

And then there are those who believe "modern=reality" to the point of trying to make a detailed automatic fire attack rules.

IOW, you just cannot satisfy them.

REG, what's this about d20 Top Secret? I was a Top Secret SI man circa 1989ish....

Just wishful thinking. WotC went through all the trouble to get TSR's assets ... though we both know that their eyes are on the main prize: D&D. To me, it would be frivolous NOT to use what you've brought. Dark Matter was the first time I've seen WotC becoming resourceful with one of TSR's assets, despite foul villainous cries of "rehash" and "company lacking original ideas."

Here's hoping for the others to join the d20 Modern line, including Top Secret, Star Drive, etc.

P.S. Any fans of Top Secret/S.I may recall a "superhero agent" supplement F.R.E.E.Lancers. If d20 Spectacular is back onboard, I hope they might include some material based on that sourcebook.

 

[JPL]

Well, an awful lot of old IP has cropped up here and there --- d20 Future had everything from Bughunters to Stardrive, albeit in greatly abbreviated form.

Ah, FREELancers. I wasted most of my sophomore year of high school with that one (and the Commando supplement, which was pure deep-fried coolness).

What's funky about that setting is that it was set ten years in the future...in the year 1997, right? And they had mecha...but no Internet. I think that it would still make a heck of a d20 Future campaign --- in the year 2017, an elite team of augmented troubleshooters-for-hire take on the cases no one else can handle!

Actually, I am still hoping for a WotC d20 Modern espionage sourcebook called "Top Secret" and featuring Orion v. the Web (updated by 20 years, of course) as the sample setting.

But ultimately, I'd like see WotC do something that will appeal to the kids who are 13 today, not twenty years ago like me...that's what's going to keep the industry going. Just throw us older guys a bone once in a while.

 

[Committed Hero]

I mean the ORIGINAL Top Secret.

Right, but unless you mean the trade dress and name, what else is there? There is no established setting, just 7 or so modules with nothing linking them.

 

[kingpaul]

4.0 Ed will not SAVE the OGL, it will KILL it.

*shrug*

I have hopes that it'll stay around when 4.0 rears its head.

 

[lmpjr007]

Right, but unless you mean the trade dress and name, what else is there? There is no established setting, just 7 or so modules with nothing linking them.

The adventures alone would be worth it, at least to me. A couple little changes and you could run them as a series for D20 Modern. Give it a cool name like Top Sercet: Covert Black Ops or something like that.

 

[JPL]

But you have forgotten one thing,

Who said 4th Edition would be part of or even use the Open Game License?

WOTC created the OGL, BEFORE Hasbro bought them. Do you really think Hasbro would keep something like the OGL in place, when they have made TONS of money do variation of Monopoly games? Take one concept and do Marketing Line Extension on it an make tons of money on it. With the OGL in place, that make it impossible for Hasbro to do that. The OGL makes hundreds and hundreds of competitiors for Hasbro. Hasbro releases 4th Ed with no OGL, people who are customers will "upgrade" to 4th Ed because it is OFFICIAL and then drop any 3.5 OGL material since it will not be compatable.

For example: Look how many people STILL support and play 3.0 over 3.5?

4.0 Ed will not SAVE the OGL, it will KILL it.

Purely speculative at this point, right?

People have upgraded to 3.5, yes...but part of that is the fact that 3.5 is still open content (and it's really a relatively small set of tweaks to 3.0). Also, the 3.0 corebooks are out of print...if non-open 4.0 comes along, anyone could just print the bulk of the 3.5 d20 rules under the OGL and take the wheel of that gravy train.

Would everyone switch to a non-open 4.0, while 3.5 remained open? I don't know. Will 4.0 be so incompatible with 3.5 (and all the related d20/OGL products) that the latter will be driven to extinction? No one knows yet.

Furthermore, I'm not sure how successfully Hasbro could put the genie back in the bottle at this point. We have all grown accustomed to open d20, and to freely exchanging (or selling) our homebrew creations, and the backlash from the gaming community would be huge.

And finally...last I heard, the d20/OGL licenses had been quite successful and presumably made WOTC some great money. As you pointed out, Hasbro is a business and like making money, and I'm guessing that they are pretty good at it, to the point that even the non-gamer MBA who's calling the shots will do the math and determine that 4.0 should be open.

You may be right, Mr. Porter, but to me it sounds like the same talk that went around back when 3.0 was released, and then 3.5 --- that evil Big Business was going to trick you into relying upon their license and then revoke it / sue you / make you shred your books / eat your baby. And so far, it hasn't happened.

 

[buzz]

I don't think they will ever relaunch D20 Modern. I am still waiting for a relaunch of Top Secret.

What do these two things have to do with each other?

If Hasbro is anything like when I worked at Macy Corporate Headquaters...

What do these two things have to do with each other?

The OGL makes hundreds and hundreds of competitiors for Hasbro.

The d20STL/OGL hasn't created even one single competitor for WotC. (And it's WotC we're talking about, not Hasbro.) The single biggest company to grow out of the d20 boom is Mongoose, and even they are so far down the rung from WotC that they're not even a blip on the radar.

As for your comments about 4e, I don't see a lot of merit in them.

While hard data is hard to come by, seems like I read an article by Ken Hite suggesting that d20 Modern greatly outsells GURPS.

I check the Amazon.com Top 100 Gaming category almost every week, which is probably the most relevant data Joe Gamer has access to. As you might expect, most of the list is D&D, with some WoD sprinkled in, and usually a Serenity RPG product or M&M2e. d20M always has at least one product on the list. Right now, the corebook is #34 and d20F is #72. GURPS isn't anywhere on the list, though either one of the corebooks sometimes shows up in the bottom spots, i.e., #75-#100.

The trend suggests to me that d20M is a solid seller for WotC. It's probably doing nowhere near the numbers that the top D&D books do, but it's likely doing numbers that any not-WotC publisher would kill for.

The real question is, are these numbers enough to justify it's continued support from WotC? WotC is the only entity who can definitively answer that question. However, given that, according to Amazon.com, d20M does about as well as SWd20, and WotC has plans to continue supporting that, I think it's a safe bet that d20M will stick around.

Now, that support may be limited to one book a year, but, to be honest, that seems reasonable to me. Given that third-party publishers are doing such an excellent job of supporting d20M, and the whole point of the d20STL/OGL is to drive sales of WotC's core books, I can see WotC leaving supplements to other publishers and just focusing on keeping that core book in print, updating it every now and then. Since a huge portion of d20M development gets done "for free" as part of D&D development, I'd think d20M offers a pretty good return on investment.