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Message: <blockquote data-quote="wingsandsword" data-source="post: 4530741" data-attributes="member: 14159">I am quite well aware of the terms of the now defunct d20 System Trademark License.  However, that doesn't mean it's a good idea as far as how it looks for the actual game.  Trying to sell a medieval-fantasy themed D&D PHB for $30 as an add-on cost for a completely separate RPG of a different genre isn't exactly very smart from the point of view of the maker of the other RPG.  To WotC it's a guaranteed win, because they'll pick up at least a few sales they wouldn't have had otherwise, while to the maker of the licensed RPG it's a loser decision because that chases away players that don't already own a PHB or aren't interested in paying $30 more for one so they can play an unrelated game.  I even vaguely recall an e-mail interview with Ryan Dancey about the d20 STL back from 2000 about this, where he at the time thought using the STL for other genres (I think Wild West was the example) wasn't a good idea.  The later standalone OGL games proved that there were the means within the system to workaround this.  Guardians of Order making some of their licensed games like Trigun require their separate d20-derivative rulebook while still having the d20 logo and stating on the cover it also required the D&D PHB wasn't bright either.I am also quite well aware of LFL's policies with regards to the timeframes that were not allowed to be referenced, but again from the standpoint of making a good product it's a huge crippling effect to have a huge swath of the source material that is off limits.  As I said, I won't hold that against the d6 version because while they couldn't go into detail about the Clone Wars and that era in the idea that one day Lucas would return to work on it, it wasn't the gaping hole that we had in OCR Star Wars with all the information about the Battle of Naboo in 32 BBY, then leaping ahead to the Battle of Yavin and absolute silence about the intervening 3 decades.  From the point of view of a novelist or computer game maker, you can work around this, but for an RPG where you have to expect GM's and players to romp through the setting, big conspicuous holes are bad, especially when you know they will be patched one day.</blockquote>

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