Erik Mona said:
This strikes me as a particularly 20th century way of looking at open systems. I can certainly understand the impulse that might inspire WotC to feel like they were being cheated out of something by a company that simply reprinted their core system, but the fact of the matter is that Mongoose sold, at best, 10,000 copies of that book. Vs. the "Real" Player's Handbook, which probably moved something like 350,000 units. Sure, that easily seen as cutting into WotC's pie, but it's really not that significant a chunk of their expected profits for the book, and surely most of Mongoose's audience owned the real Player's Handbook anyway.
In fact, for a customer to have such an exotic D&D fetish as to A) know about and B) purchase the Pocket Player's Handbook the chances are very high that the buyer owns not just the Player's Handbook, but probably the entire core rules and a brace of expensive hardcover support volumes direct from Wizards of the Coast.
I'm not sure that a lack of sales is a good justification for reprinting and selling the core system. It seems like your argument is that it is acceptable as long as the sales of the book is under a specific thresehold.
It think it would also create a problematic system for the RPG market if every publisher felt free to do their own Player's Handbook that isn't significantly different from the PHB. I think that wholesale reprinting is against the spirit of the OGL.
I'd contrast the Mongoose book with books like Arcana Unearthed and Mutants & Masterminds. The latter are effectively players handbooks that bring unique creations to the D20 realm.
I guess my hang up is that if all users of the OGL made their products free then I wouldn't care if one product was a replication of another product, but that isn't the case. A lot, if not most, D20 material is linked to a purchase of some sort. It would be unfair to publishers to have a product they create be duplicated wholesale in a product made by a competing publisher who didn't have to pay the development costs of the product.
Basically, I think the nature of the RPG market is such that products should be unique in content, not just in packaging. Overall, I don't think this hurts the community to put this type of restriction on creators. The cost of making a profit off of a system that is already established should be that you bring something new to the system.
I do think it would be harsh if the OGL restricted republication of stat blocks to a limited degree, but could 3rd party publishers as a whole be trusted to not try to weasel around any type of reprinting policy that is anything short of "don't reprint anything"?
I think the 4E Monster Manual stat blocks represent such a small faction of what any given monster's stat block could be, that it would be a great opportunity if every 3rd party publishers made their own stat blocks rather than reprinting them.
This is an example of what I'm talking about:
http://www.chrispramas.com/2008/06/heres-product-we-wont-be-doing.html
Definately a potentially cool product: A deck of cards with the different powers on them.
But is it really Green Ronin's place to make that product? Unlike some other game aids, this would be pretty specific to 4E PHB.
If GR put this product out it would limit WOTC's ability to make and sell a product like it. It would also raise the question of why GR should be able to do it but not other 3rd party publishers.
Assuming that the use of "cards" isn't disallowed under the GSL, I think it would add more to the community if GR put out a deck with powers they created along with some generic cards that could be filled out with the stats to PHB powers.
