Quote from: J ArcaneI didn't really want to have to deal with trying to part out where the changes were and what was open content and what wasn't and reprinting or reexplaining half of someone elses work just so I could make sense of this change over here.

The best way to avoid that is not to own a copy of the Players Handbook or the d20 Modern Corebook

Quote from: Bradford C. WalkerNo, really, most folks prefer d20 because it's the system they know from D&D and they don't want nothing to do with learning how to play the game again.

Also...not everybody starts with D&D.
 At the store I work at , plenty of people had their first RPG experience with RIFTs or World of Darkness.

 We even have a few  who started gaming with WARHAMMER Fantasy Roleplaying  or Hackmaster.

 Ryan Dancey  just seems more than a tad arrogant in that article.

- E.W.C.

Quote from: KoltarRyan Dancey  just seems more than a tad arrogant in that article.

Like I said previously, he sounds like one of those inspirational self-empowerment speakers.  He's selling you his program for success, and his program makes him money.  He's not exactly being objective in his article.

!i!

Quote from: Elliot Wilena) D20 can be anything you want it to be. Which I read as saying, effectively, if you take the SRD and systematically replace everything that you don't like, leaving the stuff you like, you'll have the game you want...and WotC will get to sell another Player's Manual even if it has next to nothing to do with your game.

In reality I think this is smarter than it appears at first, since by looking at D20 you can probably use it as a sort of "dummy testbed" for whatever systems you really care about, kind of a "lorem ipsum" for game design. But of course if you do this you may not need to tie your game to D20 or even OGL in the end.

Agreed. In particular, look at what Dancey says here:

Quote from: Ryan DanceyYou feel that Hit Points, Armor Class, Vancian spellcasting, classes, levels, etc. restrict or limit, or in some other way restrict you from expressing your "vision" (all those things are designer options, not features of the system, and can be discarded, modified, or ignored once you understand how to use the whole D20 toolbox).

Let's imagine a game where we've junked hit points, AC, vancian spellcasting, classes and levels. All that's left of D20 is the core resolution mechanic, skills and feats - and the skills and feats are going to need tweaking if you're dropping levels. By this point, reworking the SRD is going to be more work than just writing your own thing.

Quote from: JimBobOzYes it is. He says that if you write a roleplaying game, then it's probably fucked and stupid and a mess, unless you write it with many contributors over some years. As an example of an rpg written by just one person, he gives SenZar - not exactly being balanced about the idea of a sole authour.

Ryan Dancey is wrong when he links to SenZar as an example of a 'poorly designed game'.  He's so wrong that the phrase "utterly full of shit" springs to mind.  In fact, I'll write it down so: Ryan Dancey is utterly full of shit about SenZar.

The game mechanics of SenZar are rock fucking solid.  I am not exaggerating when I say that if 3E hadn't come along I might very well be running SenZar right now instead of Eberron.  SenZar is a mechanically tight game about tripping on male adolescent power fantasies.  Imagine playing in world designed around the covers of 80's metal albums.

The subject matter is dubious.  The author have made asses of themselves on the internet.  But anyone who says the game is a poor design is TALKING OUT HIS ASS.

Quote from: JimBobOz"If you want to design a roleplaying game, you should use d20."

Er, thanks Mr Dancey. That was terribly helpful.

why not he hasnt changed his tune since... 1999 or so when he declared thet everyone will bow down to d20

Quote from: WarthurLet's imagine a game where we've junked hit points, AC, vancian spellcasting, classes and levels. All that's left of D20 is the core resolution mechanic, skills and feats - and the skills and feats are going to need tweaking if you're dropping levels. By this point, reworking the SRD is going to be more work than just writing your own thing.

heck change the die type to a d10 and you have Interloc which powered Cyberpunk and Mekton

QuoteBecause he's lying about that as well.

QuoteIf you want to make a living selling rpg stuff, then it's definitely a good idea to go for d20.

Well, which is it? Is Dancey full of it when he says that making a living selling RPGs is easier via d20, or are you full of it when you say that making a living selling RPGs is easier via d20?

Quote from: James McMurrayWell, which is it? Is Dancey full of it when he says that making a living selling RPGs is easier via d20, or are you full of it when you say that making a living selling RPGs is easier via d20?

Frankly I tihnk people overestimate the success of 3rd party D20 products.  WOTC is still the biggest seller for D20 products by an absolute landslide.

The success of 3rd party companies has been pretty comparable to that of non-d20 third party companies.  Sticking the d20 logo on the back of your book is not a guarantee of greater success, that wave broke several years ago.

I would go so far as to suggest that thanks to the Atari-like glut of utter drek from companies like Mongoose, 3rd-party d20 products, and 3rd-party D&D products in particular have developed something of a stigma.  EDIT: not only that but WOTC has the edge of being "official"/"canon", something no 3rd-party product can ever be.

And of the most successful 3rd-party d20 games, many of them are sufficiently distanced from the core mechanics that I question whether the d20 element had all that much to do with thier success.

Quote from: James McMurrayWell, which is it? Is Dancey full of it when he says that making a living selling RPGs is easier via d20, or are you full of it when you say that making a living selling RPGs is easier via d20?

Again with the old rush to extremes, the "fallacy of the excluded middle."

Ryan Dancey's talking about making a living from producing roleplaying game books. That ain't the same as "making a grand or two", or "making money", as I called it. Let's set the lowest possible standard for "making a living" - equivalent to minimum wage working full-time.

Now, let's look at the people involved in writing rpgs, and in game companies, and ask ourselves, as I did earlier in the post you quoted from, what are the companies, and numbers of people employed full-time, outside Wizards of the Coast, who make their entire income from producing d20 books.

Now look at the numbers who make their entire income from producing non-d20 books.

By "entire income" I'm assuming that you'd want at least that "living" level - equivalent to minimum wage working full-time. It's not really much to boast about, "wow, this guy wrote for my game, and he made $500 that year - that was his whole income that year! He lives in his parents' basement. Man, my game is so successful, people make their whole income from writing for it! All five hundred bucks!"

The simple fact is that there's not a lot of money in rpgs. It's not likely you'll make a living from writing rpgs, d20 or not. The same goes for other kinds of writing, of course - novelists are not commonly millionaires, more often it's a hobby, or something they pursue for a couple of years before giving up due to financial pressures.

Whereas Dancey's presenting it as a sure bet. He's doing the old "fallacy of the excluded middle" himself. Either you write non-d20 stuff, and it'll be crap and you'll end up broke, or you write d20 stuff and you'll make a living. Fact is, most likely you won't make a living whatever you write.

Pump out a shitload of ten-page d20 pdfs, and you'll definitely make some money. But you almost certainly won't make a living. You won't make the equivalent of working full-time for minimum wage. d20 is no more likely to pay your bills than any other game system, including an original one. d20 is more likely to give you some pocket money, if you produce more or less decent products, and produce them in great quantities.

Just ask yourself - if it's so easy to make money writing d20 splatbooks, then why is there an OGL at all? Why would Wizards of the Coast so freely hand out the right for you to make oodles of money? Why wouldn't they just hire you as a freelancer instead? Could it be that really you're not likely to make a living from it, that for Wizards it'd be a money-losing proposition to produce d20 101 Magical Doorkbobs, so they get the fans to do it instead, and feel grateful for the privilige?

If so much cash may be won by producing d20 material, why do they give away the right to do it so freely?

Quote from: JimBobOzThe simple fact is that there's not a lot of money in rpgs. It's not likely you'll make a living from writing rpgs, d20 or not. The same goes for other kinds of writing, of course - novelists are not commonly millionaires, more often it's a hobby, or something they pursue for a couple of years before giving up due to financial pressures.

The average novelist makes 6,000 dollars a year. My source for that tidbit is Mike Stackpole but it seems about right.

QuoteWhereas Dancey's presenting it as a sure bet. He's doing the old "fallacy of the excluded middle" himself. Either you write non-d20 stuff, and it'll be crap and you'll end up broke, or you write d20 stuff and you'll make a living. Fact is, most likely you won't make a living whatever you write.

Dancey was not presenting it as a sure bet.

What he was saying is, unless you already have a fan-based following (someone like Ken Hite or Robin Laws) or unless you have a radically different game idea to market, then d20 is probably a good bet.

And I think he's right.

For *most* people, d20, or *some* other established system, is a good bet.

If someone pitched me an idea and it wasn't under an established system, Id be very loathe to risk my money on it.

And let's say you don't care about making a living. Well then the difference is even more noticeable!

If you want to make a book, and spend 30 hours on it, and make 500 dollars in a year (using your number), wouldn't you rather make the same game, spend 30 hours on it, and make 750 dollars?

In short, no matter if you just have a book you want to write or if you're going to make a go of making this your day job, you're still likely to make more money, for the same amount of work, doing d20.

This is all things being equal of course.

There's plenty that could make it NOT equal. Like you don't care for d20.

But still, unless you are an experienced designer with a fan base that looks for your work, I would recommend d20. And I think that's all Dancey was doing.

I don't think he was being as definitive as you paint him. He didn't say "do d20 or else". He said he thought you'd make more money using d20.

Quote from: jrientsImagine playing in world designed around the covers of 80's metal albums.

YES!

I've always got some thematic music on when I'm working on game stuff.  Over-the-top metal is often at the top of the list.  Hammerfall and Blind Guardian* are more recent but have great Fantasy RPG style cover art.  I'm listening to Shadow Keep right now.

SenZar joins World of Cinnabar on my list of games to order.:cool:

*(I'm actually putting a "Blind Guardian" in my game, along with some other metal references! :emot-rock:)

Quote from: JimBobOzCould it be that really you're not likely to make a living from it, that for Wizards it'd be a money-losing proposition to produce d20 101 Magical Doorkbobs, so they get the fans to do it instead, and feel grateful for the privilige?

Tangent: my wife and I started a list on the train home after the New Years party we went too and I think we got to 73.  If I manage to come up with another 29, do you think it would be worth writing this up, just for the humour value?

Mate, people will pay for it. Say, a five-line paragraph on each one. That'd be about twenty pages in all. Slap a clipart pic of a doorknob on the cover, and add in the OGL - 25 pages. Sell it for $2! People will buy it, mate!

I insist that you dedicate it to me, though, since it was my idea!

Quote from: JimBobOzI insist that you dedicate it to me, though, since it was my idea!

Of course.  It's the codpieces that are giving me the trouble.  After the Codpiece of Prowess and the dreaded cursed Codpiece of Devouring I'm a little stuck

(that's not true by the way, I'm in the thirties, but for some reason it is a lot harder than doorknobs.  Please don't give me any ideas or I'll have to stop reading this thread for legal reasons)

If I can't get 101, I might just call it Magical Doorknobs rather than add filler or try saying that a codpiece that adds 2 to Charisma is a different item to a codpiece that adds 4