On Fri, 30 Jun 2000, Brad Thompson wrote:
> This is a fool's errand. It would be nearly impossible to create a
A person chasing a pot of gold (d20 market) will do foolish things.
> completely closed system to the degree that Kevin was describing and still
> use d20. If you try, you'll have a product which is derivative of the d20
> SRD, can't create it's own characters, and doesn't have any rules for
Not such a big issue for someone who wants to lock down a:
"setting", "theme", or "genre" (however you define those terms).
> character advancement. Your game is now intrinsically tied to some other
> work, which is an OGL work by definition. This allows supplemental material
> to be created for your game/setting, even if you have closed rules, because
> so much of the foundation will be the same. The d20 System Trademark & Logo
> is nowhere near a closed system. Again, if you want to make sure your
> game/theme/setting IP is locked up so tight that nobody can create
> supplemental material, then the OGL and/or d20 is not for you.
This is exactly what people want. To make d20 products that no
one else can supplement. I don't think most people are interested
in supplementing someone else's adventure. It becomes an issue when
people lock down half a dozen settings in a particular genre and
start making it difficult for anyone else to work in that genre.
For example, when people start locking down material like "snakemen",
"mongoosemen", "downed timber monster", "moss monster", etc. it
becomes hard to do an adventure set in a swamp.
--Kal
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