So, whats going on?

Hey, don't forget about us data-pushers that are yet to do anything worthy of releasing a new file! We need love too!!

Just kidding, I have to admit I was somewhat concerned about the whole "official" thing when I read it, but now it seems reasonable to me.

 

Or QA. We could take the atari approach and ignore them...

 

Hey guys and gals...

Let me try to clear some things up... 1) I'm a fan of the game 2) I'm a fan of mods 3) I have worked an open source project (PCGen) for several years now 4) My company (Code Monkey Publishing) are licensee's of WotC, we do not work for them (Just to clarify, a licensee pays royalties for rights to use X companies material for Y product).

In short my desire was simple... Use the contacts I had to stop whatever pissing match Troika and Atari have going on and get ToEE _FIXED_... Since my company has in's with WotC, what better way than to have an 'official' or 'sanctioned' group of mod'ers do what Atary screwed the pooch on?

I'll get back to that in a minute though... let me drop some info on you all... Wizards was well aware of the 'Evil' quests in the game... since it's their Intellectual Property (i.e. Grayhawk and whatnot is their copyrght) they had to approve any such quests... They were aware of the Brothel, Evil quests, children, and the Gay Pirate... they HAD to approve it... so bearing that in mind, given what Troika has said about above items, guess who nized them? Yup, Atari.

Okay, back to my 'uses' for the group... being 'Official or Sanctioned' would mean this... a QA process and an 'official od website'... 1) QA Process - my Company already has said process in place with Wizards for what we do (And to clarify, my company picked up a broken project called e-Tools: A Character and Monster Generator when the previous coding company got into a pissing match with WotC (and lost) - This program allows for the creation and maintenance of characters for the PnP 3.0 D&D game - We got this license because of our creation and support of the Open Source project (on SourceForge) PCGen: Character Generator (For same purpose, making characters)).... Because of handling WotC's Intellectual Property, there has to be checks and balances...

What this means is simply this... When a 'Mod' is 'Gold', and you guys (the Mod community) want it to be 'Official', you tell me, I send it off to WotC, and they review it. They either say 'Good to Go' or 'Need to change x, y, & z items'. I'm simply a contact man, point of communication...

Does that mean that the 'Gold' can't be released from a 'fan site'? Nope, in fact, WotC tends to turn a blind eye to fan sites, they DO understand the inherit benefits of fan mod sites....

If good to go, then we can release the 'Official' (or Sanctioned) mod from my companies website (since we're already an official website because of our license)...

This in NO WAY stunts the development or distribution of any mods the community makes... What it does is allow official recognition for everyone that worked on the mod (better damn well have a credits file!).. It also allows for the QA process to work to its fullest nature...

There were other reasons, but I'm so damned tired atm I can't remember them...

In short though, I, nor my company, nor anyone at WotC, wants to control WHAT you do... If there's anything 'Official' WotC wants to make sure it's up to their standards (reasonable if you look at some of the uber mod for Arcanum, Daggerfall and the like)...

Feel free to fire any questions at me...

 

So let me see if I understand what you are saying.

This whole "official" thing would be basically WoTC saying "go for it", letting us use info from the DMG ect. to do our thing and so on. And when a mod was finished, and they approved it, it would have "Wizard Approved" on it and could be made available at WoTC affiliated sites. And if they didn't approve it, we could release it anyways, but only on fan sites and without the "seal of approval"?

As long as complete control was kept to this group, I think that it would be reasonable. Plus if I am reading that correctly, it would actually allow us to do things that would be at best "grey areas" right now, such as adding new spells and items from the DMG and other DnD products.

Or am I mis-interpreting all this?

 

Yeah. What Aginor said.

 

But there are no greay areas. WotC release the rules set as open gaming license, which means we can implement the spells, feats, items, etc. with impunity so long as we don't resell (Which we aren't) or steal artistic content (which we aren't)

Unless we start scanning in the DMG or copying stories out of it, we're already in the clear. We don't need WotC approval to implement anything from their SRD.

Chris Woods

 

Hey All,

Based on that line of thought I have a question regardng licensing. I'm fiddling around with sticking descriptions into the game, and the longest amount of time is probably going to be writing the descriptions once I work out how to get them to pop-up.. What would be easier would be if I could base my descriptions on the official modules, obviously altered to suit the CPRG style.

Where would I/we stand as far as WOTC go if I/we went ahead with that?

Thanks for any info..

PlatinumWeaver

p.s. I'm pretty much against asking anyone official for approval because I dont think it's possible to retain creative control in that situation. At all. Ever.

p.p.s. Being able to rip descriptions from the module would almost make up for the first p.s.

 

So long as your descriptions are wither copied from the v3.5 SRD or made up by you, there is no problem. Even if they're copied from the module, but don't include background literature there is still technically no problem.

We just can't copy a backstory from a WotC product without their permission.

Chris Woods

 

Yes, you have the right of it Aginor...

To address the other point about descriptions and whatnot... ONLY _PARTS_ of the PHB, DMG, MM, and PsiHB are in the SRD/RSRD... there are a lot of things NOT in the SRD/RSRD that could not be included legitimately in anything else... You could NOT rip text and info from modules, you could NOT take any info from Forgotten Realms or OA or anything else...

In short, if it's NOT in the SRD/RSRD you can't use it, period. If you think you can (For more than your personal use), you're wrong, period. If you do make anything using material from the closed content stuff (stuff not in the SRD/RSRD), and you distribute it, WotC will come after you eventually... they MUST protect their Intellectual Property.

There's been a lot of argument on many forums about "I bought the book, it's mine, I can do with it as I please"... Yes, for YOUR usage... when you get into distributing things, then you're wrong.

I know I'm sounding a bit harsh on this, but I want to make perfectly clear that you need to walk carefully with this... I'm not some random player of D&D with no knowledge of how these things work, I am a licensee of WotC I _HAVE_ to know how this stuff works....

I'm not pushing anything on anyone, if you don't want to do it, don't. I made the offer and if you all want to take me up on it, fine, if not fine. But don't allow 'conspiracy' theorists or bad/wrong information about what you can/can't do with the material to determine your course of action.

go to www.enworld.org and read the publisher threads there, READ the OGL and D20STL... ask people over at EN World or any other fan site where there's publishers hanging about...

But hey, you don't have to take my word for it... I mean after all, I'm just a publisher and licensee of WotC, what do I know? *wry*