Topic: Misc SW material

[B Hanson]

I updated a blog post over at the rolemasterblog.com about early  iron crown enterprises advertising in dragon magazine. Take a walk down memory lane!

https://www.rolemasterblog.com/c-e-early-dragon-magazine-ads/

[Siltoneous]

Fantastic post, and thank you.  I was playing AD&D at the time, but the rural Midwest didn't really get the chance for Dragon till well after that, and driving to the city was quite a few years away still.

[Spectre771]

I updated a blog post over at the rolemasterblog.com about early  iron crown enterprises advertising in dragon magazine. Take a walk down memory lane!

https://www.rolemasterblog.com/c-e-early-dragon-magazine-ads/

I get connection timed out

[B Hanson]

The blog seems to be working! Can you pull up the site and search for "dragon ICE advertising" ?

[Spectre771]

It's working now.  Ah yes, I remember that post!

[Hurin]

I had some problems with the blog earlier today too (connection took too long and timed out), so it wasnt just you.

[B Hanson]

Rolemasterblog is doing posts on Rangers. I put up some downloadable spells Lists—

https://www.rolemasterblog.com/three-tales-of-ranger-magic/

[Terry K. Amthor]

I too understand that the copyrights needs to protected!
Could have been written in private though.
With that said Brian`s stuff about things that are "left" out in the books is good doodoo, really love it!

With that said as an old RM2 freak I also think its sad that many RM2 books cant be bought as high quality PDF downloads because of some of the writters cant be reached! There is money to be made of this i theese PDFs if they would get buffed as someone did with RoCo I at some point.

Just to be clear: if we (ICE and Eidolon/Shadow World)  do not enforce trademarks and copyrights and allow people to publish (even online) without permission, if it came to it, ICE could lose those rights if it ever came to a lawsuit (as unlikely as that may seem).

Regarding RM2, I assume you mean the Companions. I believe that Nicholas has tried to contact those authors, but is also very careful about rights. He's not going to release anything without permission of all of the authors. It might be possible to organise new versions with just permitted material, but that would be a big project.

[Spectre771]

 It might be possible to organise new versions with just permitted material, but that would be a big project.

That may be an undertaking worth... errr.... undertaking.  RMC-## (Revised Editions).  There's certainly a desire and a market and it would be a revenue source (ok, small revenue source) but money-in is better than money-out.  ICE could be pulling in some revenue from the reprints/PDFs.  Even if it means combining RMC-I and II into a single item due to the inability to contact some authors and the permissible material available.  And combining RMC-III-IV-V because there is less material due to the inability to reach other authors. 

Heck, contact the authors and see what material is available with permissions and maybe combine all the Companions into just two brand new re-prints.

* - Hm.  I just realized something:  How will ICE be able to identify which content each author contributed within each Companion?     Damn.  This is why we can't have nice things.

[jdale]

There's a thread following efforts to find all the authors: http://www.ironcrown.com/ICEforums/index.php?topic=11282.100
You can see the issue with the sheer number of authors overall and even per book in the summary list on the first page of the thread. ICE doesn't even have contact information for most of them, so just that initial step is already difficult.

[Spectre771]

Kindly disregard the bumbling ramblings of the post below.  The answer is explained in the first paragraph of the referenced post.  I read the other post after I printed this.  Please read this post as it's very interesting. 

 http://www.ironcrown.com/ICEforums/index.php?topic=11282.100




I know nothing of copyrights, publishing, intellectual data laws, etc.  But I have experience with producing products while a student and while an employee.  As a student, any projects that are made while attending a university are the property of the university.  The rationale sucks, but as you are student, the university sort of owns you and all your works and your compensation is an education and course credits.  It's worse if you're an employee.  If they can prove that you used ANYTHING at all from the university, even if it was taken out of a trash bin*, it is property of the university and they own all rights to whatever creation/idea you created and sold to a 3rd party.  The university gets all the money and credit for the item you created.  Happened to three of the computer folks I work with.  As a senior thesis project, one buddy wrote the entire information database the university now uses.  That database was sold off to other colleges and he received $1 USD for his efforts.

As contributing authors to an ICE product, wouldn't the material become property of ICE the instant it is submitted?  ICE can therefore print and reprint as they own the material?  The author, John Q. Public, can't print off the material he submitted to ICE as his own book, even though he created it.  ICE has the copyright to it.  He couldn't take his submitted material and make a game called "Public's D100 Game System" and release the book containing only his data, ICE would certainly sue for infringement.

If there is a super quick, 20-words-or-less, explanation why ICE can't print the material and still give credit to all authors, please share.  If it's a long, in depth explanation, it's OK.  No need to go into details.




* - Yes, this happened a few years back.  A facilities management employee used bits from a trash bin to make a snow sweeper to remove snow from the fields without damaging the turf.  He did all the work at home, on his own time, and did not use any university resources.  The university found out and took over the rights and ownership of the device and he received $1 USD for his work. The device is now used at several universities and professional venues.

[Hurin]

I'm not sure if Canadian law is different, but students at our universities do own some of the materials they produce. I was told that final exams, for example, are literally the students' property, and they can demand them.

[Terry K. Amthor]

Kindly disregard the bumbling ramblings of the post below.  The answer is explained in the first paragraph of the referenced post.  I read the other post after I printed this.  Please read this post as it's very interesting. 

 http://www.ironcrown.com/ICEforums/index.php?topic=11282.100




I know nothing of copyrights, publishing, intellectual data laws, etc.  But I have experience with producing products while a student and while an employee.  As a student, any projects that are made while attending a university are the property of the university.  The rationale sucks, but as you are student, the university sort of owns you and all your works and your compensation is an education and course credits.  It's worse if you're an employee.  If they can prove that you used ANYTHING at all from the university, even if it was taken out of a trash bin*, it is property of the university and they own all rights to whatever creation/idea you created and sold to a 3rd party.  The university gets all the money and credit for the item you created.  Happened to three of the computer folks I work with.  As a senior thesis project, one buddy wrote the entire information database the university now uses.  That database was sold off to other colleges and he received $1 USD for his efforts.

As contributing authors to an ICE product, wouldn't the material become property of ICE the instant it is submitted?  ICE can therefore print and reprint as they own the material?  The author, John Q. Public, can't print off the material he submitted to ICE as his own book, even though he created it.  ICE has the copyright to it.  He couldn't take his submitted material and make a game called "Public's D100 Game System" and release the book containing only his data, ICE would certainly sue for infringement.

If there is a super quick, 20-words-or-less, explanation why ICE can't print the material and still give credit to all authors, please share.  If it's a long, in depth explanation, it's OK.  No need to go into details.




* - Yes, this happened a few years back.  A facilities management employee used bits from a trash bin to make a snow sweeper to remove snow from the fields without damaging the turf.  He did all the work at home, on his own time, and did not use any university resources.  The university found out and took over the rights and ownership of the device and he received $1 USD for his work. The device is now used at several universities and professional venues.

ICE had written contracts with all of those authors. I was not directly involved with those works, only Shadow World, and artist contracts (which were much more straightforward), but often these writer contracts were one-product use, or worse, for royalties, meaning the author was due not just one payment and ICE owned the material, but the author was due royalties based on sales. It was a bookkeeping nightmare, but since ICE was usually cash-tight, it put off the initial payment. So if these books were issued again in any form, ICE might owe the authors royalties on every sale. Does that help explain the difficulties?

--Terry Amthor, former ICE Editor and Art Director.

[Malim]

ICE had written contracts with all of those authors. I was not directly involved with those works, only Shadow World, and artist contracts (which were much more straightforward), but often these writer contracts were one-product use, or worse, for royalties, meaning the author was due not just one payment and ICE owned the material, but the author was due royalties based on sales. It was a bookkeeping nightmare, but since ICE was usually cash-tight, it put off the initial payment. So if these books were issued again in any form, ICE might owe the authors royalties on every sale. Does that help explain the difficulties?

--Terry Amthor, former ICE Editor and Art Director.

Isnt there som rule that states if they dont come forward to claim or answer email or ( letters ) they loss rights in some form?
It is really the craziest of things that RM2 RoCs cant be updated and sold for ICE because of what.. 30+ year old contracts. And not to offend, some of the authors might even have passed :/

[Peter R]

I cannot imagine even for 1 second that even if all the rights were there in black and white that any of the RoCos would be re-released
It makes no sense to put out more content for a version of RM that is about to be superseded by RMu.

[jdale]

Isnt there som rule that states if they dont come forward to claim or answer email or ( letters ) they loss rights in some form?

When the author (or copyright holder in more general terms) can't be contacted, it's known as an Orphan Work. There are some extremely narrow provisions in EU, UK, and Canadian law for largely non-profit use of orphan works, but the US has not passed any law covering them. So basically if you use an orphan work and the copyright holder eventually appears and claims violation, you're in just as much trouble as if you had used a regular work without the copyright holder's permission.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_work
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphan_works_in_the_United_States

Ideally when you write up a contract with an author you should cover the possible future issues, but the world was pretty different when the original Rolemaster Companions came out -- e.g. no electronic distribution -- and ICE didn't anticipate bankruptcy.

[Malim]

I

I cannot imagine even for 1 second that even if all the rights were there in black and white that any of the RoCos would be re-released
It makes no sense to put out more content for a version of RM that is about to be superseded by RMu.

I think that many will stay in RM2 to be honest! So I think tha tmany would buy RoCo`s with errata in them for RM2.

[Jenkyna]

I

I cannot imagine even for 1 second that even if all the rights were there in black and white that any of the RoCos would be re-released
It makes no sense to put out more content for a version of RM that is about to be superseded by RMu.

I think that many will stay in RM2 to be honest! So I think tha tmany would buy RoCo`s with errata in them for RM2.

I tend to agree with that. This is a hobby, so people will use the ruleset they want to play regardless of whether or not it's the most modern. People still play dead rules systems like Star Frontiers and Twilight 2000 because it's fun.

Where I think old Pen & Paper games may find a problem is with younger players who expect abilities they can use in combat to alter the odds in battle.

[Peter R]

The issue is that every new book that supports the old system takes away time, effort and resources from developing the new system. It also reduces the desirability of the new system.

Initially, a lot of people will not even consider moving over. If you have hundreds of dollars and thousands of hours invested in getting any of the old editions to work exactly how you want them the appeal of going back to just a few core books is extremely limited.

If over time, all the new shiny and desirable things are for the new system then the appeal of the new edition goes up with every new companion or adventure that is released. Where and when the tipping point is reached will be different for each of us. For some people, they will never need to buy another book.

[jdale]

Counterpoint to that, all the old books are already available on the net. If someone would like to pay ICE for them, but they can't, that's lost revenue. For old books that would be released as scans, rather than being redone, the amount of work required to make them available for sale is minimal.

Still moot if there are no rights available to proceed though....