The hard reality is that recognition is a huge factor in getting people to try things.  For instance, with Rolemaster I generally point out it was the game advertised in the front and back covers of Dragon magazine back in the eighties.  The reality is that it'd be nice to be able to get the sales boost from better known franchises without paying anyone anything.

I think David Sim's guide to self publishing comics is something every self publisher should read.  From, the necessity of drawing Batman and Spiderman for money when you're getting started to the explanation of the problem of working for the property holder: "They will never pay you more than it will cost for the lawyers."  It's a very worthwhile read.

Quote from: Scooter on August 21, 2023, 05:12:14 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on August 21, 2023, 04:54:46 PM


In order to build a community for a tabletop game, the books need to be readily accessible to everyone who is interested.

Wrong moron.  None of my players have the physical books. They use PDF's and a tablet or phone for quick look up. Almost everyone I know uses PDFs.  I only have one physical book of the game I'm running.  The rest are PDFs.   Throwing out falsehoods whenever someone offers a workable solution to a problem you present is indicative of a mental illness.

Gatta add onto this. I've run multiple obscure games for my friends and introduced my gaming groups to all sorts of niche titles just as members in those groups have done the same. More times then not one of us owns the physical book and the pdf then they share the pdf for everyone else to use.

Yes. Content and interaction goes a long way in making and keeping a community engaged. But the most important thing is people doing stuff with that community.  Just look at FFG 40k stuff. Dark Heresy, Death Watch and Only War are all discontinued games. But they have a vibrant community keeping them alive. The old traveller system isn't supported anymore and yet people still make modules for it that dislike the Mongoose systems. The many star wars rpg systems I see floating around each have their own fan bases despite most of those books no longer being in circulation.

Point is. If you love star frontiers. Make third party adventures. Encourage people to play it. Play it yourself. With time, like minded people will join you. That's how communities grow.

Regarding the thread title alone:

Apparently, if your RPG "X" can possibly be converted into some flavor of B/X D&D rules compatibility; there is a hot thriving market.  Fan familiarity, and numerous existing compatible products already exist.  Otherwise, I'd twist some type of D6 variant.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on August 21, 2023, 04:54:46 PM
<snip>

Box, if it's something you're actually passionate about then the fact it'll take you years of  offtime work to see a fully fleshed out project to completion isn't a big deal (nor is whether or not it takes the world like gangbusters).

And you shouldn't be worried about being sued for a sci-fi setting. There are so many sci-fi stories and films and tv shows out there using all manner of common setting elements that as long as it's not a direct port of a well known existing property then there's really nothing to worry about.

The same for urban fantasy.

But then some people would rather spend years and walls of texts bitching about why it can't be done when, if they'd devoted the same effort to actually building something they'd probably have something close to completion by now.

"But it's not..."

No. It's not.* It'll be better. Because it will be yours.

*and even if you had it, it still wouldn't feel the same because you're not the same person you were when you had and loved it.

Quote from: Chris24601 on August 22, 2023, 06:28:51 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on August 21, 2023, 04:54:46 PM
<snip>

Box, if it's something you're actually passionate about then the fact it'll take you years of  offtime work to see a fully fleshed out project to completion isn't a big deal (nor is whether or not it takes the world like gangbusters).

And you shouldn't be worried about being sued for a sci-fi setting. There are so many sci-fi stories and films and tv shows out there using all manner of common setting elements that as long as it's not a direct port of a well known existing property then there's really nothing to worry about.

The same for urban fantasy.

But then some people would rather spend years and walls of texts bitching about why it can't be done when, if they'd devoted the same effort to actually building something they'd probably have something close to completion by now.

"But it's not..."

No. It's not.* It'll be better. Because it will be yours.

*and even if you had it, it still wouldn't feel the same because you're not the same person you were when you had and loved it.

It's on my to do list. I'm never gonna be able to replicate the quality of my inspirations within a reasonable timeframe, but I can throw stuff on the wall and see what sticks.

Quote from: Chris24601 on August 22, 2023, 06:28:51 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on August 21, 2023, 04:54:46 PM
<snip>

Box, if it's something you're actually passionate about then the fact it'll take you years of  offtime work to see a fully fleshed out project to completion isn't a big deal (nor is whether or not it takes the world like gangbusters).

And you shouldn't be worried about being sued for a sci-fi setting. There are so many sci-fi stories and films and tv shows out there using all manner of common setting elements that as long as it's not a direct port of a well known existing property then there's really nothing to worry about.

The same for urban fantasy.

But then some people would rather spend years and walls of texts bitching about why it can't be done when, if they'd devoted the same effort to actually building something they'd probably have something close to completion by now.

"But it's not..."

No. It's not.* It'll be better. Because it will be yours.

*and even if you had it, it still wouldn't feel the same because you're not the same person you were when you had and loved it.

"If you argue for your limitations you get to keep them. But if you argue for your possibilities you get to create them!" -Kelly Lee Phipps

And believe me, I'm someone who's argued for his limitations A LOT throughout my life. And if there's something that it has taught me is that the above statement is the stone cold truth. If you're constantly bitching and whining about how you can't do shit because X or Y, then not doing shit is all you'll constantly do.

So Ima have to third this...

Quote from: GeekyBugle on August 21, 2023, 03:06:16 PM

Quote from: Aglondir on August 21, 2023, 03:05:23 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on August 21, 2023, 12:30:20 PM
I hate this hobby, I hate copyright law, and I hate humanity.

Your vampire ideas are great. Just take those and port it into Cepheus Engine. Add some art and formatting. Call it "The Undead Engine" and send it to Drive-Thru. Profit.

Your vampire clans are open content, right? I've got half a mind to do this myself!

This is the way.

...quit your whining and work with what you have, not with what you don't. Probably start a blog or something and post about your world building there in the meantime (I should probably be doing this as well, but keep putting it off for any number of reasons). Then keep working on it even if it doesn't kick off at first (it won't, and doesn't for anyone... until it suddenly does). And eventually you'll have something.

But if you keep sending your limitations into the ether that's all you'll ever have (and me too).

Quote from: VisionStorm on August 22, 2023, 10:32:08 AM

Quote from: Chris24601 on August 22, 2023, 06:28:51 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on August 21, 2023, 04:54:46 PM
<snip>

Box, if it's something you're actually passionate about then the fact it'll take you years of  offtime work to see a fully fleshed out project to completion isn't a big deal (nor is whether or not it takes the world like gangbusters).

And you shouldn't be worried about being sued for a sci-fi setting. There are so many sci-fi stories and films and tv shows out there using all manner of common setting elements that as long as it's not a direct port of a well known existing property then there's really nothing to worry about.

The same for urban fantasy.

But then some people would rather spend years and walls of texts bitching about why it can't be done when, if they'd devoted the same effort to actually building something they'd probably have something close to completion by now.

"But it's not..."

No. It's not.* It'll be better. Because it will be yours.

*and even if you had it, it still wouldn't feel the same because you're not the same person you were when you had and loved it.

"If you argue for your limitations you get to keep them. But if you argue for your possibilities you get to create them!"

And believe me, I'm someone who's argued for his limitations A LOT throughout my life. And if there's something that it has taught me if that the above statement is the stone cold truth. If you're constantly bitching and whining about how you can't do shit because X or Y, then not doing shit is all you'll constantly do.

So Ima have to third this...

Quote from: GeekyBugle on August 21, 2023, 03:06:16 PM

Quote from: Aglondir on August 21, 2023, 03:05:23 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on August 21, 2023, 12:30:20 PM
I hate this hobby, I hate copyright law, and I hate humanity.

Your vampire ideas are great. Just take those and port it into Cepheus Engine. Add some art and formatting. Call it "The Undead Engine" and send it to Drive-Thru. Profit.

Your vampire clans are open content, right? I've got half a mind to do this myself!

This is the way.

...quit your whining and work with what you have, not with what you don't. Probably start a blog or something and post about your world building there in the meantime (I should probably be doing this as well, but keep putting it off for any number of reasons). Then keep working on it even if it doesn't kick off at first (it won't, and doesn't for anyone... until it suddenly does). And eventually you'll have something.

But if you keep sending your limitations into the ether that's all you'll ever have (and me too).

At this point I just wanna go "fuck it" and write straight-up copyright infringing fanfic of these authors' ideas. Rather than going to the effort of writing a retroclone or ripoff, I wanna to take the easy route and write fanfiction that recaps their work exactly. At most I'd file off serial numbers, revise stuff I think needs revising. What does it matter anyway? They're not profiting from their work. Their work usually isn't even legally available to the public, and the few times it is it's in the form of a back catalog that nobody gives a fuck about. It's locked in copyright jail not because the authors want it to be but because the law takes away their agency. The author of Grim Tales d20 is afraid to be sued by WotC if he tries selling his books. The author of Aether & Flux can't get help from Drivethrurpg's tech support. The authors of Alternity can't get the rights from WotC. Etc. This is just straight up evil. I would totally support these writers directly if they were running Patreons to share their works.

Stay tuned.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on August 22, 2023, 10:47:34 AM
It's locked in copyright jail not because the authors want it to be but because the law takes away their agency.

100% WRONG!  The AUTHORS SOLD THEIR "AGENCY" (I.P. rights) FOR MONEY.  Are you REALLY this stupid and uneducated?

Quote from: Scooter on August 22, 2023, 11:17:46 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on August 22, 2023, 10:47:34 AM
It's locked in copyright jail not because the authors want it to be but because the law takes away their agency.

100% WRONG!  The AUTHORS SOLD THEIR "AGENCY" (I.P. rights) FOR MONEY.  Are you REALLY this stupid and uneducated?

Did you not read any of the examples I just gave you? I'll repeat myself:

I noticed that Grim Tales and Slavelords of Cydonia wasn't sold on drivethrurpg anymore. I contacted the IP owner who told me he was afraid to sell because WotC might sue him. So he couldn't give me the PDFs for free or payment. Not because he didn't want to, but because he was afraid of WotC suing him. And considering the recent OGL debacle, I don't blame him. WotC doesn't even need an actual case they could win if push came to shove, they can ruin him financially just by wasting his money on frivolously defending himself in court.

I noticed that Aether & Flux wasn't sold on drivethrurpg. I contacted the IP owner who told me there was a bug that drivethrurpg refused to fix despite his compliance. It has been unavailable for several years now, despite me contacting both the author and drivethrurpg several times. They don't even respond to my messages anymore.

Do you have any idea how frustrating that is? I can't just pirate the PDFs in this case. The authors are free to sue me for denying them profits. They don't deserve that either, because they're not locking their books because they want to. I want to support them, but external circumstances beyond their control prevent them from preserving their own work.

What do you expect me to do in this situation? What am I supposed to do about these books 10, 20, 50 years from now?

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on August 22, 2023, 02:28:22 PM

Quote from: Scooter on August 22, 2023, 11:17:46 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on August 22, 2023, 10:47:34 AM
It's locked in copyright jail not because the authors want it to be but because the law takes away their agency.

100% WRONG!  The AUTHORS SOLD THEIR "AGENCY" (I.P. rights) FOR MONEY.  Are you REALLY this stupid and uneducated?

Did you not read any of the examples I just gave you? I'll repeat myself:

I noticed that Grim Tales and Slavelords of Cydonia wasn't sold on drivethrurpg anymore. I contacted the IP owner who told me he was afraid to sell because WotC might sue him. So he couldn't give me the PDFs for free or payment. Not because he didn't want to, but because he was afraid of WotC suing him. And considering the recent OGL debacle, I don't blame him. WotC doesn't even need an actual case they could win if push came to shove, they can ruin him financially just by wasting his money on frivolously defending himself in court.

I noticed that Aether & Flux wasn't sold on drivethrurpg. I contacted the IP owner who told me there was a bug that drivethrurpg refused to fix despite his compliance. It has been unavailable for several years now, despite me contacting both the author and drivethrurpg several times. They don't even respond to my messages anymore.

Do you have any idea how frustrating that is? I can't just pirate the PDFs in this case. The authors are free to sue me for denying them profits. They don't deserve that either, because they're not locking their books because they want to. I want to support them, but external circumstances beyond their control prevent them from preserving their own work.

What do you expect me to do in this situation? What am I supposed to do about these books 10, 20, 50 years from now?

In the first two examples you give you ARE wrong, you contacted the creator not the IP owner, if he were the IP owner WotC couldn't sue him.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on August 22, 2023, 02:28:22 PM

Quote from: Scooter on August 22, 2023, 11:17:46 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on August 22, 2023, 10:47:34 AM
It's locked in copyright jail not because the authors want it to be but because the law takes away their agency.

100% WRONG!  The AUTHORS SOLD THEIR "AGENCY" (I.P. rights) FOR MONEY.  Are you REALLY this stupid and uneducated?

Did you not read any of the examples I just gave you? I'll repeat myself:

Yes, I did and you are WRONG.  Just because some idiot didn't handle HIS contract correctly or, doesn't know what he's blathering on about doesn't mean it is copyright jail.  If one uses another's IP in their product and don't have an AIRTIGHT contract they are a moron.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on August 22, 2023, 02:45:01 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on August 22, 2023, 02:28:22 PM

Quote from: Scooter on August 22, 2023, 11:17:46 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on August 22, 2023, 10:47:34 AM
It's locked in copyright jail not because the authors want it to be but because the law takes away their agency.

100% WRONG!  The AUTHORS SOLD THEIR "AGENCY" (I.P. rights) FOR MONEY.  Are you REALLY this stupid and uneducated?

Did you not read any of the examples I just gave you? I'll repeat myself:

I noticed that Grim Tales and Slavelords of Cydonia wasn't sold on drivethrurpg anymore. I contacted the IP owner who told me he was afraid to sell because WotC might sue him. So he couldn't give me the PDFs for free or payment. Not because he didn't want to, but because he was afraid of WotC suing him. And considering the recent OGL debacle, I don't blame him. WotC doesn't even need an actual case they could win if push came to shove, they can ruin him financially just by wasting his money on frivolously defending himself in court.

I noticed that Aether & Flux wasn't sold on drivethrurpg. I contacted the IP owner who told me there was a bug that drivethrurpg refused to fix despite his compliance. It has been unavailable for several years now, despite me contacting both the author and drivethrurpg several times. They don't even respond to my messages anymore.

Do you have any idea how frustrating that is? I can't just pirate the PDFs in this case. The authors are free to sue me for denying them profits. They don't deserve that either, because they're not locking their books because they want to. I want to support them, but external circumstances beyond their control prevent them from preserving their own work.

What do you expect me to do in this situation? What am I supposed to do about these books 10, 20, 50 years from now?

In the first two examples you give you ARE wrong, you contacted the creator not the IP owner, if he were the IP owner WotC couldn't sue him.

In these cases the creator and copyright owner are the same person. They self-published. And their work was released under the OGL.

The creator and owner of Grim Tales was afraid of WotC's hissy fit in 2008 and is now permanently afraid to sell his OGL work. WotC has zero grounds to sue him, he's just being paranoid.

The creator and owner of Aether & Flux doesn't have legal problems at all. Drivethrurpg just refuses to put the book back up because they said the bug isn't fixed.

I could totally pirate their books (if the PDFs existed and weren't unreadable unoptimized shit tier quality scans that crash if you try to open them), but they're not acting like jerks and childishly refusing to sell their books for stupid reasons. They actively want to sell their books but external (and incredibly stupid) factors are forcing them not to. One guy is afraid WotC will sue him because he used the OGL to write his books (and considering the recent OGL debacle I don't blame him for paranoia), the other is trying to fix it but drivethrurpg refuses to comply.

Do you understand the situation now?

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on August 22, 2023, 03:09:49 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on August 22, 2023, 02:45:01 PM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on August 22, 2023, 02:28:22 PM

Quote from: Scooter on August 22, 2023, 11:17:46 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on August 22, 2023, 10:47:34 AM
It's locked in copyright jail not because the authors want it to be but because the law takes away their agency.

100% WRONG!  The AUTHORS SOLD THEIR "AGENCY" (I.P. rights) FOR MONEY.  Are you REALLY this stupid and uneducated?

Did you not read any of the examples I just gave you? I'll repeat myself:

I noticed that Grim Tales and Slavelords of Cydonia wasn't sold on drivethrurpg anymore. I contacted the IP owner who told me he was afraid to sell because WotC might sue him. So he couldn't give me the PDFs for free or payment. Not because he didn't want to, but because he was afraid of WotC suing him. And considering the recent OGL debacle, I don't blame him. WotC doesn't even need an actual case they could win if push came to shove, they can ruin him financially just by wasting his money on frivolously defending himself in court.

I noticed that Aether & Flux wasn't sold on drivethrurpg. I contacted the IP owner who told me there was a bug that drivethrurpg refused to fix despite his compliance. It has been unavailable for several years now, despite me contacting both the author and drivethrurpg several times. They don't even respond to my messages anymore.

Do you have any idea how frustrating that is? I can't just pirate the PDFs in this case. The authors are free to sue me for denying them profits. They don't deserve that either, because they're not locking their books because they want to. I want to support them, but external circumstances beyond their control prevent them from preserving their own work.

What do you expect me to do in this situation? What am I supposed to do about these books 10, 20, 50 years from now?

In the first two examples you give you ARE wrong, you contacted the creator not the IP owner, if he were the IP owner WotC couldn't sue him.

In these cases the creator and copyright owner are the same person. They self-published. And their work was released under the OGL.

The creator and owner of Grim Tales was afraid of WotC's hissy fit in 2008 and is now permanently afraid to sell his OGL work. WotC has zero grounds to sue him, he's just being paranoid.

The creator and owner of Aether & Flux doesn't have legal problems at all. Drivethrurpg just refuses to put the book back up because they said the bug isn't fixed.

I could totally pirate their books (if the PDFs existed and weren't unreadable unoptimized shit tier quality scans that crash if you try to open them), but they're not acting like jerks and childishly refusing to sell their books for stupid reasons. They actively want to sell their books but external (and incredibly stupid) factors are forcing them not to. One guy is afraid WotC will sue him because he used the OGL to write his books (and considering the recent OGL debacle I don't blame him for paranoia), the other is trying to fix it but drivethrurpg refuses to comply.

Do you understand the situation now?

So the creator and IP holder isn't selling due to his own stupidity? Okay.

That DTRPG refuses to fix something they should be fixing IS BS, or is this something IN the PDF? If it's the latter then it's up to the author to fix it.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on August 22, 2023, 03:33:06 PM
So the creator and IP holder isn't selling due to his own stupidity? Okay.

He seemed nice enough in his messages. The last we spoke he said he just wasn't interested in maintaining an IP from the early 2000s because he had real life to deal with. That's a pretty common answer I get whenever I talk to people about stuff they wrote 10, 20 or more years ago. "I have too much real life stuff to deal with, so I can't be bothered with this stuff I wrote decades ago."

Most writers just aren't interested in preserving their legacy for future generations. They just don't consider it important enough to go through the insane hassle involved. Most of our cultural output from the 20th century onward is not being preserved due to overly long copyright terms and that is gonna leave a noticeable gap in historical and literary records. A century or two from now it's gonna be easy to find something published in 1923 but extremely difficult or impossible to find something published in 2023.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on August 22, 2023, 03:33:06 PM
That DTRPG refuses to fix something they should be fixing IS BS, or is this something IN the PDF? If it's the latter then it's up to the author to fix it.

I don't know the exact details. The creator submitted a new PDF and drivethrurpg still says its broken. I downloaded the PDF myself (I was fortunate enough to have bought it before the takedown) and there's no problem with the file. I don't know what has drivethru's knickers in a twist. They stopped returning my messages. I haven't been able to get in contact with the creator again.

The only part of the book I liked were the space travel rules and the tables for system generation anyway.

The reason I liked the space travel rules was because, unlike something like spelljammer, they weren't dependent on magic so you could load them into low magic settings or even steampunk settings. The author/owner invented some fake fantasy physics involving "ether" and a fantastical version of electricity called "flux". Ether was almost everywhere and concentrated at different densities on planets, in outer space, at the edge of systems (it created a pseudo-crystal sphere called the "pale ether"), and in interstellar space (the "traverse" where FTL travel was possible). Normally ether didn't interact with matter at all. But by running an electric current through wires made of certain metals, ether would repel the wires with force sufficient to counter gravity. You stick these wires to the back of a sail, you've created a ship that can fly thru the sky and even reach escape velocity. Various other machines used flux to generate power (a "flux capacitor"), generate gravity, scrub atmosphere, and lightning guns. The repulsion produced by ether scaled inversely with its concentration, so interstellar space (the lowest concentration of ether) would push ships at FTL speeds. The pale ether at the edge of systems created a natural barrier: you had to disable your flux capacitor to travel through it, otherwise the passage would shred everything conducting flux current at the moment of impact. An idiom for entering interstellar space was, naturally, "beyond the pale."

Quite frankly, recycling his ether and flux concepts probably wouldn't run afoul of copyright at all. You can't copyright an idea. The names are straight up references to Victorian outdated scientific hypothesis and the movie Back To The Future.

All this bullshit is why I'm gonna release my work into public domain. I don't want to waste my time on the hassle involved in maintaining it by myself. Let Internet Archive, Project Gutenberg, Wikisource, etc do it. I can't take my money into the grave, so I might as well leave a legacy.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on August 22, 2023, 03:09:49 PM

In these cases the creator and copyright owner are the same person. They self-published. And their work was released under the OGL.

The creator and owner of Grim Tales was afraid of WotC's hissy fit in 2008 and is now permanently afraid to sell his OGL work.

More irrelevant babble. The BOTTOM LINE is that he didn't get an IRONCLAD contract BEFORE investing time and money into someone else's IP.  His stupid mistake NOT a problem with the copyright laws.  GET IT NOW?