Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on February 07, 2024, 09:39:01 AM
<snip>Alternity campaign settings </snip>

WotC no longer owns the trademark and rights to Alternity. They sold it to Sasquatch Game Studio, who kickstarted, and then failed to deliver in its entirety, a new game line using the Alternity name. Don't get me started on my disappointment with that whole endeavor... the original Alternity is still my favorite sci-if rpg besides Shatterzone. The Sasquatch Alternity was just a mess.

The original Alternity game line from TSR can only be found in physical books through collector gouges or pdfs by means which I am sure we are not allowed to discuss here.

Quote from: Dropbear on February 09, 2024, 08:18:02 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on February 07, 2024, 09:39:01 AM
<snip>Alternity campaign settings </snip>

WotC no longer owns the trademark and rights to Alternity. They sold it to Sasquatch Game Studio, who kickstarted, and then failed to deliver in its entirety, a new game line using the Alternity name. Don't get me started on my disappointment with that whole endeavor... the original Alternity is still my favorite sci-if rpg besides Shatterzone. The Sasquatch Alternity was just a mess.

The original Alternity game line from TSR can only be found in physical books through collector gouges or pdfs by means which I am sure we are not allowed to discuss here.

Does Sasquatch Game Studio still exist? The last update on their website was in 2018. So, who owns the Alternity IP now?

Quote from: Dropbear on February 09, 2024, 08:18:02 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on February 07, 2024, 09:39:01 AM
<snip>Alternity campaign settings </snip>

WotC no longer owns the trademark and rights to Alternity. They sold it to Sasquatch Game Studio, who kickstarted, and then failed to deliver in its entirety, a new game line using the Alternity name. Don't get me started on my disappointment with that whole endeavor... the original Alternity is still my favorite sci-if rpg besides Shatterzone. The Sasquatch Alternity was just a mess.

The original Alternity game line from TSR can only be found in physical books through collector gouges or pdfs by means which I am sure we are not allowed to discuss here.

  Did WotC sell off Alternity, or did the trademark lapse so that other people can use it in marketing, while WotC still holds copyright on the system and original material? I was under the impression it was the latter.

Quote from: Abraxus on February 08, 2024, 11:46:41 AM
Like it or not we are not we older Grognards are simply not the market any longer .

I actually don't think this is really true; I think that they are to some degree incapable of doing anything that mainstream corporate culture is doing, and mainstream corporate culture did a heckin giant politics for many years.  5e launched marketed to grognards and to everyone else, because that's really easy if you have the resources.  If you read the 5e DMG and PHB cover to cover, without any of the Jeremy Crawford tweets or "this is how we do things here" reddit retards, it goes about 40% of the way to actually supporting an OSR playstyle (there's still way too many class powers to really be OSR-like, but they do all show up in an OSR-like fashion).  But grognard and OSR aren't synonyms- the game has plenty of stuff for people who are experienced with a variety of systems, and it pulls the stuff would consider important in, either as core rules, or optional.  It's the first D&D game since AD&D with support for predeclaration of rounds and round-by-round initiative with modifiers based on actions chosen. 

There was no market change in the middle of 5e.  Certainly it became the most popular TTRPG in history, but that wasn't because it was made to market to non-veterans of tabletop, it was because it was, and that's the game that got all the new people- the one that says paladins are good and orcs are evil.  The reason they had to rush to errata out all this stuff is because it's in 5e, along with some loose guidance about how to play Dark Sun and everything (before that was kiboshed for being "problematic" or whatever).  5e didn't get popular with some asshat saying that white guys can't leave design and development roles for tabletop games soon enough, it got popular doing what it had always done but better.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on February 09, 2024, 10:25:24 AM
Did WotC sell off Alternity, or did the trademark lapse so that other people can use it in marketing, while WotC still holds copyright on the system and original material? I was under the impression it was the latter.

You can trademark terms but you cant copyright a game system.

Quote from: Rhymer88 on February 09, 2024, 09:44:25 AM
Does Sasquatch Game Studio still exist? The last update on their website was in 2018. So, who owns the Alternity IP now?

It's mothballed but you can buy their stuff on Drivethru. Primeval Thule is really good, I was sad they gave up on it to do Alternity.

Quote from: Venka on February 09, 2024, 10:41:21 AM

Quote from: Abraxus on February 08, 2024, 11:46:41 AM
Like it or not we are not we older Grognards are simply not the market any longer .

I actually don't think this is really true; I think that they are to some degree incapable of doing anything that mainstream corporate culture is doing, and mainstream corporate culture did a heckin giant politics for many years.  5e launched marketed to grognards and to everyone else, because that's really easy if you have the resources.  If you read the 5e DMG and PHB cover to cover, without any of the Jeremy Crawford tweets or "this is how we do things here" reddit retards, it goes about 40% of the way to actually supporting an OSR playstyle (there's still way too many class powers to really be OSR-like, but they do all show up in an OSR-like fashion).  But grognard and OSR aren't synonyms- the game has plenty of stuff for people who are experienced with a variety of systems, and it pulls the stuff would consider important in, either as core rules, or optional.  It's the first D&D game since AD&D with support for predeclaration of rounds and round-by-round initiative with modifiers based on actions chosen. 

There was no market change in the middle of 5e.  Certainly it became the most popular TTRPG in history, but that wasn't because it was made to market to non-veterans of tabletop, it was because it was, and that's the game that got all the new people- the one that says paladins are good and orcs are evil.  The reason they had to rush to errata out all this stuff is because it's in 5e, along with some loose guidance about how to play Dark Sun and everything (before that was kiboshed for being "problematic" or whatever).  5e didn't get popular with some asshat saying that white guys can't leave design and development roles for tabletop games soon enough, it got popular doing what it had always done but better.

Thank you for that. Mearls' successful vision of 5e was as an all-things-to-all-men/persons/critters game. Grognard and Wokester alike. It became very successful. So SJWs forced out Mearls, Crawford took full control, and yurned it into

Quote from: GhostNinja on February 09, 2024, 11:07:59 AM

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on February 09, 2024, 10:25:24 AM
Did WotC sell off Alternity, or did the trademark lapse so that other people can use it in marketing, while WotC still holds copyright on the system and original material? I was under the impression it was the latter.

You can trademark terms but you cant copyright a game system.

Even so, I'm sure WotC sold Sasquatch all IP rights.

I was never a WOTC fan.  Nothing here changes my viewpoint.  I choose to spend my $$ elsewhere, where I believe I'm valued as a customer.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 07, 2024, 01:46:24 PM
The weirdoes don't spend money, and WotC is expecting them to spend monthly and to keep spending to mantain access to their shit.

I disagree.  The weirdoes wouldn't drop $200 on a set of books, but I'd bet most of them are spending $25 a month on Disney plus.  A lot of people are suckers for subscription services in a way they aren't for single purchases; once they've set up a subscription they tend to forget about it.

Quote from: S'mon on February 09, 2024, 01:31:44 PM
It's mothballed but you can buy their stuff on Drivethru. Primeval Thule is really good, I was sad they gave up on it to do Alternity.

I thought that name sounded familiar. I didn't much care for elves and dwarves in my sword and sorcery, but other than that Primeval Thule was great.

Quote from: Thornhammer on February 09, 2024, 09:53:21 PM
I thought that name sounded familiar. I didn't much care for elves and dwarves in my sword and sorcery, but other than that Primeval Thule was great.

The Elves are sufficiently Melnibonean or Vadhagh that they work ok I think. The dwarves yeah, they're just dwarves. Not even old school Norse dwarves lusting for gold and Freya; standard Tolkien-D&D dwarves with some cool Babylonian style art.

Quote from: Venka on February 07, 2024, 02:43:00 PM
While I never went on record saying it, I never really believed Pundit's claim that they would walk away in a serious and significant way from printed products. 

wotc actually shifted away from in house printing around the same time as 5e came out. They started outsourcing the books and that why alot of the first run prints had some quality issues. They also outsourced the first few modules. Kobold, Sasquatch and Green Ronin are ones I know of.

So somethings been up from the start and we are essentially now seeing them possibly about to double down on the stupid.

Quote from: GhostNinja on February 09, 2024, 11:07:59 AM

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on February 09, 2024, 10:25:24 AM
Did WotC sell off Alternity, or did the trademark lapse so that other people can use it in marketing, while WotC still holds copyright on the system and original material? I was under the impression it was the latter.

You can trademark terms but you cant copyright a game system.

I believe WotC retained trademarked names for unique races and such, yes. So perhaps it was a trademark lapse on the name in fact. Sasquatch did use pretty much the same game rules as TSR Alternity for the most part.

Sasquatch Game Studio does still exist but its members are off doing other work that is more profitable than TTRPG design after having spent the KS money they received and not having enough left over to produce several books in the line that were supposed to be part of the KS.

Quote from: S'mon on February 09, 2024, 01:36:34 PM

Quote from: GhostNinja on February 09, 2024, 11:07:59 AM

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on February 09, 2024, 10:25:24 AM
Did WotC sell off Alternity, or did the trademark lapse so that other people can use it in marketing, while WotC still holds copyright on the system and original material? I was under the impression it was the latter.

You can trademark terms but you cant copyright a game system.

Even so, I'm sure WotC sold Sasquatch all IP rights.

Well they did mention at some point that they could not use the original unique Alternity races for their game and created new ones. So I don't think they got all of the IP if they did buy it.