Erick Wujcik's Greatest Error?

[RPGPundit]

Erick Wujcik's Greatest Error?

Its been a year since Erick Wujcik died. I was quite possibly his greatest fan. I made him a forum, for christs' sake! So it might seem weird that I of all people would choose to criticize him, on the anniversary of his passing.

But its not really Erick I'm criticizing, except perhaps for lack of good judgment or intuition.  It seems to me that he was fooled, tricked if you will. Nevertheless, it might be the greatest error Erick Wujcik ever made, as far as his RPG legacy is concerned.

Amber is Erick's masterpiece. And by all rights, if any game deserves a revival, its this one. Even now, after years without any meaningful new developments, Amber remains an incredibly popular game, with a very loyal following. There is a natural market there for new material.

So it is particularly tragic that for this great game, it looks like there will not only be no more new material, but even the existing game is destined to remain out of print forever. And here was Erick Wujcik's greatest mistake: he put his trust for the future of this game to Edwin Voskamp and Eric Todd, who have, for the last two years, failed utterly to do fuck all with the game. Their website, "Diceless by design" remains with the very same placeholder it has had for the last two years, since one year before Erick's death until today. Voskamp and Todd have failed utterly and completely to capitalize on Amber's ongoing popularity, or even to try to maintain momentum with its online fandom, or to even communicate with its online fandom. They have failed.

And yes, this is in a way Erick's failure as well. I'm sure they promised him all kinds of things, and their credentials as fans of the game were good, and they appealed to his good nature and he trusted them. But he was wrong. They've fucked it up beyond all imagining, and have doomed us all.

Now, one year after Erick Wujcik's death, that failure counts not just as a disappointment to Amber fans everywhere, but as a sad stain on Erick Wujick's memory; as a reality that has damaged the likelihood of his memory being preserved into the future with a strong vibrant game that he created, a brilliant magnum opus of a game that should by all rights be an active and vibrant fixture of the gaming world. Instead it, and Erick Wujcik's memory along with it, will be doomed to recede fading into the ever-darkening shadows of obscurity. And yes, I place the heavy blame for that square on the shoulders of Mr. Voskamp and Mr. Todd's rank incompetence. Sadly, they appear determined to sit on their property, doing nothing with it on the one hand nor letting it be given to a company or respected designer that could move forward with the game on the other hand. Which is almost as bad as if the Swine had gotten their hands on the game. At least then we'd have a fight on our hands, but as it is, this is just a surrender.

RPGPundit

[gabriel_ss4u]

Bastards!

[Croaker]

I'm also very disappointed that we've never heard any news from them in 2 years.

I try to tell myself that they may be really busy and/or blocked by the zelazny estate, but still, I can't help but think nothing will come from there

[RPGPundit]

If it was just a question of their being blocked in PUBLISHING a new game by the zelazny estate, there's still a hell of a lot they could be doing right now, like, say communicating with the fanbase.

Instead, they've done absolutely nothing.

RPGPundit

[jibbajibba]

Maybe they don't like us very much.
It does occur to me however that we really don't need them.
We don't need a new edition we don't need new rules the internet is rife with houserules variants and the like. Ambercons, though deminished in size still continue.
Rather than bitch about it we should take control of the situation. Between us we could easily produce a free to web Amber rule book. Put in the best variant rules, the best campaing examples etc etc. On this site alone we have enough experience to scome up with something.
In fact I was thinking about this last night and have already decided to take my in house Amber ccg game that I made up 5 or 6 years ago remove our Amberites replace them with Canon ones and release it for free from a website that will contain all the rules and templates for new card creations.
I am unsure about the legal situation  but feel fairly certain that as long as no one makes any money out of it and there is no copywrited matierial it would be almost impossible to take action. More importanly I don't care :-)

So Pundit as Erick's greatest fan why not start to put something together. It's about time RPGs threw off the top down model and embraced the web 2.0. I am totally convinced we can put together something decent with no reference to Diceless by design.
I have a million and one ideas needless to say both in terms of layout and content. I might even be able to drum up some cash for art work , although i suspect that an appeal to the Amber Conmmunity and a re-opening of the Golden Circle Web Ring might prove sufficient to drum up enough cash for a few dozen decent drawings.

[Schattensturm]

Sounds like a plan. The question is still about rights. House rules are a fine thing, but ADRPG and Amber Diceless, etc. are all trademarks. If the two want to make trouble, they could probably use this (although I don't know all that much about US law on trademarks and such).
WotC created the D20 open licence, explicitely allowing other companies to publish material for D&D 3.5 under this label. There is no such thing for Amber. Could anyone find out whether this is a problem?
What about the rights of Zelazny to names and concepts from the books?
It is one thing to make a free for all web project of it, but new Amber players will only be generated with printed material. Everything else dooms Amber in the long run. It is cool that we all know how great Roger's and Erick's work is, but to keep this knowledge alive, you'll have to publish.
As for the graphics. I know that quite a few Amber players are very good at drawing and painting. And I've made more than my share of magazine designs, so a rulebook layout shouldn't be a problem. The question is all about legality.

[jibbajibba]

Sounds like a plan. The question is still about rights. House rules are a fine thing, but ADRPG and Amber Diceless, etc. are all trademarks. If the two want to make trouble, they could probably use this (although I don't know all that much about US law on trademarks and such).
WotC created the D20 open licence, explicitely allowing other companies to publish material for D&D 3.5 under this label. There is no such thing for Amber. Could anyone find out whether this is a problem?
What about the rights of Zelazny to names and concepts from the books?
It is one thing to make a free for all web project of it, but new Amber players will only be generated with printed material. Everything else dooms Amber in the long run. It is cool that we all know how great Roger's and Erick's work is, but to keep this knowledge alive, you'll have to publish.
As for the graphics. I know that quite a few Amber players are very good at drawing and painting. And I've made more than my share of magazine designs, so a rulebook layout shouldn't be a problem. The question is all about legality.

The publishing thing we can do nothing about. It is not possible to put a book in shops. Leagal rights blah blah. The point is, Is it actually necessary?
No one is going to walk into a store see an AMBER RPG and thing hey I like Amber what is an rpg? even if there was a published book it would be available in Game stores or on line or if you are very lucky in the little game bit at Borders. Since an Amber RPG isn't going to get new RPGers it's just going to tap into the exisitng RPG market and attract people that play other games do you need a published book?
Websites like this have a reasonable penetration, 2-5% or role players I would guess and maybe 10-20% of the more adventurous ie not just interested in D&D or WoD editionX. If you can create a compelling product that get's people's imagination going  you might be able to create enough groundswell. If that is the case and there was a free downloadable pdf they could print for 10 dollars at the local copy shop or for the price of ink and paper at home you might be able to do something.
Now the legality of web based stuff that draws on copywrited material is such a  grey area. If you shut down free fan type stuff on the web then 80% of the stuff that isn't porn would have to go and in any case by the time it got to that point of attracting attention the groundswell would already have to be sufficient to demonstrate to Diceless the Zelazny estate or whoever that there was a market for an exisitign product and then you just give it to them and let them publish, which they would probably do if there was profit to be make and the creators of said product were not looking for any control rights or ownership.

[gabriel_ss4u]

I plan on making my own source books... have been for a while.
Working on the Chaos one right now.
You saw the Houses...

Would be cool if I had more time to do it.
I think a character sheet is 1st priority.
Excel or publisher is all I have but it's good enough, you should see the stuff I could do with excel. The real problem I have with my sourcebook is that i just find pictures off the web which reeaally fit with my characters, shadows, or concepts.
I don't have everyone's names who made the pics, let alone permission to use them.
But it's gonna look cool as hell, and it'll just have to be local gaming, once I find that Baltimore group.

[gabriel_ss4u]

Matter O' Fact...
Here's an idea. This is just a WoD Char.Sheet i made and revised.
thanks to some awesome artist on DeviantArt for the picture I swiped that I see (use) as Lady Razell du Vertix, the Vampire Queen/Assassin working for the crown.

I'm thinking of reworking it all, I want bottom right 1/4 the sheet for picture, I'll put a trump boarder and a pic can just be imported.
I'll rework it before end of Summer.




What do you all think?

[choccie_maus]

A friend of mine started a webcomic using the Amber setting. It'd only been up and running for a month or so before the Zelazny estate lawyers stomped on him and made him shut it down.

I am sure the only way they found out about it in the first place is because he posted something about it on a forum like this one.

Just a warning - they are out there and they are watching us!

[Schattensturm]

Sorry, Gabriel, I like the character sketch, but not the sheet. It sure has the home made charme of the original ADRPG rules, but it doesn't look very professional.
Didn't mean to be harsh, but that's my opinion. Sorry.

[SunBoy]

Personally, I find it nice. Never been a fan of WoD sheets, but it isn't bad. Problem I see is, if you photocopy that, or just plain print it in black, the letters are going to look like a big black puddle. And as a side point, I'd leave the "History" and "Concept" sections out, which would give you more room to the sketch, like you want, and just take those kind of notes (and anything else needed) in the back of the sheet. And, hey, why so big an "Item Sketch" space? An alternative would be just to put a little "notes" or "contacts" or "Important Possessions" or whatever there... That said, I like the overall layout of the thing. Sorry if I'm being an arsehole, but hey... you asked.

[jibbajibba]

A friend of mine started a webcomic using the Amber setting. It'd only been up and running for a month or so before the Zelazny estate lawyers stomped on him and made him shut it down.

I am sure the only way they found out about it in the first place is because he posted something about it on a forum like this one.

Just a warning - they are out there and they are watching us!

Interesting especially from a first time poster thanks for the heads up

[gabriel_ss4u]

No offense taken gents.
Thanks for the compliment Sunboy. I was going to post the sheet w/all the boxes showing the template on excel, but that isn't as pretty, so I whited them in.
I knew it wasn't a great ADRP sheet, as I said, I want to rework it.
Reference the WoD sheet and you'll see it looks closer to that, I wanted the flavor for my own gaming group in WoD.
But these suggestions for reworking are ones I had planned.
excel takes a while to 'tetris' format everything how you want it.
The Item box (bottom left) was especially useful in my "Immortal, the Gathering" game I created to go along in the WoD setting. Each Immortal has their own edged weapon so I left a box souly for displaying it.
Sorry it is so big, I didn't think it'd transfer that large, but you get the idea. As I said, it was a rather hasty re-working of a different game system sheet.
I need to find more time , I do want to create a Chaos Reference book/Binder that could be considered a great detailed open & play reference system. But everyone's Chaos is different, and that's the very beauty of it.
Perhaps if I just make it, set up a blank format from it on Publisher, then anyone could also fill-in-the-blanks in their own computer to form a personalized GM Chaos Book.
Everyone's Chaos has similar elements. Great Houses, Lesser Houses.
Orders of Knights, Church, Abyss, etc.
Even hangouts and cool ideas in Chaos like extended primary colors as one poster thought up.
Everyone deserves their own Chaos and I think we, (we being Brand & Us), can bring cHAoS to all.

[Dip-N-Dots]

I like where you are headed with the line of thought.  Of course, it isn't the first time the notion of an end-user based wiki has happened for Amber.  If you can remove the central control concept and work it more like a true wiki with editors rather than moderators, you will end up with a plethora of content, and as a whole the end result will likely be much better!