Dragaera

Map and RPGs

Starshadw at aol.com Starshadw at aol.com
Wed Jun 5 07:42:04 PDT 2002

In a message dated 6/4/2002 9:58:13 PM Mountain Daylight Time, 
skzb at dreamcafe.com writes:


> I hear stories about writers losing copyright over stuff like this.  I 
> dunno.  As far as I'm concerned, as long as no money is changing hands, it 
> doesn't bother me.
> 

-nodding-  Yes.  Let me be perfectly clear about this - anything I did as far 
as an RPG goes - website, maps, etc. - would belong to you.  Anything ever 
created by anyone playing in said game would also belong to you.  I/We would 
own nothing.  Frankly, if you ever found anything useful, it would be 
flattering.  I don't see that happening since there is no way possible for us 
to ever know your world as well as you - my anal-retentiveness demands that I 
remain as close to "canon" as possible so the first step would be to re-read 
the books carefully and take notes on how things "function" in your world.

One thing that I would be certain to do would be to put your copyright notice 
on the website, along with a statement to the effect that everything and 
anything belonged to you.  -thinks-  We might even be able to create 
something along the lines of an agreement that people had to agree to in 
order to be able to play (like the software licenses where you have to click 
the "I Agree" button).  Believe me, I have no desire nor intention of taking 
away your copyright.

I would never exact a charge to anyone who wanted to role-play.  The only 
thing I can see ever coming up would be that if suddenly this thing took off 
and the website got so enormous it was costing beaucoup bucks to keep it up 
(I know several fan-related websites that are this big and are in trouble 
because their owners never thought about this until it was too late.  I know 
one person whose site costs them $200/month due to its size and the amount of 
traffic).  In that case, I might ask for all of us (by "us" I refer to those 
participating in the game) to help chip in with the cost of keeping the 
website up and running.  But there would be no profit involved whatsoever.  
I've never understood how people could charge for role-playing, nor how 
people could sit there and pay for it.  To me, the nice thing about RPGs is 
that, once you have the basic books, you don't have to fork over more cash 
(you certainly can do so since all systems have a multitude of supplemental 
books) in order to enjoy role-playing.

Ack!  This went on longer than I intended.

Stacy