Outlaw Mess

[hrrrothgarrr]

Buy Monstrous Compendium II! It contains monsters from your's truly (and some other cool folks).

The royalty payments will surely make me rich beyond the dreams of avarice...

Wait a minute, what's that? I already got paid when I got my contributor's copy of DD that my beasties appeared in? Why you little...Hobbit!

Yup. The rumours are true. Ain't nobody getting rich off OP.

[captainrufus]

The question then begs: Why did "that guy" do it? Ignorance? Laziness?
It's clearly not money since if one is gonna risk getting sued to oblivion doing so as a support publisher for a niche game in a niche industry is not the way to riches. Or even beer money.

Its all so confusing and a bit upsetting. Even now at half off I don't think I want to buy a single thing from OP as I feel I may be supporting some immoral if not illegal activity.

Its one thing to say play an OOP arcade game in Mame. Its another to say read a scan of an existing gamebook on a torrent. Its totally over the illegal and unethical end to swipe people's art or other work and print it for sale.

There is something missing here. It all doesn't compute and I really don't like want to join the RPGnet pitchfork bandwagon. (Which is usually resolved for things against their political sensibilities and Palladium. Getting their ire usually takes some effort!)

And quick GW mess: They are sending Cease and Desists all over the Internet. To Fumbbl, various fansites that have the slightest usage of their images, to Boardgamegeek which caused them to basically rip out almost EVERYTHING they had from fan made tiles or rules translations to fanmade play aids. They just cleaned house instead of risking legal action giving normal corporate legal speak and not being specifically clear about it.

Put it this way, by GW style if they say owned T&T this fine site would probably get hit with a C&D for the 5th ed cover picture being on the site title! (A place called Librarium Online was hit for this for having a slightly morphed version of the 40K Double Headed Eagle in their site title as part of their logo. They may have been selling site tee shirts with that image which probably shouldn't be done though.)

I guess its gaming IP hell month on the Internet.

I do like the idea of us making our own happy fun though. Maybe I should revamp my Swords and Wizardry Minotaur class for T&T?

[feldrik]

I am glad I did not put my foot in my mouth about the stuff at BGG that WOC and GW want stopped. It looks like a similar situation to what I have been reading about, only WOC and GW have bigger guns.

I am not going to get into whether anyone did things with malice of forthought or not but it is an example of how jealously guarded an intellectual property is (and should be) and why such things should be respected even if one does not agree with the reasons why.

Everything from loss of revenue to loss of credebility can be caused by well meaning (or not well meaning) people that misunderstand the seriousness of such breeches.

That is all I really want to say about it because I don't have any facts.

[quoghmyre]

"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."
— Robert A. Heinlein

BUT that does not excuse Mr "that guy"'s actions or attitude since this came to light.

Napoleon complex???
www.online-ambulance.com/articles/doc/1/grp/Psychology/art/CausesOf.htm

[Deleted]

Nov 24, 2009 9:30:12 GMT -5 @shipy said:

I have all the money I need.

That's great James. Could you arrange with me to pay the $60 license fee for my cover you've been using on Troll's Blood & Old Delvers? Alternatively could you mail me the address of the art broker you say you bought it from, and we can sort all this out?

You have my email address.

Thanks!

[machfront]

*applauds*

[quoghmyre]

I doubt we'll be seeing that scoundrel again. As someone said concerning his post here and on the Trollwalla, he only spammed us.

a better word

[Vin Ahrr Vin]

Well, I think the whole situation is really a bummer. Whether James has handled the present situation well or not, you can't argue that his "that company" did a heck of a lot to promote T&T. I mean, there were a number of products which he offered for sale as reprints which had been hard to find or out of print entirely.

I just can't understand why he has taken such an odd non-responsive stance. Perhaps he's just hoping that everything will just blow over, but it seems like there is simply too much anger among T&T fans right now. Whatever his rationalle, it does NOT appear to be working. :-(

[quoghmyre]

I know this is long thread and many may not have followed it but

Sooo not to throw more gasoline on the thread but...

I heard back from Rick on Saturday regarding the email I sent him upthread. I waited to post this just to see if anything was going to happen regarding this or not with out tipping anyone off. But here is the good news and the really f-ing crazy news.

Good News:

Quote:

I intend to spend more time creating pdfs for sale. Thank you for any advice and help you can give me.


So Rick is interested in expanding into the PDF market and the points I made about the front page of driverthrurpg/rpgnow might help. He also talked about the SA archives and says he is considering trying to bring them out but it will be a lot of work and probably some money back to the original submitters since FBI had not rights to republish. Heck it was 1979 who would have wrote a contract that covered PDF .

Crazy News:

Quote:
"that company" never had the right to sell T&T 4th edition, any edition of Sorcerers Apprentice, Uncle Uglys, Monsters Monsters, T&T First Edition, or any other FBI products as PDFs or in any other fashion. Was he doing this?


That was the bit that made it clear that "that guy" is way beyond redemption on this matter. Rick told him to stop printing some of this material before and obviously he was ignored. I sent Rick links to all the offerings that are/were FBI products. It's a matter for lawyers if "that guy" refuses to stop at this point. One of the reasons I asked about POD fulfillment was for the record keeping. It seems trivial to track how many copies have been sold since One Bookshelf and Lulu should have all the information required.

So there it is I figured many of you would like to know.

-Mike

you seem to be commending Mr "that guy" for things he should not have been doing???

sorry can't get the link thing to work

[kopf]

Dec 2, 2009 0:19:52 GMT -5 Vin Ahrr Vin said:

Well, I think the whole situation is really a bummer. Whether James has handled the present situation well or not, you can't argue that his "that company" did a heck of a lot to promote T&T. I mean, there were a number of products which he offered for sale as reprints which had been hard to find or out of print entirely.

Yeah I can brag about my fiction in Troll's Blood And Delvers being right beside Liz Danforth's writing and John Hobson's artwork? Umm no I can't. And 90% of what has been up for sale the last two years has been discredited as done so without permission, complained about by the authors, and using art from sources that were "too good to be true." The minute "that company" tried to sell beyond re-sale outlets and our rather already established community, it's discovered that all of the art has been acquired rather shadily, from artists, suspiciously all of who live away from North America. Any legitimate art used was paid for by others?

I will make the argument that "that company" has not done much to promote T&T at all. The owner is just waging war against copyright claims and artists' control over their works.

Dec 2, 2009 0:19:52 GMT -5 Vin Ahrr Vin said:

...I just can't understand why he has taken such an odd non-responsive stance. Perhaps he's just hoping that everything will just blow over, but it seems like there is simply too much anger among T&T fans right now.

Paraphrasing is own and your words, this community of T&T fans were the only ones he ever really cared about, right? A lot of good he has done us. We need publishers that can appreciate the value of say $60 for someone's effort, not flippantly brag about wallowing in cash after accepting the charity of others for years.

[apeloverage]

Nov 30, 2009 20:47:41 GMT -5 captainrufus said:

The question then begs: Why did "that guy" do it? Ignorance? Laziness?

To some people, the internet seems more anonymous and 'safe' than it really is.

[uburoi]

Dec 2, 2009 5:02:00 GMT -5 kopf said:

I will make the argument that "that company" has not done much to promote T&T at all. The owner is just waging war against copyright claims and artists' control over their works.

Actually, looking over some of "that guy"'s stuff, I notice a lot that seems like it was pulled off the 'net, much like he apparently did with Escape From Khosht. Now we have to wonder if he had permission to re-print those as well.

Speaking of re-prints, anyone notice he's pretty casual about that as well? Not only has he re-packaged a lot of Hobbit Hole / Dungeoneer Digest solos & GM adventures and sold them individually, his "T&T 2007 House Rules" book is really bad. Not only is it mostly his bootleg "6th Edition T&T" from 2000, it re-prints four or five articles verbatim from The Hobbit Hole, most notably Hogscape's "There's a Dirk In My Quiver!" and a couple "alternative character generation" articles.

[hrrrothgarrr]

Yes, I noticed. Several of the monsters I submitted to that appeared in HH and DD also appear in Monstrous Compendium II, or at the very least in the FD version from the Delver's Pack. While it is nice to see my creations given the stamp of "officialdom" for what little that's worth. I had no knowledge that my creatures were being republished, and by not only OP but FD as well.

Also I was surprised to see some of my chatter on Kindred from Trollhalla published both in HH and in "History of Trollworld". Again it's not so much that I mind seeing my name in print, I would just have liked to know about it first.

It also leaves me in the unpleasant possition of not knowing the status of rights on my creations. If I republish any of my stuff that has been printed or reprinted by OP will I find myself in hot water with the copyright folks?

[uburoi]

Dec 2, 2009 11:03:58 GMT -5 hrrrothgarrr said:

It also leaves me in the unpleasant possition of not knowing the status of rights on my creations. If I republish any of my stuff that has been printed or reprinted by OP will I find myself in hot water with the copyright folks?

See, that's what I've been wondering. If we were to go to some of the authors of stuff that's appeared in HH/DD previously, would we be able to re-print it in a new 'zine, with new layout & graphics? There's a lot of good material in some of those early issues which might very well be lost due to Outlaw's troubles.

[Boozer]

Hi all - Today I took the very sad decision to ask OP to stop selling my products that do not have licensed art. I will be looking to form another arrangement for publishing my work in the future. I'm not happy about how this has turned out at all.

Since the 80s I have been writing for T&T and working very hard on a great many solos and adventures, so I cannot have my reputation as a writer tarnished as my products are sold with 'stolen' art (allegedly).

I hope to continue to write for T&T in the future.

Also I do not think I will remain very active on Trollhalla.

Anyway, that's my bit of news for the day...