Tom wrote:
>
Maybe there's your third class: authors, Authors, and THE Authors (aka Licensees or Licensor).
Hah! Good solution. (Pace Jeff's comment below).
>I have, occasionally, wondered about the boundaries of this vis a vis
>publishing with TAS. I would do (I do do) my utmost to keep in line with
>what's gone before. Not to be honest, that I really push the boundaries.
My interpretation of the TAS/DM's Guild/etc., on DTRPG is that it's a
mechanism to allow you to _use_ (i.e., make explicit reference to) Canon
and other TAS/DMG/etc. material in your work (in exchange for giving a
hefty chunk of the price tag to the Canon-owner), but that your work does
not _become_ Canon thereby.
Yes. Think that's what I said.
>I would be chuffed if they did. (Whether a March Harrier thing or a
>Freelance Traveller thing). I'm not aware of anything that has so far done
>this but nor would I be surprised or put out if someone wrote, for example,
>their own entirely different version of, for example, Spume.
>So perhaps there's something between an author and an Author. We need a
>third case!
Nope. "Author", with the explicit capital, is a yes/no sort of thing; if
you're not an Author, you're a Player. _All_ Players are, in one way or
another, contributors to Our Game; it is merely that some Players are more
prolific in their contributions than others.
Well, good job I managed to have _Into the Unknown_ (and a couple of other things) published so I can be an Author. ;-)
>I've definitely used FT things (like your Rikarunasha's Peers [1] and the
>Dhe game [2] most recently) at TravCon but now I think about it, I'm
>struggling to recall something that I've included in a March Harrier
>Publication that originated with someone else (outside of the standard
>Mongoose publications). I'[m not quite sure whether that's a good thing or
>a bad thing. It's probably just a thing and given how much I think I'd
>like my work to get reused, perhaps I should consider it more.
While I certainly approve of using material that others have chosen to
share with the community, it shouldn't be looked at as an _exchange_;
community content is for sharing and using as needed/wanted, not a 'barter'
situation, any more than publication in a magazine, whether FT or JTAS, is.
My apologies, I didn't mean to suggest it as a 'barter' or even a 'you scratch my back', it was more that I just feel a little fearful of it because either a) I wouldn't do it justice, b) it might not be welcome (as I've heard some have concerns about just this aspect of the TAS licence), c) it wouldn't feel quite so much 'mine' if I was, say, cobbling together a bunch of things others had come up with.
But those may be just my own hangups and ones I should be easier about overcoming.
Of course, there seems - to me - absolutely no point in me reinventing the wheel if I need an equivalent to Burke's peerage for my noble heavy adventure, if someone (Jeff) has created something that's just what I need.
If I ever get round to finishing part II, writing part III and either sending it to Mongoose or publishing it via TAS, I'll see if Rika.... [I'm not looking it up again... couldn't it be easier to spell?!] needs to go in the finished thing.
cheers
tc