What If?

[hunter]

Originally posted by Gruffty:
Definitely interested!

Hunter, any ideas on the cost of a license/ce on the described basis?

<rummages through wallet.........>

See previous posts

Hunter

 

[hunter]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
Where does LBB:8 Robots fit into all this?

Can an author of a non OTU adventure/supplement use the stuff in there?

As others have said, the OTU and the Traveller rules, especially books 4-8, are so tied up it is difficult to know which bits are allowed and which bits aren't.

The problem gets worse with MT and TNE, since the rules and setting are so entangled.

T20, T4 and CT B1-7 are probably the easiest to separate from background material, and are the most internally consistent with each other with regards to tech paradigms.

As mentioned previous, this is probably the biggest 'problem' that has come up over the idea. I don't think it is insurmountable or even particularly difficult to deal with.

Hunter

 

[clementk]

Originally posted by Randy Tyler:
1. Would we have to create the pdf's or would you do it? (I going to guess that the author will have to do it but I would like a clear answer.)

FWIW there are free products out there that will at least export text to pdf like OpenOffice and Ghostscript/Ghostgum. Also some free internet conversion sites IIRC. Still a standard style/style guide and pdf format documents would be very nice.

Casey

 

[vutpakdi]

I'm interested, but I'd have to see the details of the license. In particular the structure of license fees would probably be the most critical.

A large up front fee or a relatively large per copy fee would probably make me lose interest quickly. For example, if the up front fee were $100 or the per copy fee were $1, then I'd be pretty darn reluctant to try anything since I'd probably most be interested in putting out ship deckplans for a couple of bucks a copy.

Ron

 

[Pompe]

I might be interested concerning world-building stuff, but I don't think I'd be comfortable with this solution, at least not as it looks.

First is as some already have mentioned the distinction between mechanics and setting. If I'd like to write rules for alternate/harder/better/updated/more exciting worlds in the Traveller universe, I'd find it hard to not go into setting specifics, as it is those mechanics I'm trying to offer an alternative to. The license is only interesting if I can offer it to tell presumptive readers/buyers how they can use my work in Traveller and what the results might be when trying to use them in the OTU or something very much like it.

The second problem as I'd see it for any more generic/sizable rule supplement is whether it is worth to limit it to this web-site only. I might well be interested in making a deal for a "Compatible With Traveller"-logo on my finished worldgen system, but mot if it'd hurt my ability to pitch it to those who don't care about Traveller.

 

[Spinward Scout]

I would be interested as well. I've been working on three part adventure that would diverge from the OTU. I wanted to run it as a game, but the people that talked about playing backed out. I'd hate to see my work go to waste. The part I'm a little confused about is the "No compatibility with the OTU, nor any use of OTU material could be used" part. My game diverges from the OTU around year 1110 and ends up being a very different world/universe after that. Is this something I would be able to use?

Very interesting,

Scout

 

[Fritz_Brown]

Have you taken a look (recently) at the JTAS "Writing for us" rules? Most of it is not directly applicable, but it has some info that might be considered. (http://jtas.sjgames.com/writing.html)

I think a review "council" would be a good idea. Then you can pre-approve at least the first submission from someone for the license. 'Cause, if you're going to revoke the license, you're going to have to look at it anyway....

A standard format would be nice, as well.

I think this is a great idea, but - if it isn't controlled well - it could be a nasty can of worms you're opening.

 

[RandyT0001]

Assuming that this comes about and I got a limited license:
Would this 'standard' format dictate that all my adventures set in my alternate Travller universe have to be 12 pages long using a certain font/ header format with x number of illustrations/ diagrams/ maps? Don't get me wrong, I agree that the products should be well laid out and presentable but I think that if some one produces poor material he would see little sales, spurning him to improve his product or have the license pulled.
If there is a seperate 'review council' where my work might be delayed due to a councilor being absent (for whatever reason) for an extended period of time then I'm losing potential sales. If I were to publish 'indecent' material I'm sure the offended person would quickly send QLI a note about it. Probably I would be given the chance to quickly fix it or lose the license. Who chooses who will be on the 'review board', it shouldn't be potential competitiors (others who have a license)? Do I get compensation for the copies of my work sent to the 'review board'? What's to keep a member of the 'review board' from distributing copies of my work, ruining my sales? I know that once the pdf is made available for sale there is nothing to prevent copies from being distributed by this first buyer without further compesation but at least I got a sale for my work.

I understand the appeal of a 'standard' format and a 'review board' to maintaining quality control on products released through QLI and with 'Traveller' on it but I think that market forces, sales, should prevail here. If someone produces very poor quality work or indecent material word will quickly get back to QLI and/or Marc then the license (if not quickly fixed) would get pulled. I don't think that this license would be a term based thing (like for a year) but more a unit based thing (per individual product).

IMO

 

[clementk]

I am referring mainly to the Style Guide thread (link) that seemed to go nowhere. Or perhaps the thread suggestions themselves are supposed to be a style guide? There are some formatting tips and word usage material on this site but at least one 404.

So could someone use this, for example, to compile the various rules from CT books 1-8, Striker, AHL, Snapshot, make generic alien chargen rules from the Alien Books, the task system, etc. and give the whole thing a coherent streamline to make an honest to goodness complete CT rulesbook?

Seperate tech trees and 'verse options built in would be great as well but I don't think CT can stretch that far without major rewrites and changes. Or an errata fixed MT and T4? Maybe this is how T5 actually could be released!

As is I see this useful for publishing some things like add ons to FF&S, UWP generation, and similar. Things that could be very useful and which people want to write but are seen as not worth the amount of time and effort to do for free. Also homebrew 'verses bounded by OTU assumptions. Interesting that TPTB are finally trying (along with FF&S and the T20 licensed games) to seperate the OTU from Traveller somewhat. Hope it's doable.

 

[clementk]

Originally posted by Randy Tyler:
Would this 'standard' format dictate that all my adventures <snip of have to bes> but I think that if some one produces poor material he would see little sales, spurning him to improve his product or have the license pulled.

Unlike say the OGL these products are all going to be sold from one place, QLI and will be associated in at least a small way with QLI. So some basic style guidelines can't hurt one bit. See my previous post for a link to a CotI thread on the subject. I don't think page length and # of illos matter as much as basic formating and use of language and terms.

If there is a seperate 'review council' where my work might be delayed due to a councilor being absent (for whatever reason) for an extended period of time then I'm losing potential sales.

It sounds like someone's going to need to review it anyway to see if it violates the big stipulation of the contract, no OTU. Otherwise you'd have versions with the OTU material still in it out there in violation of license.

 

[RandyT0001]

Originally posted by Casey:
Unlike say the OGL these products are all going to be sold from one place, QLI and will be associated in at least a small way with QLI. So some basic style guidelines can't hurt one bit.

Maybe my choice of header/text font and point size are something that I consider sets my work apart from QLI publications. QLI sells other products (Loren's ship's boat for example, and I know Loren has a totally seperate license from Marc for it, apart from QLI) that don't follow the style guidelines as specified by QLI (from what I see in the demo download). It is a good product, nice layout in legible text. Why should I be held to QLI's product style guidelines when I have a seperate limited license? QLI (and Marc) is getting a share of the sale price and restricting my ability to sell the product (only through QLI) regardless of my formatting choices.

It sounds like someone's going to need to review it anyway to see if it violates the big stipulation of the contract, no OTU.

At present there are only two people that can do that, Hunter and Marc, since they are the ones offering this limited license. Loren couldn't do it because he is not a party to this limited license offer. Now if Hunter and/or Marc can give enough details, restrictions and specifications about what is and what isn't OTU, as far as the limited license permits, to a 'review board' then why couldn't they just give that same information to the buyers of the limited license in the first place? If a license holder, who is given the OTU restrictions by Hunter/ Marc, is found to violate it then Hunter has the ability to quickly delete those products from the catalog here at QLI.

 

[far-trader]

Hunter, put me down as interested too, in fact I was half-way through composing how to approach you about an idea much like this. Of course I'm probably more of a reviewer/editor/proofer/critic by nature, and have a pretty fair grasp of OTU* I think, so I might be better suited to the review panel bit once you decide how it's going to work.

* or rather my own idea of what defines OTU which may differ from what is finally decided, but that can be covered by some rules I think

 

[clementk]

Originally posted by Randy Tyler:
Maybe my choice of header/text font and point size are something that I consider sets my work apart from QLI publications. QLI sells other products (Loren's ship's boat for example, and I know Loren has a totally seperate license from Marc for it, apart from QLI) that don't follow the style guidelines as specified by QLI (from what I see in the demo download). It is a good product, nice layout in legible text. Why should I be held to QLI's product style guidelines when I have a seperate limited license? QLI (and Marc) is getting a share of the sale price and restricting my ability to sell the product (only through QLI) regardless of my formatting choices.

I was meaning a basic style guide for these new publications. Since these aren’t QLI publications they IMO (but I’m just a CotI member and further these publications wouldn't reflect on me or a work of mine) wouldn’t have to be binding (see below though), more of a “Here’s a guide to beginners or for people who don’t normally bother with this type of thing”. If you look at the actually finished style guides linked to in the aforementioned thread (page 2 mostly) they are usually more than just header/text font and point sizes. Admittedly that’s about all that the one here on QLI is currently but even it has a section on term usage.

For that matter LKW’s pdf is sold in at least one other site, RPGNow.com, not just here on QLI’s site, and he has a full license from MWM. I’m not suggesting that these products look exactly (or even remotely) like QLI publications or that they all look the same.

It sounds like someone's going to need to review it anyway to see if it violates the big stipulation of the contract, no OTU.

At present there are only two people that can do that, Hunter and Marc, since they are the ones offering this limited license. <snip> Now if Hunter and/or Marc can give enough details, restrictions and specifications about what is and what isn't OTU, as far as the limited license permits, to a 'review board' then why couldn't they just give that same information to the buyers of the limited license in the first place? If a license holder, who is given the OTU restrictions by Hunter/ Marc, is found to violate it then Hunter has the ability to quickly delete those products from the catalog here at QLI.

Well no offense to Hunter (RL is RL and all) but he’s not been the quickest at such things lately. It does run the risk of substandard or indecent material being released and Lordie knows T4 already built up enough substandard material for Traveller*.

This is up to TPTB of course. I have no idea how this is handled with a full license. Hunter was the one who mentioned a review board in the first place and I’ve done enough speculating already.

A style guide would be a good place to lay down such things as what terms and material can and can’t be used and how.

* I only got back into Traveller after T4 from T20 lite completely missing GT and the CT reprints until after that

 

[Blue Ghost]

I don't see a real problem with any of this. Common sense dictates that generic artifacts ought to be free game, but anything (proper noun-things) will be off limits. I don't mean to offend, but some of you are really parseing some items that are really rather obvious.

And, like a couple others have said, if this thing goes through, then you really needn't worry about it, since Avery or Hunter will give it back with huge swaths of red crossed through verboten references.

Let's use some common sense here, and take off our rules' lawyer hats... if only for the time being.

p.s. I hope I didn't come off as being to coarse. These are important issues, afterall, and we should get some clear directives from the almighty Traveller PTBs

 

[hirch duckfinder]

one more question - will this slow down otu production at all ? will the most talented writers still be able to get more rewards for goig the otu/qli route?

(personally i'm most interested in otu if i want another type of sci-fi i would probably go for another very well known franchise...)

 

[RandyT0001]

Hunter,
Assuming that this comes about I have a couple of more questions:
1. Will the buyers of this limited license be listed on the catalog page here like Ronin Arts and Loren K Wiseman are (once products are made available)?
2. Will limited license holders have an independent way to upload their products to the catalog instead of relying on you to upload it for them?

 

[kaladorn]

My own thoughts:

1) Mark me as very interested. Within the last week and a half, I just approached Mr. Miller by e-mail about the idea of some form of limited license. Mind you, I'd prefer one that let me use a few references to the OTU, but <shrugs>....

2) Is there any reason we couldn't have a license that lets us involve the OTU in approximately as much detail as the current Fair Use policy permits? (Less than a page, or with just a few references?) Perhaps there is (I'm not IP lawyer). But perhaps there would be a way to grant a limited use to use the OTU. The particular case I'm thinking of is the old Lee's Guide to Adventure. Nice generic adventures, specified in terms of the UWPs required for the planet. But then they go on to provide examples by name and sector (but that's all... less than 2 lines of text per adventure) of where you *could* situate them within the OTU. Could you write such a wonderful document and leave that out... but then probably publish 'suggestions' on the web separately under Fair Use?

3) Are standard deck plan icons from the various deck plan supplements fair game? If I want to draw custom deck plans, I want the user to have a 'Traveller feel' to them. (A good example of this kind of compatibility is some of the FASA stuff, a bad example of compatibility from a look and feel perspective is the old Judge's Guild sectors, where they made all system icons look like stars which just doesn't feel right for those used to GDW's maps).

4) Would an LBB-like feel (say convincing Berka to let me use the LBB book cover generator to produce a nice cover) be an infringement of anyone's designs/rights? I would like to produce adventures that had an LBB-esque feel to them (the meat would be in the adventure itself, not the flashy multicolour artworks filling up vast amounts of space...). Do we think this would fly, from a permission perspective?

5) Supplements which offer alternate or extended rules - would that be acceptable? I particularly think of doing stuff for MT, but using only 'canon' rules (as opposed to 'forbidden canon' stuff). For that, a refresher on MT's Canon/Forbidden Canon might not hurt (which items you can draw from, mechanically).

6) Conjecturally, the author still holds copyright. Does this imply they can withdraw their permission to produce and distribute an item if they wish? <no idea why, just wondered>

7) Doug Berry, in ACQ, published a half page table (half of an LBB page) that associated various task difficulties in various systems (T4, TNE, MT, CT, GT - I don't think T20 was in there but I forget). He didn't explain their systems, he didn't do much more than say 'they exist' and establish a mapping between task difficulty levels. This chart allowed him to then talk in terms of difficulty levels for all of his rules - and each GM could apply his own appropriate conversion. Would something like this be acceptable? I mean, do you need SJG's permission to publish a small chart that equates a Difficult Task to a particular difficulty under GT? If so, perhaps QLI or Marc should work with the various licensees and make this one half page chart 'public domain' and thereby usable as a reference by all Traveller authors. I mean, what it does do is really allow for generic game rules and for portability to other systems... and that should be good for *all* Traveller licensees.

Anyway, very very interested.

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by hunter:
3) The product could claim only mechanical compatibility. No compatibility with the OTU, nor any use of OTU material could be used. If you want to do that you need a full license.

Then it wouldn't be Traveller (Not to me, anyway ).


Hans

 

[Flynn]

Hunter,

I'd be very interested in pursuing something along these lines. Please keep us informed if this should come to pass.

Thanks for looking out for us,
Flynn

 

[Chuck Anumia]

Originally posted by far-trader:
Hunter, put me down as interested too, in fact I was half-way through composing how to approach you about an idea much like this. Of course I'm probably more of a reviewer/editor/proofer/critic by nature,
_________________________________________________
[qb] cweiskircer I work all week as a Quality Control Specialist, writting, editing, proof reading and training people to work instructions.(CW)
__________________________________________________
I might be better suited to the review panel bit once you decide how it's going to work.

__________________________________________________
I also feel better suited to reviewing than creating.

I would love to see this work out and may have some small thing to offer.

<grins while rubbing credit cards together...>