Author: Gareth

Interesting.

For all the hubbub surrounding 4th Edition, and the constant internet threads surrounding “controversy” of publishers choosing to produce compatible releases without signing the GSL….

After the first week of sales of our 4E product, Scourge of the Rat-Men, I have to say that I’m disappointed.

The PDF is moving sluggishly (a hair less than we see for the first week of a Superlink release, in fact), and we’ve sold only a bare handful of print copies. Not what I expected, at all. I wasn’t banking on cornering the market, but I figured being pretty much the first available third-party 4E adventure would have led to a sales spike of some sort….

Publishers thinking that anything *remotely* like the boom of the 3rd Edition days is going to happen with 4E should seriously rethink their plans.

Posting this from a Red Roof Inn in Columbus OH– where , myself, The Minion and my two other kids (15 and 13) are doing the road-trip thing to Maine (visiting the grandparents, stopping at The Minions college along the way).

We did a 12-hour day today, to be followed by another tomorrow (ending near Springfield MA). Tuesday will be a college visit, then the final push to Maine, where we stay for about a week or so, then head back.

I’m intermittently connected, so posting will be infrequent.

Buh-bye!

Kenzer & Co. have announced a 4E version of Kingdoms of Kalamar — which is being released without the GSL and without the special D&D license they had with WOTC for their 3rd Edition stuff.

Over in their forums, David Kenzer writes:

“…. we no longer have an agreement with Wizards. Why? Is there some “magic” restriction in IP law that restricts people from making new creative material that doesn’t use any TMs, patents or copyrights of another company?”
[…]”That is not copyright infringement. Copyright infringement is basing your work on someone else’s creative expression. Rules are not creative expression. Also, it is not “based” on their rules. It happens to “work with” their rules.

Should every programmer that writes a program that works with a computer have to pay the owner of the OS it runs on? I think not. I could be wrong, but fortunately, the US and International copyright laws agree with me.”

Hopefully, this should help demonstrate to J. Random Gamer that existing copyright is valid, and the GSL is not an absolute requirement for support of 4E.

In other news, Louis Porter picks through and my leftovers. Aw, bless.

I picked it up. He spends nearly a full page (of the 6 1/2 pages of actual content) arguing his justification of why he’s covering topics which Phil and I did years ago. Ouch.