WizKids has bee sold to NECA (National Entertainment Collectibles Association, Inc.), as can be seen here: http://www.wizkidsgames.com/ and http://www.necaonline.com/article/detail/278.

But they only write about the clix-games and the pocket card games. No mention of Shadowrun or Battletech. So that makes you wonder, who owns Shadowrun and Battletech?

Is it still in the hands of Topps, Wizkids or could we be so lucky that Catalyst has actually acquired the licenses?

Lars

Topps retained Ownership. I asked Adam about this the day the sale was officially announced.

From what I understand, NECA bought the Wizkids name, the "Clix" brand, and either the Marvel (and I'd guess DC) licenss for Heroclix was transferred over, or NECA negotiated a new contract. I have no clue about where the other licensed Clix brands stand, other than that I think CGL holds all the Battetech and Mechwarrior rights (Other than Video game/computer), so NECA can't do a new Mechwarrior Clix game.

Bull

i am getting a headache trying to visualize this...

yay for modern IP agreements...

Its a world where only lawyers benefit. Too bad there wasn't a way for the originator of an IP to still gain credit, but anyone capable of doing further development could do so. Royalties kinda do it (they protect the originator but stifle development), and IP aggrements kinda do it (the originator loses some rights so that others can further development, but this can lead to a legal SNAFU).

creative commons?

anyways, all this makes me think that in SR the *AA's have won, and that the DRM, while breakable, is the least of your worries. That is, if you try to do anything on any node with a DRM broken program, your access id gets flagged, the holder of copyright gets a notice, and you get a nasty letter from a lawyer, or a visit from some runners out to collect, depending on your living conditions.

that is unless you routinely spoof access id, only access nodes in the virtual equivalent of a Z-zone, and basically do not exist in the eyes of the powers that be...

also, GNU and GPL never happened in SR, so the open source mentioned in unwired is at best BSD licensed. So for all one knows, every project that picks up some level of usability gets siphoned of to some corp R&D for polishing and packaging.

in all instances, the corps win in the long run...

Allow me to be the lone voice in the wilderness, or perhaps the ivory tower as the case may be.

I find Intellectual Property law to be a good thing as it keeps creators having as little or as much control as they choose while also protecting those who might wish to purchase and use those rights.

Furthermore lets not confuse DRM and piracy with IP law it's like saying the way we handle maritime law to the rules governing flag football.

while i suspect we should probably move this of the forum, as it will rapidly have zero to do with SR, how do IP laws protect the customer exactly?

Don't worry, all the ownership will be scrambled by the first crash anyways. Of course by then we'll be to busy dieing with VITAs, awakening and goblinizing to find time to play games.

meh, ill be parked in some out of the way place, making sure my data is virus-free, and reading up on simsense and asist...

Are we speaking about customers as the end product consumers? It doesn't but then again it's not designed to. Intellectual Property law, as say it's in regards to shadowrun for example isn't a customer affecting issue.

ah, i read it wrong, your talking about protecting trades in rights, not between creator and your basic joe on the street...

i guess our basic problem is that IP laws came to be when the equipment needed for mass copying where expensive and time consuming to set up and operate.

these days however every person have potentially access to a device that would make gutenberg scream witchcraft...

From what I understand, Topps still owns the IP rights for both Shadowrun AND BattleTech. CGL licensed the rights to Battletech from Topps, just like they licensed the rights for Shadowrun. Microsoft's erstwhile video-game rights to these two IPs was licensed a few years back to Smith & Tinker (Jordan Weisman's VG startup).

I would think that, if Wizkids 2.0 wanted to continue/relaunch MechWarrior as a Clix game, they'd have to license the rights from Topps. But then again, I could be wrong, because I don't know the nature of the agreement with CGL. Me, I see Battletech (the board game) and MechWarrior (in the Clix incarnation) to be two completely different games; however, the license agreement with CGL might cover the gamut of "all tabletop games using Battletech/MechWarrior branding."

Although marginally off-topic: What's funny to me is that FASA (as an IP-holding company only) still owns the rights to Earthdawn (the "history of Shadowrun," some of my friends have called it). I wonder why FASA didn't sell this IP to Wizkids/Topps when it sold SR and BT and thus also license it to CGL? As much as I love all three of these games, it would've been nice to see them all fall under the same banner, especially seeing how much love CGL has given SR and BT thus far...

As someone who hates earthdawn and hates it's continued influence on shadowrun I for one am glad that did not happen. I have also heard a unsubstatiated rumor that CGL passed on Earthdawn.

Color me curious: Why do you hate Earthdawn so much? Don't get me wrong: I prefer SR over ED, but I really appreciate the chord ED struck. For one, it's a breath of fresh air compared to the same-old-same-old feel of traditional D&D.

Also, for the record, ED doesn't directly influence SR anymore, apart from their shared past (in the 4th World vs. 6th World sense). CGL has mentioned in the past that Red Brick and CGL have agreed to not step on each other's respective game worlds, such that Red Brick's ED developments won't cause any far-reaching continuity issues with SR and CGL would do the same with SR in relation to ED's continuity, and the two games don't ever reference each other anymore. In other words, don't expect to see any more ED-era immortal elves or dragons popping up in SR.

iirc, earthdawn was already licensed out to a third party when fasa "tanked" and passed battletech and shadowrun on to wizkid (who licensed it on to fanpro, who had done the german version on license from fasa earlier).

btw, earthdawn is currently licensed to red brick limited...

Intellectual Property is theft!

I'm really not sure, whether the new edition of D&D can be called 'traditional' in any sense of the word.

Ok, you still kill monsters and take their stuff...

Bye
Thanee

And find enchanted longswords in the bellies of lions..yet, now, you need no longer go looking
for bat guano and sulfur to hurl fireballs

Heh. That's still better than suits of full plate armor dropping from dead insect swarms (Diablo 2).

Bye
Thanee

"You're a squirrel who somehow has money, and sometimes swords and shields."

I think CGL did a good job with their Eclipse Phase license personally. It basically means that if the fans of Eclipse Phase want it to live, then the IP won't ever get into the hands of the lawyers which could spell death to the RPG.

I agree that it's a good idea to make sure an IP doesn't descend into legal hell, but I have to wonder about the long-term profitability of a Creative Commons license if you let people copy and redistribute it for personal use (so long as you credit the original source). Maybe I don't fully understand the CC license paradigm, but if someone wants to explain how it works in a profitable business model, I'm all ears.

On a side note, if anyone has the Eclipse Phase book, send me a PM and tell me what you think of it. The premise sounds interesting, but I've never been a huge fan of "percentile dice" RPG systems.

It looks like you are correct about the 3rd party license (Living Room Games, in 1999). Although I have to wonder why FASA licensed out a viable game to a third party rather than having their own talented pool of creators work on it...? They didn't pull out of the industry until a whole 2 years later.

Earthdawn has gotten "Cancelled" prior to FASA closing down. It wasn't selling, and a last ditch effort to rally some interest and/or support in the form of a Rules CD-Rom that was packed in with a couple magazines (InQuest, Shadis, and maybe a couple others) failed.

Was it not selling presumably because diehard D&Ders flipped ED the bird? Sadly, Most D&D fans I've known have a predisposition against ED for no valid reason, probably for the same reasons some people who've never played or know anything about SR hate the game because they "don't want any namby-pamby elves in their cyberpunk, thank you."

Nowadays, a PDF of an RPG book isn't too out of the question (although most people I know who have a PDF prefer to also to have a copy to read "in the meat" since they can't always be sitting in front of their computer/laptop). But back then? E-format books weren't really all that feasible. What probably would have served them better would have been if they had put together a digest-size "first Earthdawn adventure" rules packet to whet the appetite, much like how SR did with "Food Fight." InQuest used to pack in quickstart rule things like that all the time.

The Earthdawn CD-ROM was actually the entire core rule book as a well hyperlinked HTML file, not a PDF.

I'm not sure how many hours it took to set it up that way, but I would actually love the Shadowrun rules that way. As an electronic resource a well hyperlinked set of files is better than a PDF.

I'm guessing the business model would be very similar to most Open Source business models. Most of the money would be made in the publication of new content. Since new content can be made by anyone but there are only a limited number of publishers (CGL would be the main one and the one with with the most authenticity) they would still be making money printing off books (as they can set the price for hardcovers). R&D costs shrink to almost nothing and they can produce more content (both fluff and stuff).

I'm guessing that CGL would also be the ultimate authority when it comes to game rule changes and continuity of the Eclipse Phase system and as such can state any third person's product is not cannon.

So, theoretically, I could write/publish/market/sell my own Eclipse Phase novel, so long as I gave credit to CGL as the creator in the legalese, and possibly included a "not affiliated with CGL" disclaimer somewhere?

That what I thought, the CD being the whole core book.

But that begs the question: Why did they give away the whole farm for free rather than use some kind of teaser/quickstart rules to entice players to come back for the real thing?

On one hand, yeah, you have the whole rules -- for free! -- but if someone's not prepared for that, it can be overwhelming (New Player browsing the rules: "Do I REALLY need to know what 'thread magic' is before I start playing?"). A quickstart helps prospective players and GMs get a handle on the basics and the premise without feeling like they're drowning.

Also, giving away something for free degrades its value. I mean, how often were the pack-in freebies in InQuest actually any good? I generally dismissed out of hand most of the freebies cos they were inherently throwaway.

What's ironic is, ED may not have fared well back at FASA Proper, but if it was really dead, it wouldn't have survived to its 3rd Edition (which released this past summer). Wonder what FASA did wrong, and what lessons today's RPG makers can learn from it?

Earthdawn "died" in an age when games still had to make enough money to suport the production costs of being printed. The HTML CD was, I believe, a Hail Mary pass at a time before the market was really ready.

Living Room Games tried where FASA failed, but also did not last very long.

Red Brick kept the game going by moving to PDF (and possibly print-on-demand), removing all the upfront costs and risks associated with regular printing.

I hope that Earthdawn: Third Edition does very well as a Red Brick / Mongoose collaboration, but I am not holding my breath.

I also look forward to Age of Legend 4e (Earthdawn as a D&D 4th Ed. game world) since I actually think the Earthdawn world vision would fit the D&D4 mechanics better than the standard D&D worlds.

I may be wrong, but I believe only the new ED novels are currently PoD. Red Brick may have PDFs available for 3rd ed., but they also have very nicely done hardbacks for the core books (think on-par with the quality of the current SR hardback splatbooks, but 300+ pages).

We're going to reach a point where even the corps don't know who owns what anymore.

and thats the point where we get events like the novell vs SCO trail...

I haven't read the license yet, but if the CC license is anything like my game system, then yes you could. You should expect that CGL can turn around and say, that isn't cannon though.

Edit:
I went through and read the license and it is non-commercial, which means only the originator can make money on the content, so If you wrote a book for Eclipse Phase you can submit it to CGL and negotiate a royalty deal with them. If you published the book yourself you could only sell it at cost (and you would have to be able to show that in court). You are able to create whatever you want for Eclipse Phase, and you able to make as many copies of the existing stuff as you would like (just as long as you don't sell them for profit).

one thing struck me thinking about Shadowrun and games, is any game developer holding the rights to make a Shadowrun game? Would be fun to see a real attempt on a new Shadowrun game, maybe a FPS/RPG hybrid like Fallout 3

it was mentioned in a earlier post, smith & tinker, or something like that, have licensed both battletech/mechwarrior and shadowrun from microsoft...

hmm would have preferred if one of the bigger RPG fish had pick up the license but I shall wait and see what smith & tinker comes up with.

It was implied in an interview with S&T that they would do a Shadowrun game (but only after they were sure the new BT game was a success).

Define "bigger RPG fish."

Honestly, I'd rather have the SR/BT licenses under the helm of a company run/owned by Jordan Weisman because he co-created SR AND BT (among others). He KNOWS these universes because they are like children to him. If anyone can do them right and treat them with the respect they deserve, he can.

true but love alone can´t provide the base for a game that can compete with the big market.

Uh, have you SEEN the demo for the MechWarrior game in the works?

Tell me that's NOT a marketable commodity.

I saw it at the CGL booth at GenCon this year, and EVERYONE was drooling at it. I also read a 5-6 page interview with Weisman and the main guy helming this game. They're in it for real, and they are not messing around.

Now, take some Shadowrun. Lather, rinse, repeat.

You don't think they could EASILY pull that off? Hell, all they'd have to do is make "Deus Ex, but with MAGIC!" and people would be happy.

I agree. Even though S&T is fairly new as a company, they are employing a lot of the old FASA interactive programmers and are pulling from their years of experience. I expect that they also have unofficial support from Microsoft (I say this as they only plan to make MW for the XBox 360 and PC and they stated that a PS3 port was not likely to happen). I can't think of a better company to make both a MW and SR game.

IMO the d&d players had 3 typical complaints.


cultural- "what do you mean there are no gods? How can you have a fantasy game without gods? Wait, is this one of those games you have to bring the gods back? Man, I hate those games. Why doesn't anyone do something new?"

oppurtunistic - "So the mages not only can't have dozens of spells ready to cast but the spells he does have may never fire off because the thread weaving test can fail ad infinium?"

Mechanics - "These dice are weird. Hand me my d20."

The first two are flavor/prefence. You either like the setting and appreciate the skill based magic or you don't.

The complaints about the system were less reasonable pre D20. ED has three key charts: Step, Success, and Attribute. I never met anyone who had an issue with the attribute table since almost every system has one. The success chart was irritating because it is weighted so there's no clear algorithm, but compared to comparable games of the day, AD&D 2nd ed, Runequest, MasterTable, etc it wasn't onerous.

The Step system drives some people insane, even though it is part of the appeal to me. The Step rating is the statistical average roll and, for anything higher than step 7, the most probable result. That made comparing defenses to attacks and armor to damage very easy.

The ED designers never pointed out a) it's a repeating pattern and b) you can use any combination of low-Step dice that add up to a given high Step value with minimal impact.
There is no major statistical difference between 4d6 (step 4 x 4), 2d8+d10(step 5 x 2 + step 6), d20+d8 (official step 16). With exploding dice all will average a 16. The two notable difference is that the minimun non-botch value varies from 3-5, which isn't probably a big deal for step 16, and the odds of a botch run from 1 in 160 to 1 in 1296. So the step chart tries to use as few dice as possible.

Don't the Passions count as "gods"?


Maybe it's just me, but the D20 system bores me (and it does cause cancer, after all). IMO, there's nothing more satisfying than rolling a whole fistful of dice, which is why the mechanics of any edition of SR appeal to me. Hell, even rolling two dice is better than feeling like you're tossing a bouncy ball onto the table.

This just occurred to me: Regarding the original topic, since Topps owns the SR IP, and Wizkids was sold to NECA, isn't the legal disclaimer at the bottom of every forum page... well... inaccurate, to say the least?