Thanks, Rotbart -- I was just making a post on this exact subject on the EP message boards:

Just to be clear -- the Creative Commons license isn't just about "you can redistribute it for free" -- it also means "you can remix it for free and distribute that." So if you want to translate some of it into a different language, or a different game system, or if you want to take the characters and put them in a spreadsheet format or a differently formatted PDF: not only can you do that, but when you do, you can give it to anyone you want as long as you obey the basic license info.

It's a lot easier to play a game when everyone has the rules. By making the game available on bittorrent, even the players that don't have money for the game can acquire the rules. So when those players find new jobs, then you already have them hooked, and they might buy Eclipse Phase product. It's nice that it actually all works out.

Baen free library can tell you : if you provide reading material, on the internet, for free, the -sales- for said reading material on the physical side shoot right up, for a variety of reasons (including eyestrain from reading things that are way too interesting on monitors instead of paper ;p )

Of course, while CC covers most of that, it doesn't cover trademarks – so you should think about a trademark policy.

Otherwise, while you could take the content of EP and translate it, you wouldn't be allowed to distribute it as "Eclipse Phase".

That's true; we've been lax about that because it has yet to be really necessary.

[Of course, you can't actually trademark the title of a single book, just the graphical depiction of that name, or the name/depiction of an entire brand ... which is what Eclipse Phase is.]

So much this. I have downloaded many rpg books, just to "check them out". If I like them, I buy a copy, often both digital and physical. I prefer physical but a pdf is easier to go unnoticed at work than a stack of gaming books. If I do not like the book I do not buy one, of course I do not use the illegitimate download anymore either, cause... well, I did not like it. I can easily say that access to downloads has caused me to buy more books than I would otherwise have. The only exception to this would be a well known company that no longer provides their books in .pdf. Now I just used the illegitimate downloads instead of a purchased copy. In this case that company actually lost sales that I would have given them if they had not taken away my option.

QFT!

Reading a computer screen for hours on end can't compare.

Grexul

E-ink readers FTW.

(Sadly, most RPG material is organized/presented in a way that most e-ink readers don't work well with it...)

To Everyone here on Dumpshock, moderators and fellow posters alike;

I wish to formally and officially appologise for my previous posting about rumor-mongering on this subject, which caused my post to be repoted and the thread to be locked down. I have recieved an official warning and I am NOW fully aware of the consequences of my prior actions. The post was made in equal amounts of disgust, anger and frustration which had been fueled by events in my personal life before making the offensive post, and I had no cause to take said frustrations out on the members of this board. I have already sent an appology to the moderators and currently await summary judgement. I can only hope that my brief moment of stupidity does not cause me to be banned from these boards permanently.

As an act of contrition, I will take a self-imposed banishment of one full week, starting at the posting of this message.

Again, for those whom I have offended, and any rules I have bent or broken, I sincerely appologise.

BookWyrm

So someone removing all the graphics and the formation to the PDF and calling It Eclipse Phase Redux will be able to use that name ? I mean Eclipse Phase has been TM but Eclipse Phase Redux is not the TM.

Consult your lawyer. The content of the book is all CC-licensed, but trademark usage is a different beast altogether. Creative Commons is about copyrightable material, not trademarkable material.

I'm not willing to do anything like that. I was just asking.

There you go then. Use the Creative Commons-licensed content within the bounds of that license -- and extracting the text from the PDF and distributing that extracted text is fair game under the CC license -- but don't use the trademark unless you're willing to take the risk or consult a lawyer.

Or are a lawyer

No, but that gorgeous Warhammer on the front doesn't hurt.

I have still not gotten a reply from CGL over the Ctulutech books that I paid for and they never shipped.

But thanks to the CC licensing, a body could fix that with sufficient effort.



BTW, drama bans are for sux. Bring back Frank. Unless he got banned for actions unseen, he never really jumped out of bounds...
Also, BookWyrm, forgiveness is achieved by atonement, not by withdrawal. If a week is what you need to calm down, so be it, but don't disappear on our account.

Posthuman may well do some Kickstarter/ransom drives to fund those sort of things, when we are legally able to do so.

I think you did fine at the "apology" level.

Read the linked trademark policies.

And no, you can't, that would violate the trademark blatantly – even Eclipse Case would.

thought i'd link to this immensely usefull posting:
http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=30621

A case of one, where we don't know what would have happened otherwise, does not prove anything. Eclipse Phase is an excellent game. Perhaps it is selling well in spite of the free PDF. I bought it in PDF before I even realised there was a free version (though I would have bought it anyway both to support the product a product I liked and because I want to be notified of updates by DriveThruRPG). What if you compared it instead to something like Manual of the Planes which was sold as a PDF. You're suggesting that if this were given away free it wouldn't impact on WotC's sales of the book generally, but I think that unlikely. I know a number of people who pirate RPG books instead of purchasing them. They even regard this as some sort of moral victory.

Factors that you haven't controlled for in stating that the success of Eclipse Phase proves anything.

That it's a core rule book. - For example, I purchase things that will need to be passed around as physical books. Things I just want to read myself, e.g. Ghost Cartels, I buy as PDFs. I therefore bought Eclipse Phase as a book. If they produce, for example, an "Eclipse Phase Monsters" book (silly example), I'll just have that as a PDF. Meaning a lost sale for Posthuman.

That technology is progressing and that we are in a transitional phase (when are we not?). People still prefer physical books for now, but tha ttide will shift. I already prefer PDFs for many reasons and when I and my friends can have a light tablet form device that can handle these sorts of PDFs easily (see the iPad thread elsewhere) I'm going to have even less reason to purchase the physical books. Despite a few very vocal people who like to pronounce the superiority of physical books at ever opportunity, digital is the way things are going in the not too distance future. As that happens, the business model of seeding free copies to stimulate purchase of physical copies will get hit hard. The advantage to the publisher of PDF sales is enormous - no storage, no printing, no fiddly trying to estimate how many you'll sell when deciding on the size of print runs, no cut given to the local retailer. But vast though those savings are, they don't scale as well as free. Also, most publishers have yet to really take advantage of the power of digital books. When they do so, the advantages of digital over paper will grow further.

You have no Eclipse Phase that wasn't given away free with which to compare the Eclipse Phase which was. Maybe they would have sold a lot more PDFs (they were pretty cheap). Who knows? Adam may have a feel and will probably comment on all this, but what you don't have is "proof". As I say, Eclipse Phase is very good and very new. Your argument might be the equivalent of watching Usain Bolt eat a couple of cheeseburgers and then sprint past you and concluding: "Hey look - this proves cheeseburgers don't slow you down."

As I say, I know people who have quite a lot of RPG material that they have explicitly pirated instead of buying. If you want to talk music and movies, then it's a hundred times more. That is direct harm to the industry that I can see first hand.

Aside from all this, it is the publishers of Eclipse Phase choice to distribute it freely. That doesn't in anyway lessen other publishers right to choose differently.

K.

On yet another aside, is there a forum similar to this one where people can discuss Eclipse Phase? I bought it a few days ago and it's making my head swim. I'd like to try and puzzle out some things about it and maybe even find a place to play it online.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=eclipse+phase+forum&l=1

That would be one of them thar "official" forums. I was looking for one more like Dumpshock that was less official but more active and used by a wider array of people. Hence the use of "similar to this one."

No, I don't think there's a Dumpshock equivalent for Eclipse Phase.

Closest would probably be rpg.net.
Otherwise, i don't think there's an dumpshock equivalent PERIOD.

Much obliged.

There were some very good threads about it on rpg.net. The problem with the official forums is that they are so hideously over-thought out that it's pretty much impossible to maintain any sort of community there. I think there are over a dozen different topic areas which makes the sort of babble that keeps Dumpshock busy and twisted just can't get established. Instead of a couple of big noisy rooms, you have lots of monastic cells with the occasional lonely thread in them.

Off-topic here, though, so I'll complain about them no more.

K.

Yeah, that's why I don't care for official forums usually. They also seem to attract an odd sort of poster. I can't explain what's odd about them, but it... it just is. The Wizards of the Coast forums is a good example of that. I can't stand them, but I can't identify why either. It's weird.

Knasser:

Every time someone has offered a free version they have seen an increase in sales. Eclipse Phase isn't the first to do this. Individual authors of books do this, Baen as a publishing company does this, various music companies/performers do this. The people who hoard without ever buying anything are actually the proven exception.

And until they come up with a good solution to the eye strain problem (as they've already come up with one for the portability) then ..no, physical books will not be replaced. Even the kindle with its special display screen still produces more eye strain than reading a book. If you discount people wanting to support a product they like.

There are, of course, other variables in play (game quality, promotions, etc) -- but as I said, EP has sold more than twice as many copies as another Catalyst core book did in PDF format, in much less time. Was some of that factor the price? Was some of it the Creative Commons? Was some of it Shadowrun fans wanting to see what Rob Boyle was up to now? Was some of it people looking for a sci-fi game in a relatively untapped (currently) market? All of the above.

I personally agree, and it's on the list of things for us to talk about, although we do have some bigger fish to fry right now.

RPGnet seems to have adopted Eclipse Phase as one of it's "Darling Games", which means it gets a lot of discussion. So I'd say it's a pretty good place to go to chat about it

Bull

Of course, not with you, right bull? *snickers*

@Stahlseele

At least they didn't create an EP Ghetto like they did for D20!

I would add, that there is a huge difference between a fan of a game and being a Forge expatriot (which seems to be a lot of the people residing on RPGnet these days).

Perry from Kickstarter is a friend, but I don't know if the self-imposed time frame the model uses would be the best fit for a niche thing like E-ink compatible rules. Though I guess it would be a good way to determine the interest in such a thing. I guess a good old email list would be the best way to test the waters. Then, once you've got a decent chunk of emails, you can just send them all the link to the new kickdrive. I'm just worried that the readers haven't really hit the level of saturation yet to pull requisite numbers, but it should still see solid sales as the market share goes up.

Not entirely sure what you mean, Stahl.

I don't talk EP much, mainly because I've only skimmed the main book and I haven't had the chance to play it yet. It looks cool, and I want to play it, we just haven't managed to fit it into the gaming schedule yet. I don't usually talk much about a game until I actually play it, as I don't feel I can form a valid opinion of it till then.

Ahh, if you mean because I got suspended over there, that got lifted on Thursday. Apparently a bunch of folks pleaded my case (unknown to me, I was perfectly willing to cope with a one month suspension), and since I've been on there for 8 years, have over 5000 posts, have never caused any problems before, and apparently my comments were pretty mild, so they cut me some slack and reduced it down to a week and a half.

Bull

I'm not particularly worried about exposing EP fans to the Kickstarter; in terms of being able to reach a good portion of our fan base, I think we're fairly well off there. Could be doing better, but as we devote more time to Posthuman Studios, we will be ramping up that sort of thing.

As for ransoms for niche projects, to me, that's the ideal purpose of them -- combining the purchasing power of people who want a niche product to make it possible for that niche product to be produced and made available for other more casual fans.

I suppose the "donate what you think it's worth" nature of it can mean that everyone is satisfied and you get the opportunity throw out extra collectible-type swag to the big supporters. I just worry about not making the numbers needed and then having to shelf the idea for later re-visitation. Still, I am totally excited by the idea.

Me too. And we're not looking at raising, for example, the 20-30K necessary to build a book like Sunward. We'll be looking at smaller projects and smaller amounts of money -- enough to pay for our time to generate some desirable things while we work to get fully on our feet.

I can see quite a few ways to use it to fund things that can be traditionally difficult or low or slow profit in the hobby sector.

Is that really appropriate?

Another well-run gaming forum is ASL on gamesquad:

http://forums.gamesquad.com/forumdisplay.php?f=30

It works pretty well. I can see an Eclipse Phase forum working there.

Ransoms work great when a company delivers a product. I'm still waiting for my Arc Dream product, but I'm used to waiting: I pre-order ASL stuff from MMP, so I'm used to waiting years for stuff to come in the mail. And I often have to call them with a new credit card. Greg Stolz tends to do a good job. I think, if you provide reasonable guidance for product, then customers will be happy. Chas Argent does a great job of calming the ASL community when we have been waiting for over a year on some pre-orders.

In general we're looking more at things in the "Greg Stolze model" than the "Arc Dream model."

Does that include releasing it for free afterward like Greg does?

That depends on the project. Free as in Creative Commons? Almost certainly. Free as in dollars? Not necessarily.

My good man, as the writer of that section of SoA, I must say that it warms my heart to see it was not completely forgotten. Maybe one day I'll finally do that Shadows of Bangkok webbook

Mike

DO IT NAO

Seriously, I could use that shit; I've been planning to do a Southeast Asia campaign after I'm done with this Minneapolis one. I feel like I know enough about the area to ad lib it (finishing up a linguistics major with a focus on Hmong, so the area's not unfamiliar), but I'd totally love your perspective on it for some inspiration.

It's already come up a few times. Basically, there's been some plot threads (actually tied them into the Hong Kong incident) suggesting that the Mafia in St. Paul, which has a strong Hmong component, has been smuggling arms to Hmong "Chao Fa" holdout rebels in Szechuan as a fuck-you to the Triads there, for instance. But I'd like to do more with all of it.