Mark Oliva
First Post
This has been discussed here already, and it's decided now, so I'll throw it into the soup.
Those of you who have interest, suggestions, or whatever might want to join our new Yahoo groups mailing list: dungeons-daring-at-yahoogroups.com. We really need ideas and input from you, so we hope you'll come over to the mailing list. It shouldn't overload your mailbox. I doubt the list will have much traffic at the start.
Member of the Dungeons Daring list will have full, free and immediate access to all of our alpha and beta material.
Former members of the old Projects Group 1370 with whom we wrote much of the "Northern Journey" adventure for WotC's "Forgotten Realms" have been developing a new, open, free, non-commercial fantasy RPG called Dungeons Daring (TM). It is not a Dungeons & Dragons lookalike. It uses a fair amount of OGC from the d20 SRD 3.5 and also some from other OGC d20 publishers, but it also deviates from d20 in a number of important respects.
The authors approached us (the Vintyri Project) about the possibility of my company, Steigerwald EDV Verlag (TM) publishing the new game through our subsidiary, the Vintyri Project (TM). We've been discussing it, reviewing drafts, etc., for some time now.
Last night, we reached an agreement among all parties for us to publish Dungeons Daring, as requested. We in the Vintyri Project will join the current crew as authors, helping to push ahead the beta release date. That also will delay the release of our Vintyri World by about three months.
The status is as follows:
1. The Players Guide is about 65% finished.
2. The Game Master's Guide is about 30% finished.
The immediate goal is:
-- To release our betas no later than the release of D&D 4E. I can't guarantee we'll reach that goal, but we'll try.
The longer range goals for this RPG are:
1. To have the content completely open and free.
2. To allow anyone to distribute the official release with no ifs, ands or buts.
3. To publish under the OGL 1.0a (more on that to follow).
4. To protect only the graphical trademark, the name Dungeons Daring and some copyrighted graphics that may or may not be used in the originals (more on that to follow).
The explanations:
Because we use OGC from the SRD and other products, neither we nor my company's attorney see any legal possibility for using a different open license. **IF** some of you see a legal way around that, please inform us, and we'll submit your suggestion to our lawyer.
We want to make the Dungeons Daring graphical trademark and the name trademark available at no fee to other publishers, but we also want to prevent both from being used for non-compatible products. We also want both to be available to people who want to put pout alternate versions of Dungeons Daring, but we want such publishers to be required to clearly state that it is an alternate version rather than the official version.
The only workable method to achieve this that occurs to either us or our attorney is to declare these elements (as long with some non-open graphics) as Product Identity and to issue a free, no-fee trademark license that defines usage terms for the grapühical trademark and the trademark name. As we near release, wealso wil register the trademark so that it bears an (R) symbol rather than a (TM).
Parallel with this, we will develop the Vintyri (TM) World with the new rules system rather than with the d20 SRD 3.5, which had been our original plan. This will ensure that the new RPG almost from the start has a campaign setting to support it followed by forthcoming adventure material (i.e. modules, etc.).
Vintyri products will be commercial OGC products in PDF form. We hope to offer them at RPGNow, DriveThruRPG, EN World shop, etc.
Although we anticipate no earnings from Dungeons Daring (a free product, after all), we will appropriate an advertising budget for it when it is released officially. Without advertising, too few people will know it's there. In addition, we have written pledges from four other OGL RPG publishers for contributions to the advertising budget. None of these publishers intends to jump publicly on the Dungeons Daring bandwagon, but if Dungeons Daring picks up users, they are considering developing for it in the longer run. They, too, would like to break the ties that bind them to WotC's decisions, if that's possible.
I may post short updates here from time to time, but please consider suscribing to the dungeons-daring mailing list at yahoogroups.com.
Thanks for your interest!
Those of you who have interest, suggestions, or whatever might want to join our new Yahoo groups mailing list: dungeons-daring-at-yahoogroups.com. We really need ideas and input from you, so we hope you'll come over to the mailing list. It shouldn't overload your mailbox. I doubt the list will have much traffic at the start.
Member of the Dungeons Daring list will have full, free and immediate access to all of our alpha and beta material.
Former members of the old Projects Group 1370 with whom we wrote much of the "Northern Journey" adventure for WotC's "Forgotten Realms" have been developing a new, open, free, non-commercial fantasy RPG called Dungeons Daring (TM). It is not a Dungeons & Dragons lookalike. It uses a fair amount of OGC from the d20 SRD 3.5 and also some from other OGC d20 publishers, but it also deviates from d20 in a number of important respects.
The authors approached us (the Vintyri Project) about the possibility of my company, Steigerwald EDV Verlag (TM) publishing the new game through our subsidiary, the Vintyri Project (TM). We've been discussing it, reviewing drafts, etc., for some time now.
Last night, we reached an agreement among all parties for us to publish Dungeons Daring, as requested. We in the Vintyri Project will join the current crew as authors, helping to push ahead the beta release date. That also will delay the release of our Vintyri World by about three months.
The status is as follows:
1. The Players Guide is about 65% finished.
2. The Game Master's Guide is about 30% finished.
The immediate goal is:
-- To release our betas no later than the release of D&D 4E. I can't guarantee we'll reach that goal, but we'll try.
The longer range goals for this RPG are:
1. To have the content completely open and free.
2. To allow anyone to distribute the official release with no ifs, ands or buts.
3. To publish under the OGL 1.0a (more on that to follow).
4. To protect only the graphical trademark, the name Dungeons Daring and some copyrighted graphics that may or may not be used in the originals (more on that to follow).
The explanations:
Because we use OGC from the SRD and other products, neither we nor my company's attorney see any legal possibility for using a different open license. **IF** some of you see a legal way around that, please inform us, and we'll submit your suggestion to our lawyer.
We want to make the Dungeons Daring graphical trademark and the name trademark available at no fee to other publishers, but we also want to prevent both from being used for non-compatible products. We also want both to be available to people who want to put pout alternate versions of Dungeons Daring, but we want such publishers to be required to clearly state that it is an alternate version rather than the official version.
The only workable method to achieve this that occurs to either us or our attorney is to declare these elements (as long with some non-open graphics) as Product Identity and to issue a free, no-fee trademark license that defines usage terms for the grapühical trademark and the trademark name. As we near release, wealso wil register the trademark so that it bears an (R) symbol rather than a (TM).
Parallel with this, we will develop the Vintyri (TM) World with the new rules system rather than with the d20 SRD 3.5, which had been our original plan. This will ensure that the new RPG almost from the start has a campaign setting to support it followed by forthcoming adventure material (i.e. modules, etc.).
Vintyri products will be commercial OGC products in PDF form. We hope to offer them at RPGNow, DriveThruRPG, EN World shop, etc.
Although we anticipate no earnings from Dungeons Daring (a free product, after all), we will appropriate an advertising budget for it when it is released officially. Without advertising, too few people will know it's there. In addition, we have written pledges from four other OGL RPG publishers for contributions to the advertising budget. None of these publishers intends to jump publicly on the Dungeons Daring bandwagon, but if Dungeons Daring picks up users, they are considering developing for it in the longer run. They, too, would like to break the ties that bind them to WotC's decisions, if that's possible.
I may post short updates here from time to time, but please consider suscribing to the dungeons-daring mailing list at yahoogroups.com.
Thanks for your interest!
