New Character Builder from WotC!

[EvilFleet]

How about fictional characters? If WotC can bring novels in-house and republish them, they must own them.
If I write a novel about humans and elves and dwarves who are fighters and clerics and mages, with names like Mogsquith the Divulginator, or whatever I like, but use the online character builder to create and store their specifics, could WotC sue me for royalties for using those characters if I ever get it published?

Someone raised a similar issue on another board, only they were concerned that WoTC would take their character/adventure ideas and incorporate them into their own novels/published adventures.

For something like this to happen, some poor intern at Wizards would essentially have to go through over 40,000 "Tell Me About Your Character" stories. No one could do more than a fraction of that before jumping into the nearest sphere of annilhilation.

If you're really concerened, change the names of the characters in your novel.

 

[fanboy2000]

It is a history of either not knowing what your talking about or essentially lying to the customer and rarely following up on it.

What I think they have is a history of changing direction after either 1) there's been an official announcement or 2) after there have been hints dropped. I suspect that, to you, this is the same as not knowing what their talking about.

Also, sometimes Wizard's is outright misquoted. (E.g., there was an erroneous "we're not working on 4e" quote going around just before 4e was announced.)

It's great that there are so many people willing to take WoTC at face value.

I don't know about other people, but I'm not taking anything Wizard's at face value. But I do recognize that everything they say is subject to a high level of scrutiny. Because of this, I think it is a tough argument to make that a marketing strategy of saying nothing is preferable to a marketing strategy of keeping the customer informed. Both strategies on their own are going to cause a loss customers.

There is, in fact, someone on this board that explicitly stated before the announcement that they were canceling because there was no communication from Wizards.

After being told months ago that Dark Sun and Essentials was coming to the CB but not being told, hey, it's not the CB you use, I don't believe a word they say.

I don't know. I don't want them to become Apple. I.e., say nothing until it's out the door. But I think that's going to be the end result of all of this. I bought one piece of software from Apple after getting tired of waiting from a new version. A month later the new version was announced and released the same day.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

that's pretty short sighted no?

What if it allows you to build monsters? And then your mosnters become WoTC IP.

I mean, does no one remember gleemax and all of the awesome jobs WoTC did there?

Stop thinking of it as just the now and open your eyes to the potential, just the potential mind you, that whatever you do with not just the CB, but all the tools, is WoTC to do with as they please.

If WoTC is reduced to using my monsters and my campaing ideas then things are bad.

Gleemax was an interesting set of ideas badly executed. It is interesting that WoTC are still seeking to implement some of those ideas. There is some evidence that they are learning from their mistakes. It is a pity that htey are making so many of them.

 

[tuxgeo]

How about fictional characters? If WotC can bring novels in-house and republish them, they must own them.
If I write a novel about humans and elves and dwarves who are fighters and clerics and mages, with names like Mogsquith the Divulginator, or whatever I like, but use the online character builder to create and store their specifics, could WotC sue me for royalties for using those characters if I ever get it published?

Someone raised a similar issue on another board, only they were concerned that WoTC would take their character/adventure ideas and incorporate them into their own novels/published adventures.

For something like this to happen, some poor intern at Wizards would essentially have to go through over 40,000 "Tell Me About Your Character" stories. No one could do more than a fraction of that before jumping into the nearest sphere of annilhilation.

If you're really concerened, change the names of the characters in your novel.

Why should I have to do that? Does WotC own my characters on their servers unless I do?

As I understand the situation, it is entirely possible for lawsuits to be filed up to seven years after the fact. (Yes, please do correct me about the timing, there; that's mostly a guess.)
Given that, there is no need for "some poor intern at Wizards" to go through the slush pile; instead, all they have to do is see what sells like crazy, and see if those characters are on their servers. They wouldn't sue about something that didn't sell squat, because there's no money in that; so the high-sellers would self-select for scrutiny.
We non-WotCites can only wish there were 40,000 high sellers every week. . . .

 

[GMforPowergamers]

For something like this to happen, some poor intern at Wizards would essentially have to go through over 40,000 "Tell Me About Your Character" stories. No one could do more than a fraction of that before jumping into the nearest sphere of annilhilation.

the way mor likely way that would go would be that a WotC writer would have a similar idea as ((we will use me as this example)) I do. Lets say both of us make female tiefling Swordmages named Ember who specilize in fire magic... well there are only so many fire powers and feats so of cource they look similar.

Just becuse my character was on there server as of Nov 21st and the books Ember are in (soon to be a movie, and suplment...boy did she take off) 2012, can I sue and say they stole my idea?

Those 'we own your stuff stored here' is more to prevent my example then to cause other problems...

 

[Ahrimon]

Someone did bring up the problem of art ownership. If they have an original piece of art that they crop for a character picture and then WotC takes it uses it somewhere else.

It's a fringe case. But for some, it could be a very important one.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Just becuse my character was on there server as of Nov 21st and the books Ember are in (soon to be a movie, and suplment...boy did she take off) 2012, can I sue and say they stole my idea?

The simple answer is yes.

Proving they stole your idea, OTOH, is another matter entirely.

 

[JoeGKushner]

If WoTC is reduced to using my monsters and my campaing ideas then things are bad.

Gleemax was an interesting set of ideas badly executed. It is interesting that WoTC are still seeking to implement some of those ideas. There is some evidence that they are learning from their mistakes. It is a pity that htey are making so many of them.

It has little to do with ideas I'm afraid and more to do with IP ownership in WoTC as attack dog to protect themselves in these cases.

 

[Maggan]

If you're really concerened, change the names of the characters in your novel.

I'd say, if you are really really concerned, don't use another companies tools (rules, concepts, online tools) at all when creating your characters if you hope to capitalize on the creations later.

Of course, if that is you concern, you should never ever speak online about your creations until you have secured said capitalization.

/M

 

[nnms]

I've been playing a lot of Essentials stuff lately and then DMing. Today I opened up the CB to make a non-Essentials character for a one off (Eladrin Fey Pact Warlock). I got to the feat section and was overwhelmed. I've been DMing 4E since it came out and have played my share as well, but things are getting out of hand.

If the new character builder has some sort of better way of dealing with feat choices, I'll be impressed. If it doesn't, I'm going to stick with Essenials classes and the two Heroes of books for choosing feats.

Perhaps some sort of feature questionaire. Like I want to "hit more often" or "add a power" or "boost a class feature" or "multiclass" or "do more damage" and then it shows you all the feats that do that for the class/race combination you've chosen.