Al-Qadim Anyone?

[Alzrius]

AFAIC, Wizards of the Coast are the publishers and Sovereign Press are the designers of the upcoming Dragonlance Campaign Sourcebook. They accepted their roles in getting this product released this year.

See my above post for how I feel that came about. When someone with something you desire has all the power, you'll accept whatever their terms are to get it.

The same goes for Neverwinter Night whose designers/developer are BioWare but the publishers are Infogrames (originally it was Interplay but the relationship soured between Interplay and BioWare).

I didn't know. I really don't understand the dynamics of computer games. I just play them.

If you still don't like it, talk to Sovereign Press.

I don't like it, but WotC would be the ones I would talk to. Sovereign Press can't help it if WotC put the squeeze on them for more money on Sovereign's enterprise to get Dragonlance 3E out there.

Is there anything else you wish to bash Wizards for?

Not that I can think of. I'm just stating how it is and my opinion on that. Is there anything else you wish to bash me for?

 

[jaerdaph]

Sorry. I'm still not seeing why this is "sleezy".

Try going over to the SRD and Modern SRD pages, and the OGL and d20 License as well. Pretty gosh darn generous if you ask me....

 

[Alzrius]

To reiterate, I think its sleazy because WotC is doing virtually none of the work on the main product, and is making sure it gets most of the money for it. How is that not unfair? How is that related to anything in the d20 licenses?

WotC should be paid for use of their intellectual property, thats one thing. Its quite another for them to insist on such an arrangement that results in them receiving all the money on a book that they published but didn't write. Sovereign Press employees wrote the new book and they won't see a dime for that effort when the revenues on it come in, because WotC is taking it all. That's sleazy.

 

[jaerdaph]

To reiterate, I think its sleazy because WotC is doing virtually none of the work on the main product, and is making sure it gets most of the money for it. How is that not unfair? How is that related to anything in the d20 licenses?

WotC should be paid for use of their intellectual property, thats one thing. Its quite another for them to insist on such an arrangement that results in them receiving all the money on a book that they published but didn't write. Sovereign Press employees wrote the new book and they won't see a dime for that effort when the revenues on it come in, because WotC is taking it all. That's sleazy.

I know this is going to sound negative and like I'm bashing you, but it really isn't so just take my word for it

Sovereign Press (are the writers the owners or employees? That's an important difference) doesn't seem to mind the arrangement, so why do you? Don't forget, writers contract at a set price per word, or if they are in-house, get a salary no matter what. I seriously doubt that anyone who wrote it didn't get paid one way or the other.

Again I have to ask, why is that sleezy? As I said before, it's WotC's IP, and theirs to license, and it has value in its following. Why shouldn't they get the lion's share of the profits for their property? George Lucas certainly does for Star Wars, an even hotter licensed property.

Anyhow, no flame intended. Peace

 

[Sagan Darkside]

Sovereign Press employees wrote the new book and they won't see a dime for that effort when the revenues on it come in, because WotC is taking it all.

Where are you getting this information from?

Sovreign Press must be major idiots to agree to such a thing.

Unless you are just making this up- then they are not the ones who are major idiots.

sd

 

[Ranger REG]

To reiterate, I think its sleazy because WotC is doing virtually none of the work on the main product, and is making sure it gets most of the money for it. How is that not unfair? How is that related to anything in the d20 licenses?

WotC should be paid for use of their intellectual property, thats one thing. Its quite another for them to insist on such an arrangement that results in them receiving all the money on a book that they published but didn't write. Sovereign Press employees wrote the new book and they won't see a dime for that effort when the revenues on it come in, because WotC is taking it all. That's sleazy.

How can it be sleazy? Wizards have been hiring freelance authors to write for them using work for hire contracts. It's the same with other publishing companies.

Plus, Wizards owned Dragonlance IP.

You think that Paramount is not going to profit from the sale of Star Trek RPG by Decipher, even though Decipher wrote and publish the books using their own money? Do you think that Tolkien Enterprise is sleazy to let Decipher publish a RPG using LOTR IP?

Stop calling it sleazy. No one put a gun to Sovereign Press and demand they market Dragonlance. If you own Sovereign Press then you should do something about it.

 

[Alzrius]

We don't know that Sovereign minds the deal or not. We just know that they entered into the agreement anyway. The reason I personally find this upsetting is, as I've said before, this is the reason we don't see more 2E campaigns brought up to 3E.

I'm getting this information on a recent interview that was done with Jim Butler, in which he said that that was the new WotC policy on updating old worlds, and that thats the reason we don't have more of them in 3E now. There were several companies looking into both Dark Sun and Planescape in 3E around 2001 (I asked a few third-party publishers at GenCon that year, and they told me so). But now, no one is touching them at all, and we know why.

The reason this seems wrong to me is that Sovereign Press had their people write the new Dragonlance book, and while those writers doubtlessly received money for that, Sovereign wasn't allowed to publish what they had written, and thus the company won't receive any money on that. They paid the writers, but earned no money on the work the writers did for them. Instead, WotC, who did none of the work, will earn the money on every sold copy of the book. Sovereign would have published the book if they were allowed to to make the money on it, while paying WotC a modest licensing fee, instead, WotC is collecting all the cash on the book since they're the publisher.

WotC has made the deal being that Sovereign isn't getting any returns on the project they initiated. That is sleazy business practices. If they had made the same deal to Sword & Sorcery Studios, we very well might not have seen Ravenloft 3E.

REG, you keep talking about Sovereign doing something about it. Understand, there is nothing they can do! WotC holds all the cards there since its their IP, and because of that they made the only deal available an unfavorable one for Sovereign. They were just big enough and concerned enough with the fans to take the deal anyway, despite it being financially bad for them.

 

[Mouseferatu]

They were just big enough and concerned enough with the fans to take the deal anyway, despite it being financially bad for them.

Meaning no disrespect at all to the folks at Sovereign, who I have no doubt are all great people, but this is just silly. A small company writes and puts together a book of that size because they believe the eventual profits on it will be worthwhile. Sure, they may also have wanted to make fans happy--that's just good business--but that's not why they did it. If they didn't think it would be profitable, even under WotC's deal, they wouldn't have done it.

 

[Alzrius]

Meaning no disrespect at all to the folks at Sovereign, who I have no doubt are all great people, but this is just silly. A small company writes and puts together a book of that size because they believe the eventual profits on it will be worthwhile. Sure, they may also have wanted to make fans happy--that's just good business--but that's not why they did it. If they didn't think it would be profitable, even under WotC's deal, they wouldn't have done it.

It may seem silly, but lets examine the facts here: They wrote the book. They're publishing the support products. They aren't receiving revenues on the main campaign book, the most profitable book in the campaign line.

Obviously they aren't going to undertake a deal that they feel will be ultimately unprofitable. They aren't in the business to lose money. They probably feel (I think rightly) that the Dragonlance support products will make up for earning nothing on the main book, ultimately earning them a net profit, but the fact is their first move on Dragonlance is going to be a financial hit for them, not a gain.

 

[Dragonhelm]

Hello, all. For those that don't know me, I'm the co-chair of the Whitestone Council, which heads up both Dragonlance.com and the Dragonlance Nexus. We're pitching in and helping Sov. Press with the DLCS.

Ranger REG pointed me in this direction, and I wanted to respond to the basic issue here.

The basic issue, if I understand correctly, is the assumption that WotC is reaping the rewards off of someone else's work and are not contributing or assisting in the production of the DLCS. This simply is not true.

Yes, the good folks at Sov. Press are writing the book. However, WotC are the ones editing the book, they're the ones providing art, they're the ones publishing and distributing the book.

All in all, it is a cooperative venture. I think that you will find that the end result will be the best of both Dragonlance and Dungeons and Dragons.

--Dragonhelm