Are the Retro Clones doing well?

[Raven Crowking]

"2e" is not a Trademark, is it?

 

[Nikosandros]

"2e" is not a Trademark, is it?

No, but in the linked post on DF there is explicit mention of AD&D. I'm actually unclear if the limitation extends beyond the document itself, but I see that, for example, the authors of OSRIC are very careful about that.

 

[Raven Crowking]

And wisely so.


RC

 

[Aurumvorax]

D&D (with the ampersand) is explicitly trademarked therefor it's safe to assume AD&D is. While writing my retro-clone, I expressly avoid the mention of anything that directly refers to the old game going so far as to call the product I'm basing it off of "Zeb Cook's 2nd Edition Ruleset" and the original D&D "The Original Fantasy Game." I even changed THAC0 because, while I'm not certain the term is trademarked, it is possible under the trademark rules (it's a unique term) and I've never seen THAC0 used outside of 2nd Edition. Even other retro-clones and publications, including HackMaster which I would expect to have it, don't use it.

As for 2E, I'm pretty sure they don't as it's a pretty common phrasing. 3E isn't trademark and neither is "3rd Edition" or even "4th Edition."

 

[paigeoliver]

In Red Box Fantasy I just refer to D&D as "The Game" and usually mention "older versions" and "newer versions". Everyone knows what you are talking about. It isn't like a large amount of people are going to end up playing our retro-games with no knowledge of D&D.

D&D (with the ampersand) is explicitly trademarked therefor it's safe to assume AD&D is. While writing my retro-clone, I expressly avoid the mention of anything that directly refers to the old game going so far as to call the product I'm basing it off of "Zeb Cook's 2nd Edition Ruleset" and the original D&D "The Original Fantasy Game." I even changed THAC0 because, while I'm not certain the term is trademarked, it is possible under the trademark rules (it's a unique term) and I've never seen THAC0 used outside of 2nd Edition. Even other retro-clones and publications, including HackMaster which I would expect to have it, don't use it.

As for 2E, I'm pretty sure they don't as it's a pretty common phrasing. 3E isn't trademark and neither is "3rd Edition" or even "4th Edition."

 

[SSquirrel]

4E makes a lot of inherent assumptions about player strength and has an extremely dense system of options. This makes for a very fun game. But the same richness makes tweaking it into a "grim and gitty" rules system complicated unless there is a simple trick that is easy to balance.

Remove the Divine power source and/or cut the number and effectiveness of healing surges in half. I'm curious how Ken Hood would go about converting his Revised Grim n Gritty rules for 3.5 to 4E.

 

[Hairfoot]

It'll be interesting to see how Dark Sun is handled in regard to divine power sources. It could either provide a model for flexibility in 4E or establish that from now on all settings will be the same thing with a different paint job.

 

[JohnRTroy]

I do know that C&C is successful enough to support 2 full time employees, but that is still far less than the success of Mongoose or Paizo. As for Kenzer, I do not know, but I do get the impression that no one has quit their day jobs, but I have not seen anything specifically stated by them.

Steve Chenault, by the way, is married to a full-time lawyer, so I suspect in much of the industry, "full-time" employment might be very dependent on what the wife does (if they are married) or what standard of living you wish to do. I think the amount of third-party publishers that can live on their own salaries would be counted on a single hand.

That's probably true for most 3rd party publishers, including a lot of the d20 publishers. Necromancer was one of the "biggest" (until Paizo) but Clark Peterson was one of the few publishers I saw be up front about the situation by admitting to a day job. I think that is the true reality of the game publishing market today.

I have to wonder how Freelancers pay the bills--do they have day jobs? Do they have writing jobs?

 

[pawsplay]

You must admit, Retro Clones would be a pretty good name for a band.

 

[Nellisir]

You must admit, Retro Clones would be a pretty good name for a band.

Retro-Clones of the Lost Caverns would be better.