Arthaus reverts rights to Ravenloft and Gamma World back to Wotc

[Ghostwind]

Arthaus Reverts Rights to RAVENLOFT® and GAMMA WORLD® to Wizards of the Coast

Sword & Sorcery Studios to release electronic manuscript for VAN RICHTEN’S GUIDE TO THE MISTS

Atlanta, GA and Renton, WA; August 15, 2005 — Arthaus Publishing, Inc. and Wizards of the Coast, Inc. today announced that they have reached an agreement for the reversion of rights to the RAVENLOFT and GAMMA WORLD campaign settings. Wizards of the Coast has tentatively agreed to allow White Wolf, which solicits and sells all Arthaus products, to continue to sell back stock in both lines under its Sword & Sorcery umbrella brand through June of 2006.

This reversion means that the RAVENLOFT supplement Van Richten’s Guide to the Mists will not see print. Sword & Sorcery Studios will release the unproofed manuscript (by authors Carla Hollar and Rucht Lilavivat and outgoing developers Jackie Cassada and Nicky Rea) as a free download available at <http://www.swordsorcery.com/>. The manuscript will be available this September.

“It has been a pleasure to publish and work on these two classic properties,” said Stewart Wieck, Managing Editor of Sword & Sorcery Studios. “These are icons of the RPG culture, and I think we did them justice, added to their lore, and gave them a fresh treatment for this generation of gamers.”

Arthaus Publishing licensed the rights to RAVENLOFT, the gothic horror brand of DUNGEONS & DRAGONS®, in 2001 and—under the Sword & Sorcery banner—has released 19 different products in the line over the last four years. Van Richten’s Guide to the Mists was to be the twentieth product in the line. Arthaus licensed GAMMA WORLD in 2002 and released six products in the line.

“Sword & Sorcery has done a great job with both lines,” said Rich Redman, Wizards of the Coast’s Assistant Brand Manager for Licensing. “We never had any doubts that these lines were in good hands.”

No real surprise here. Now I have a real excuse to clearance price the Ravenloft and Gamma World books at the store.

 

[Voadam]

Will they lose the rights to sell the pdfs on dtrpg.com as well then?

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Hmm, interesting. I always liked Ravenloft, but never managed maintain momentum with any of my campaigns. As for Gamma World, I passed on this current incarnation.

I'm not surprised about Ravenloft, though. Heroes of Horror looks like it's set to be a generic version of Ravenloft.

 

[Darth Mikey]

THANK YOU GOD!!!

"Great Job" my ass. White Wolf completely buggered Gamma World. Not only did they botch the setting, but the books themselves are misleading and completely useless.

Gamma World had two key concepts throughout the previous editions. One, anything goes fun. You did not play GW for gritty, realistic Post-Apocalyptic roleplaying. If you want that play Twilight 2000. You played Gamma World so that you could play bizarre characters fighting wierd menaces and encountering robots, mutants and strange artifacts.

Second, you played GW so you could have strangely mutated characters and NPC's. Gutting the mutation system in GW is like taking the magic out of D&D. Sure you can do it, but why would you?

Also, the amount of typos was mindboggling. In some cases, you have to read two sentences past to figure out what they were trying to say in another sentence.

The incompetence in publishing was matched only by their indifference and lack of support. The official WW GW site has not been updated since the initial launch.

The rule books themselves don't offer a setting. They offer bits of settings and tons of advice on how to run a RPG in general. While stuff like that can be helpful, that's not what I paid my money for.

I dropped my money on the game, and with each book I kept hoping it would improve. I kept hoping that maybe WW would listen to the gamers and "fix" the damage. Of course, that didn't happen and now I've got 20-30 pounds of wasted paper sitting on my shelves.

Now I have a real excuse to clearance price the Ravenloft and Gamma World books at the store.

Hmm... you should just put them in the restrooms at GenCon, in case they run out of toilet paper.

 

[Turanil]

I was never interested in Ravenloft, and my curiosity is just midly aroused by Gamma World. Nonetheless, I am interested in this info: does it means, for instance, that WotC thinks of producing its own rulebooks for GW?? If it happens to be the case, the precedent Arthaus GWd20 books might become collectors even if they are crap. In any case, I am looking forward to what WotC comes up with GW.

 

[The Grumpy Celt]

So, no love for Gamma World? What about Ravenloft? Was it not selling, or was the contract simply up?

 

[Cynik]

What do you think, that WotC will do with the ravenloft setting? Sell the rights to another company? Publish products themselves? Or simply take it to the grave?

Cynik

 

[Pinotage]

So does anybody know if WotC are going to continue supporting Ravenloft? Or is it going the way of Darksun and Planescape?

Pinotage

Edit: Wee! Crossposting! Welcome to the boards, Cynik!

 

[Ghostwind]

My guess would be it will no longer be supported.

 

[Ratenef]

I would wager by the dripping vitriol of Darth Mikey's comments above, that it was wise of me to steer clear of the Gamma World setting this time around.

I have suspected for some time that Arthaus was closing shop for the following reasons

1 - they haven't mentioned any forthcoming products for the last six months or so
2 - they have been having a fire sale on the stock they do have (40% for any of the older books) for the last few months
3 - there was rumours abounding that the Gazatteer books weren't going any further do to conflicts between the "Kargatane" and the publishers(?)

I am sorry to see this happen as I was very impressed with what Arthaus was bringing out and was always looking forward to the next release.

Now that WotC has bought back the rights I wonder if they will put them on the market for another company to try their hand or if they percieve enough of a market to publish stuff themselves.