TSR Did TSR Sue Regularly?

Shannon Appelcline (Designers & Dragons) talks about it here! With infographics!

"Every company interacts with the rest of the industry in a different way. For Chaosium it's been more than 40 years of licensing, while Target Games created and defined roleplaying in its home country of Sweden. Dave Nalle's Ragnarok Enterprises instead influenced designers and publishers through interactions in A&Eand Abyss. As for TSR, the founder of our industry: as wags have put it: they sue regularly."

Advanced Designers & Dragons #47: TSR Connections: Licenses & Lawsuits - RPGnet

They also sued WotC once!

 

[Kimberly Burgess]

Marc doesn't list Space 1889 on his FFE site, but I would not be surprised if it pops up there in the future. This is his current listing for the CD Roms. He has some stuff offered on DriveThruRPG as GDW, but his CDs are a much superior deal at $35 a disc with a 4th disc in each order being free. He has HERO Traveller and GURPS Traveller.

FFE- CDROMs

 

[billd91]

Wow. That list of CDs has really expanded. Traveller Apocrypha?!? Very nice! I just wish he could get Digest Group Publications material. I’d buy to for sure.

 

[Kimberly Burgess]

Wow. That list of CDs has really expanded. Traveller Apocrypha?!? Very nice! I just wish he could get Digest Group Publications material. I’d buy to for sure.

Curious, DGP wrote Megatraveller, and in the directory for Megatraveller is a folder called Licensed Covers, where I found the covers for DGP's books listed here: List of Traveller Books - Wikipedia

Yet aside from Digest Group's Jounal issues 3 and 4, I have no content to associate with those covers. Very weird. Why include the covers at all? Solely for the sake of completion?

Digest Group's Journal issues 3 and 4 are here in their complete text.

 

[billd91]

Curious, DGP wrote Megatraveller, and in the directory for Megatraveller is a folder called Licensed Covers, where I found the covers for DGP's books listed here: List of Traveller Books - Wikipedia

Yet aside from Digest Group's Jounal issues 3 and 4, I have no content to associate with those covers. Very weird. Why include the covers at all? Solely for the sake of completion?

Digest Group's Journal issues 3 and 4 are here in their complete text.

I was a subscriber to the MegaTraveller Journal back in the day so I've got the hard copies. Lords of Thunder in MTJ4 was excellent. I'd have loved to see them complete and publish Onnesium Quest, which appeared in some of their ads but apparently never got farther than a few notes.

 

[Kimberly Burgess]

Very nice!

I found this on the Traveller Wiki: Digest Group Publications - Traveller

DGP / FFE Limited Permission​

Roger's Official Permission to Marc Miller
Date: Friday 1 Nov 1996
Dear Stuart and TML'ers,

I wrote a detailed letter about DGP's copyright policies on TML awhile back (with which Marc Miller concurred), but there still seems to be some lingering confusion concerning the matter in public Traveller discussions, so I'll clarify the situation again. I think you are going to love this:

MARC MILLER HAS DGP'S PERMISSION to use background data (UWP lists, planet names, sector maps, etc.) from DGP's Traveller works in any way that he sees fit in printed Traveller 4 publications!

In addition, Marc Miller has been given a free hand to dip into DGP's Traveller archives for inspiration in developing background material for his new incarnation of the Traveller role-playing game. This way, he can keep Traveller 4 consistent with what has come before!!!

The races (the Geonee, the Brinn, etc.), the places (Vland, Shudusham, Capital), and the things (robots, equipment, etc.) which you loved from DGP's works still exist in the overall Traveller milieu. I don't believe Marc has any intention of changing this (he's DGP's number one fan!).

Traveller has been around a long time, and it would be a shame to invalidate the thousands of pages that have been written for the milieu. Marc knows what he's doing, and he knows what you love. A lot of what has come before will not exist in Milieu Zero, but the future has not been erased.

And the best years are yet to come.

Sincerely,
Roger Sanger,
Digest Group Publications
[originally appeared on the Traveller Mailing List, Digest #641, Friday 1 Nov 1996]

FFE Policy on DGP (1998 to Present)​

OFF-LIMITS: FFE's basic policy is that DGP materials are off limits to be quoted or re-written as new products. Universe elements from DGP materials still exist in the OTU, and may be included as story elements in new materials, but DGP storylines are considered ended. New stories should be written and the old DGP ones left alone. DGP illustrations or text may be paraphrased or quoted in limited amounts at the Traveller RPG Wiki, but not off the wiki. If in doubt, please speak with one of the moderators or simply paraphrase. So, the wonderful elements of DGP materials are still around in the OTU, but we must be careful in using them, be respectful in how we quote them, and cooperative with DGP's property owner.

- Maksim-Smelchak (talk) 11:00, 13 February 2019 (EST)

 

[RealAlHazred]

On dark days, I think about how much more Traveller stuff would be available right now if they hadn't been forced to spend tens of thousands of dollars on pointless legal battles. There was a stable of incredibly creative, extremely productive people in the Traveller fandom, who created dozens of 'zines and fan publications; second only to D&D, IMO. Imagine if there'd been money to coordinate and edit those materials into more official (or at least, high production value) products.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Steve Jackson has the rights to TFT back and even has a zine, adventures, and even third party content/Kickstarters which I never thought I’d see.

Yeah, but these days its competing with a million other fantasy games, and the early 80's vibe of it is mostly likely to appeal to people who like that sort of old-school-but-not-D&D thing.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I don't even really remember being aware of exactly what GDW and TSR were doing. By '96 I'd already tired of 2e entirely and by then Gygax was a guy who'd been basically out of circulation for a decade. Nothing he did post-TSR really registered, it just wasn't, frankly, all that good or relevant to the state of RPGs at that point. He was basically still living in 1980. So I guess none of my group really much registered whatever was going on there, and we'd LONG ago got everything Traveller we ever needed. I did pick up a copy of 2300. Wasn't that impressed, and never did care much for Aftermath and its focus on the minutia of different guns. That game totally fascinated my brother-in-law, so we played a couple times perfunctorily.

Aftermath was FGU. I think you meant to refer to Twilight 2000, which was GDWs immediately-post-apocalypse military-focused game.

 

[Thomas Shey]

What do you think? How did it turn out? Are the rules still essentially the same?

Very mildly cleaned up apparently.

 

[Thomas Shey]

heh, Good ole Aftermath. Talk about a confusing game at the time, we had a guy who ran it around the time it was new. Aftermath and one other post apocalyptic rpg that slipped my... oh wait I remember know The Morrow Project. The guy was a big fan of anything post apocalyptic. heh.

I still think people thought Aftermath was more complicated than in practice, it was. My guess is it was presentation problems.