Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
ShortQuests -- individual adventure modules! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed to plug in to your game.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rotack23" data-source="post: 1220747" data-attributes="member: 15266">Just curious, is this fantasy book for you and your friends or are you planning on trying to get it published.No offense, but if you are trying to publish it, you just showed how naive you are. …1.) Sure the old edition stuff USED to have stuff from Lovecraft  and Moorecock in it as TSR writers thought it was “cool” to pay homage and get inspiration from their favorite writers, but they were pretty naïve at that point in their careers as well. After a chat from some copyright lawyers, future products didn’t include these critters unless a special deal was made.2.) Even if WotC granted you permission to use their ideas and name, (highly doubtful, they would have even less reason to say yes if your novel has less of tie-in than usual. That just opens the door for other fantasy writers to “borrow” from WotC for free. The SRD is different, that is designed so that WotC can focus on selling core books while 3rd party publishers take on riskier challenges and survive on thinner margins. And unless you are the next big fantasy writer, WotC is not going to risk their IP on an unknown, untested writer) a potential publisher would see it as a potential problem. Most publishing houses are very conservative and unless it is really worth the risk, they’d rather not deal with a story at all. 3.) Ever make a photocopy of a photocopy? It didn’t come out as good as the original did it? If you base your inspiration and research on gaming product, it is going to show in your novel, it will feel derivative. Take heart, there are successful writers who used to game, Raymond Feist and George RR Martin are the two off the top of my head. Feist even loosely based his novels off of his own game world. But I suggest that you read these two author’s books if you haven’t already.  I think you will see that their work has left their gaming roots way behind. While the fantasy genre is taking off these days, there are higher standards for fiction than in gaming. Some authors, such as Charles deLint, refuse to do write the standard fantasy set up because they only see themselves as mimicking JRRT when they try. Other authors won’t even read fantasy because they think the whole genre is derivative of LOTR. I think you should go ahead and write your fantasy story, but I think some good old fashioned mythology research and your own imagination will serve you better in the long run vs. filching WotC ideas as a sort of genre “shorthand” for any monsters you need.Good Luck</blockquote>

Verification