Dungeon #110

[NytCrawler]

NytCrawler, Grummore, welcome to the boards.


But please tone down the rhetoric a little, everyone. Thanks.

- Darkness

Sorry, this whole "official", "unofficial" thing just sorts of gets under my skin.

So does the whole "professional" thing as well, but I'm willing to let that go, heh.

 

[NytCrawler]

Well, apparently I've just been schooled. I can admit when I'm wrong. See, kids! This is why dialogue is important! At any rate, I found the legal notice on the DS fan site interesting:

Wow. Does anyone have specific details regarding this?

Since I've worked internally with athas.org for almost what, two 1/2 years now, I can probably answer a few questions, but you might want to email gab@athas.org if it deals with legal matters since he is the legal guru of the group.

 

[Erebus]

Since I've worked internally with athas.org for almost what, two 1/2 years now, I can probably answer a few questions, but you might want to email gab@athas.org if it deals with legal matters since he is the legal guru of the group.

Well, basically I was just wondering how WotC or Paizo could publish material in the magaines? Did they have approval from athas.org or was there some other way around it? It's happened on numerous occassions before, as well, has it not?

 

[WanderingMonster]

This means that fan-created add-ons (such as new net books, adventures, etc.) are jointly owned by both Wizards of the Coast and the creator; neither can do anything outside the official website without the permission of the other.

Okay, so maybe this is why Paizo is printing the conversions? Since it can act independently of the website and WotC. If I read it correctly, if Wizards wanted to print any DS materials, they would need athas.org's permission. But Paizo can do it, and it's official by virtue of the Dungeons and Dragons logo. Interesting.

I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong.

I'm sure it must be frustrating for athas.org to be trumped by the official D&D periodicals. On the bright side, the renewed interest in Dark Sun might attract new visitors to the site who are looking for something beyond what was presented in the magazines. So from that perspective, it might be a renaissance of sorts.

 

[flip]

Just gonna weigh in and clarify a few things.

by way of introduction, I'm one of the greybeards of the DS community, and a founding staffer of athas.org ...

First point: Monsters. There's a very simple reason that Dungeon didn't look at or consider our published monsters: They weren't published when the article was written. This is a magazine folks; they have to do a lot more layout than we do. The article deadline was probably at least two months before the print run began, and there were probably a couple of rounds of editing that went in before that.

While portions of Terrors of Athas have been available for a long time, they were never really published ... preview versions, and some individual monsters, yes, but not exactly easily available. The full version wasn't posted until a month ago. There's no way it could have been used, or referenced by, Dungeon.

Second: I spoke to the Editor in Chief at Pazio several months ago. He informed me that Dave Noonan has made it a point not to read or consult any of the athas.org material. This is likely from a CYA perspective, in the case that we might decide to flip out an accuse him of stealing our work ... or to avoid doing so subconciously.

Because of Dragon/Dungeon's publishing policy, they couldn't take the approach of just talking to us first. Essentially, they can't/won't publish anything that has been published elsewhere (even on the Internet) ... some kind of Copyright issue; I think they claim ownership of all submissions.

Third: The terms of our original agreement with Wizards state that all of the Dead-Worlds sites were the custodians of their particular world, and were authorized to produce official material. There are certain limitations on this:

We can't make money off the setting. If we charge anything for products, it's materials only. Our primary method of distribution is on-line. We can't kill off or otherwise majorly affect any iconic characters. We have to use D&D. We can't run our own services (bbs, web-based chat, etc), we're to direct fans to the WotC provided boards.

Not everything published on the site is official: only our PDFs are actually considered to be official products (not a WotC policy there, it's one of ours).

I'm not demanding that Pazio should have used our material. I understand the reasons and the rationale. I would have liked it if we were invited to help contribute.

 

[NytCrawler]

On the bright side, the renewed interest in Dark Sun might attract new visitors to the site who are looking for something beyond what was presented in the magazines. So from that perspective, it might be a renaissance of sorts.

This is true, however, they didn't give very much mention to us from what I understand.

The only mention in the Dungeon side was in the adventure, not sure about the Dragon side.

 

[Grummore]

Well, sorry here for having been a bit cranky

While I am not of athas.org team, I am one of those who sticked to all the discussions and board since the beginning. Thanks Flip for having given these information, but again, I feel as him, sad to see two differents conversions going on, while there could have been only one.

 

[Dragonblade]

Second: I spoke to the Editor in Chief at Pazio several months ago. He informed me that Dave Noonan has made it a point not to read or consult any of the athas.org material. This is likely from a CYA perspective, in the case that we might decide to flip out an accuse him of stealing our work ... or to avoid doing so subconciously.

Because of Dragon/Dungeon's publishing policy, they couldn't take the approach of just talking to us first. Essentially, they can't/won't publish anything that has been published elsewhere (even on the Internet) ... some kind of Copyright issue; I think they claim ownership of all submissions.

This makes sense to me. Basically since the work on your site is jointly owned by the authors and WotC, Paizo can't publish any of it without your permission and WotC's permission. Also copyrights can get complicated.

If Dave Noonan writes his own Dark Sun material without having looked at the material at athas.org, then Paizo doesn't have to worry about securing the rights of a third party author. They can write whatever they want and stick the Dark Sun label on it, since they already have WotC's permission to publish Dark Sun related material.

 

[Alzrius]

The question that still seems most pertinent though is: if materials in an official fansite and Dragon/Dungeon clash, which is taken as being more official?

I still say that the magazines win out, since canonity (which, make no mistake, is the same as "official" in this context) is source-based (e.g. authority on what is and is not canon flows from a single authoritative source, in this case WotC), and the magazines are closer to that source than the fan sites (given that the Paizo people, and the entire organization, regularly consult and work with WotC, trade materials, collaborate, etc).

Before this sets off any flames, I want to point out that this is in NO way a judgement call on the quality of either works! The people at athas.org are nothing less than exemplary in the work they've done, and set a standard that I only wish the other official fan sites could live up to. Official doesn't necessarily mean something is better than something else, just that it's more official.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

The question that still seems most pertinent though is: if materials in an official fansite and Dragon/Dungeon clash, which is taken as being more official?

Something which the fansites can do which other "official" producers of material can't do (and often seemed not to care about as they cycled through new authors again and again) is reconcile differences. Dark Sun's publishing history is a lengthy list of conflicts of "fact". Athas.org can, and has, worked out wrinkles like this.


Eric Anondson (pseudo-retired Athas.org stiff)