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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Vpenman" data-source="post: 455330" data-attributes="member: 6794">Fast Learner,If you look at what actually happened, I believe you will find that Hasbro announced it was going to sell off its electronic gaming rights in Dec. of 2000 and then announced it had sold those rights in Jan. of 2001 (<a href="http://www.corporate-ir.net/ireye/ir_site.zhtml?ticker=HAS&script=461&layout=-6&item_id=148123" target="_blank">www.corporate-ir.net/ireye/ir_site.zhtml?ticker=HAS&script=461&layout=-6&item_id=148123</a>).  The press release makes it clear this included the rights to Wizards of the Coast intellectual property.  It is not credible to believe the people working on Master Tools were unaware of this sale. However, at least until June, 2001, updates continued to be released that reported work being done on the mapping utility, monster scans, etc. It was not until sometime in July that somebody said "Wait a minute".Clearly WotC retained the rights to do a 3rd Edition D&D utility or else E-Tools would not have been released. I suspect, but do not know, that when this was allowed in the Infogrames deal, the lawyers involved reviewed the pertinent contract and specifications for Master Tools and gave their okay to them.  I admit this is speculation on my part, but I believe this is much more likely than Infogrames saying, "Yeah, go ahead, you can do a utility" without bothering to find out what would be in that utility.I was at Gamma in March, 2001, when TSR told the distribubtors Master Tools would be released at GenCon. This was two months after the Infogrames sale. A press release was issued promising an August ship of Master tools, and, as I said, the project updates continued to sing that product's praises into June.In August, I was at GenCon 2001 and saw a demonstration of the character generation utility. That character generator was no where near being ready to be shipped at that time. Personally, I believe something happened in the June - July, 2001, time frame that revealed that project was neither as far along as had been reported and was not the project Hasbro/Wotc thought was being developed.I admit this is speculation on my part, but I believe it is unusually accurate speculation.BTW: I have been developing software projects for over 20 years myself and, in addition to a wide variety of games on a number of platforms, these include the Dungeon Master's Assistant program (published by SSI), the original Core Rules CD program (published by TSR), and the Core Rules 2.0 and its Expansion programs (published by WotC).Victor</blockquote>

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