Nikchick
Explorer
Because of the current climate with D20, I'll be frank in saying that we played this one as close to the vest as possible at first, to avoid a situation where someone with more resources could negate the work we were doing on this book by beating us to market with a similar project of their own. It's the nature of the beast that d20 publishers are releasing products along very similar veins (looking at GR's schedule, there are already multiple competing publishers who have also planned Dwarf books, Witch books, Superheroes games, and so on) and while a certain amount of parallel development is to be expected we really wanted to avoid any sort of predatory, adversarial situation cropping up.
Once we passed the critical stage of development on the books, we contacted each of the publishers whose content we intended to include. One thing Chris wanted to do was make sure that the spells were credited properly: if a publisher wanted the spells to be credited to the author, Chris wanted to get those authors listed! He's very much a "credit where credit is due" kind of guy.
We also specifically asked permission to reference the other publishers' books in the back cover text, because that's not something you can just automatically do.
What we found once we contacted the individual publishers is that overwhelmingly they were happy to help. Some folks even offered to send us electronic copies of their OGC in the future, for future volumes. Only one publisher expressed concern about the project, but we were able to have polite and reasonable negotiations over the material and ease their concerns.
I'm very proud of Green Ronin's cooperative relationship with other d20 publishers. I would much rather find a way to work together, or side-by-side in a non-adversarial way than jockey for position in a ruthless, cut-throat manner. The industry is too small to go around pissing everyone off! If I wanted a life of corporate shenanigans, I would pick a different career (like one with financial rewards for being a backstabbing ****).
Regards,
Nicole
Once we passed the critical stage of development on the books, we contacted each of the publishers whose content we intended to include. One thing Chris wanted to do was make sure that the spells were credited properly: if a publisher wanted the spells to be credited to the author, Chris wanted to get those authors listed! He's very much a "credit where credit is due" kind of guy.

What we found once we contacted the individual publishers is that overwhelmingly they were happy to help. Some folks even offered to send us electronic copies of their OGC in the future, for future volumes. Only one publisher expressed concern about the project, but we were able to have polite and reasonable negotiations over the material and ease their concerns.
I'm very proud of Green Ronin's cooperative relationship with other d20 publishers. I would much rather find a way to work together, or side-by-side in a non-adversarial way than jockey for position in a ruthless, cut-throat manner. The industry is too small to go around pissing everyone off! If I wanted a life of corporate shenanigans, I would pick a different career (like one with financial rewards for being a backstabbing ****).

Regards,
Nicole