D&D General If you were made president of D&D, what would you do?

[Staffan]

I wouldn't take someone non-authoritative's word on that. Do you have some proof on that like a statement from WotC?

This thread quotes Keith Baker as saying Wizards wholly owns Eberron. Keith got paid pretty well for it – I believe the Setting Search prize was $100k, in 2002 money, plus I'm assuming he's been decently compensated for the work he's done as a freelancer for Wizards since. And Eberron isn't just Keith's baby – there's a lot of James Wyatt and some of Bill Slavicsek in the original book as well. Keith has never to my knowledge complained about unfair treatment by Wizards – the closest I've seen has been the Patreon post quoted in the thread above, where he laments that unrelated actions by Wizards has made him consider severing ties.

And this page talks about Ed Greenwood selling all rights to the Realms to TSR for $5k in 1987 dollars (well, $4k for the material and $1k for work as a design consultant).

 

[bmfrosty]

Trademark Status & Document Retrieval

View attachment 358941

It didn't occur to me that ustpo had a reasonable to search site. I'll believe you if you say you be checked them all there.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

Adventures in both settings (Lankhmar and Conan) were written for 1e, meaning TSR had some sort of license to use those IPs.

Yes, but they were never settings owned or created by TSR/WOTC

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

I wouldn't take someone non-authoritative's word on that. Do you have some proof on that like a statement from WotC?

Both Ed and Keith have said so. I don’t need to do your research for you.

My statement is verifiable as the truth. I have no idea where you got your idea from, but it was clearly not authoritative.

 

[bmfrosty]

Both Ed and Keith have said so. I don’t need to do your research for you.

My statement is verifiable as the truth. I have no idea where you got your idea from, but it was clearly not authoritative.

Burden of proof is on you. You made a statement about WotC ownership about all settings. I'm pretty sure they own Blackmoor, Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, and Eberron outright. I think they probably own Mystara. Really don't know past that.

 

[Steampunkette]

It didn't occur to me that ustpo had a reasonable to search site. I'll believe you if you say you be checked them all there.

I gave both the link and a screenshot showing ownership. You don't have to believe me.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

Burden of proof is on you. You made a statement about WotC ownership about all settings. I'm pretty sure they own Blackmoor, Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, and Eberron outright. I think they probably own Mystara. Really don't know past that.

No - I don’t care. I know the answer and don’t need to convince people of the truth.

However, I am curious about why you don’t think they own outright: ravenloft, darksun, spelljammer, planescape, and the nentir vale. Those settings were created and only ever owned by TSR/WotC

 

[bmfrosty]

No - I don’t care. I know the answer and don’t need to convince people of the truth.

However, I am curious about why you don’t think they own outright: ravenloft, darksun, spelljammer, planescape, and the nentir vale. Those settings were created and only ever owned by TSR/WotC

I don't believe that they don't. I do believe that IP ownership is complicated and usually not settled until it's tested in court or stated by the creator of such to be owned by others. I do however believe that TSR had a bunch of legal BS happen under their management.

 

[Staffan]

The ownership of most of the settings isn't in question, because they were created by people employed by TSR and are thus work-for-hire. I've never even heard the suggestion that e.g. Rich Baker would have some ownership stake in Birthright. With the two settings created by outsiders, Forgotten Realms and Eberron, they bought the rights fair and square, and I've never heard or seen either Ed Greenwood or Keith Baker suggest that they feel they got a bad deal. In both cases, the setting as published is a combination of work done by the "creator" and TSR/Wizards folks, and I'm not just talking about fleshing out details. For example, the Manifest Zone podcast has a fairly early episode where they chat with the co-creators of Eberron, James Wyatt and Bill Slavicsek, about the influence they had on the setting, and some of the things considered fairly Eberron-defining are things Wyatt brought to the table – I think the warforged might have been his, for example, or at least he did some hefty work on them.

 

[GreyLord]

There used to be MtG novels too, but I haven't kept up to see if they're doing that any more. If anything, they probably remember that TSR imploded because of debt to Random House and they're probably gunshy about getting into a similar hole - or may have been blackballed by them after the bankruptcy.

I have seen a fair number of "young adult" books for D&D and other random books, but haven't seen the likes of the novels from back in the 90's, other than the recent two Dragonlance novels.

I believe the D&D novels are still available, or a lot of them. They have just changed in format and how they are sold. There are a TON of D&D novels availabe on Amazon in the Kindle format for example.