Ethics of publication
And there's where you're going to continue to disagree with rpace, Nightfall. You're not a freelancer. You're a consumer. You're going to get a quality piece of work from a company that you're a fan of. What's the problem?
But for those of us who do the work behind this, there is a problem. Rob Kuntz has no legal right to the City of Brass. Everyone is quite aware of this. He IS, however, the person who wrote the original D&D adventure. He is the author who brought the myth to the D&D world. His name is associated with the myth within the D&D world. Although not ownership, in terms of marketability, it's the same thing.
The law cannot support his claim to the material, but his name has been established with that product. He was contacted by NG to write a new module based on the original for 3E publication. Both parties agree that the CoB release date was pushed back until after other publications like the Maze series (so don't say he couldn't deliver). Ties were severed and the project goes on anyway.
As a freelancer, that worries me. If I publish work and am contacted to do a new version of that work, regardless if I have actual ownership, my name is associated with that work. rpace is right, Rob will have trouble shopping the project to other publishers because they don't want to overlap identical projects. That will diminish sales. No company, not even those that had contacted him directly with interest in the project, want to take on something that won't sell well.
Consumers are going to get what they want, but I as someone who is still working within the industry (including being contacted to convert Rob's material to fit the rules that I know much better than he), I am nervous of a similar situation happening to me in the future.
And there's where you're going to continue to disagree with rpace, Nightfall. You're not a freelancer. You're a consumer. You're going to get a quality piece of work from a company that you're a fan of. What's the problem?
But for those of us who do the work behind this, there is a problem. Rob Kuntz has no legal right to the City of Brass. Everyone is quite aware of this. He IS, however, the person who wrote the original D&D adventure. He is the author who brought the myth to the D&D world. His name is associated with the myth within the D&D world. Although not ownership, in terms of marketability, it's the same thing.
The law cannot support his claim to the material, but his name has been established with that product. He was contacted by NG to write a new module based on the original for 3E publication. Both parties agree that the CoB release date was pushed back until after other publications like the Maze series (so don't say he couldn't deliver). Ties were severed and the project goes on anyway.
As a freelancer, that worries me. If I publish work and am contacted to do a new version of that work, regardless if I have actual ownership, my name is associated with that work. rpace is right, Rob will have trouble shopping the project to other publishers because they don't want to overlap identical projects. That will diminish sales. No company, not even those that had contacted him directly with interest in the project, want to take on something that won't sell well.
Consumers are going to get what they want, but I as someone who is still working within the industry (including being contacted to convert Rob's material to fit the rules that I know much better than he), I am nervous of a similar situation happening to me in the future.
