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<blockquote data-quote="VelvetViolet" data-source="post: 9533405" data-attributes="member: 6686357">This is exactly why I think the rpg landscape is turning into gray sludge. Once a corpo publishes an idea, and they can publish a lot of ideas, now they can arbitrarily suppress the free speech of other creatives for the next 95 years for every idea they published. There are many great rpgs that got canceled by corporate malfeasance and now nobody can write anything even loosely similar out of the fear of possible litigation. This is bullcrap.This is pretty much a death knell for genres without much in the way of public domain resources, like scifi. All the cool stuff is copyrighted, and has usually been dragged through the mud by corpos too, but the best anyone can do now is yet another pastiche of Alien/Outland. What frustrates me is that this isn’t a problem for genres like urban fantasy or cryptid conspiracy. Those have tons of public domain resources, but nobody wants to make them. Unlike vulcans and klingons, nobody owns the chupacabra, the Roswell greys, vampires, witchcraft, leprechauns, etc. “Dark•Matter is problematic!” This is complete nonsense. How is it problematic for your game to have Rosicrucians, Templars, Freemasons, New World Order, Knights of Malta, etc. as conspiracies pursuing various agendas? If it really offends you that some of these share names with actual secret orders and mystery cults whose members don’t care about your hobby, then just make stuff up. Invent a fictional secret society claiming descent from Ancient Egypt, or a fictional government agency, or a fictional pharma company that cuts up magical creatures. Just do something that brings some color to this gray lifeless media landscape.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="VelvetViolet, post: 9533405, member: 6686357"] This is exactly why I think the rpg landscape is turning into gray sludge. Once a corpo publishes an idea, and they can publish a lot of ideas, now they can arbitrarily suppress the free speech of other creatives for the next 95 years for every idea they published. There are many great rpgs that got canceled by corporate malfeasance and now nobody can write anything even loosely similar out of the fear of possible litigation. This is bullcrap. This is pretty much a death knell for genres without much in the way of public domain resources, like scifi. All the cool stuff is copyrighted, and has usually been dragged through the mud by corpos too, but the best anyone can do now is yet another pastiche of Alien/Outland. What frustrates me is that this isn’t a problem for genres like urban fantasy or cryptid conspiracy. Those have tons of public domain resources, but nobody wants to make them. Unlike vulcans and klingons, nobody owns the chupacabra, the Roswell greys, vampires, witchcraft, leprechauns, etc. “Dark•Matter is problematic!” This is complete nonsense. How is it problematic for your game to have Rosicrucians, Templars, Freemasons, New World Order, Knights of Malta, etc. as conspiracies pursuing various agendas? If it really offends you that some of these share names with actual secret orders and mystery cults whose members don’t care about your hobby, then just make stuff up. Invent a fictional secret society claiming descent from Ancient Egypt, or a fictional government agency, or a fictional pharma company that cuts up magical creatures. Just do [I]something[/I] that brings some color to this gray lifeless media landscape. [/QUOTE]

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