White Wolfs pay to play deal...

[Khairn]

I disagree on the "dumb move of the year" item.

We just finished watching the court case between Marvel & City of Heroes. White Wolf -HAS- to show that they are attempting to enforce their trademark, otherwise they lose the ability to sue other companies over its misuse.

That said, I don't think that WW has anyintention of actually enforcing this contract. In my opinion, it exists exactly so they DON'T have to enforce it in order to maintain their trademarks.

I understand that as well, but this is a publicity nightmare. Badly managed. dumb, dumb, dumb

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

I think the only unreasonable thing is that they say if you split the costs of a location to play among your players, you are paying to play and therefore need a license. I think if the license were to apply only to "for profit" games then it would not be too big a deal. Anyway, I would think in the end that most people will just ignore them and go on playing as they have done in the past. Can't see it as worth the effort of White Wolf enforcing the license.

 

[azmodean]

You see this a lot in the software world *cough*Microsoft*cough*, and I'd hoped not to see it elsewhere. If I'm running a WW game, the only input WW has in it is that I bought the rulebook from them, it's just ludicrous that they demand money if I use the contents of that book for commercial gain.

An analogy: I have quite a few programming manuals, do the publishers of these books have the right to demand that I purchase a liscense from them in order to use what I have learned? I think it is obvious that they do not, and I do not see how WW (or WOTC/Hasbro, whatever) is different.

As has been pointed out, if the company wants to start a series of sanctioned events, then they can impose whatever rules and/or fees they want in order for an event to be considered sanctioned, but demanding that you become liscensed for any and all WW games where money is paid is just silly.

 

[reveal]

I'd do it by sending notice to gaming stores that rent out rooms.


The merit of pay-for-play we can debate, but that's at least one way to enforce it.

Couldn't the stores just say they were renting space and the people in the room could do whatever they wanted? I can rent a ballroom and play basketball in it for as long as I am paying for as long as I don't mess up the room.

 

[DragonLancer]

After reading through that whole thread, seeing the comments pro and con, I likewise have to say that its a bad bad idea.

I used to play in a Cam Vampire LARP (only played for a year) and the money for playing was small and went towards hiring the venue, ink and paper for the printers, props, and fuel. The organisers made nothing out of it.

I can see what WW are trying to do but this is quite a poor way of doing it. Instead I can see this will hurt (not kill) their LARP games in the long run. In the time I played and for a while after it was quite obvious that many Vampire LARPers wanted nothing to do with the Camarilla organisation for various reasons.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

Couldn't the stores just say they were renting space and the people in the room could do whatever they wanted? I can rent a ballroom and play basketball in it for as long as I am paying for as long as I don't mess up the room.

Good point.

 

[wingsandsword]

If this was for Trademark protection reasons, why did they wait well more than a decade after publishing their first LARP books to do so?

White Wolf has proven itself very litigious in the past. They did sue Sony over Underworld, which was thrown out. They sued the Camarilla and forcibly absorbed it as a house organ, instead of a fan club that operated with WW's blessing. OWBN is likely to be wiped out by this, and as the Cams major competition, that may well be a goal of WW in this. To be honest, what I've heard from OWBN players is that it has a reputation about as bad as the Cam though.

I played in a large vampire larp here in Lexington that lasted for two and a half years, and we got players from around the state and from other larps who came. Of all of them, only two (both Storytellers) had any Camarilla experience, and neither was a current member (hint hint). The organization has a reputation of being munchkins, powergamers, extreme favoritism, and being very poorly organized (it's a very bad sign for what is supposed to be a large organization when I can find little about them on the web, and what I do find are web pages that haven't been updated in literally years). For the record, that larp didn't normally charge, we got the venue from the University (which since many of the players were members of the campus gaming club, wasn't a problem to make a request through them), and the ink & paper costs and other minor operating expenses were just soaked up by the ST's as the cost of gaming (a little like how a tabletop GM doesn't charge his PC's for the new books he buys).

Now, there was one time this larp did charge for an event, they rented the convention facilities of a local hotel and had a whole-weekend event, charging to cover the operating costs of renting the meeting space, since it wasn't cheap, that's it.

For legal reasons, it might, might be a wise idea, from a customer & public relations standpoint, it is an utter disaster.

 

[TerraDave]

Hmm.

From a PR point of view, it doesn't look very smooth. Sort of like when TSR was trying to shut down pretty much any D&D website...again for the purposes of protecting intellectual property.

There are plenty of examples of where you can purchase a book or other media, and then use it in an activity where you charge money without a license. I don't think that in any way endangers copyright. For example, I don't think a college prof. has to get a license when he assigns or uses a textbook for a class.

I guess there are things like putting on a play or using sheet music for a live performance, do these require permission if the copywright is still active?

 

[reveal]

Hmmm... After reading it, I don't really think it's all that bad.

White Wolf encourages people to use and play its games in the fun and improvised spirit they were intended. Registration and the ensuing license only become a requirement when event organizers charge a fee to players, making their game a commercial enterprise. One exception to this requirement is when a convention requires a fee to be charged by a group. As long as the event organizers charge only the fee required by the convention, they are not required to obtain a license. However if they charge a fee in excess of the base fee then they will be required to obtain a license from White Wolf.

Basically, if someone is trying to make money off of organizing a game, then White Wolf requires that said someone become a member of their fan club.

But, here's where it gets interesting:

Next have all your active players and fellow organizers obtain their own memberships.

So, because the person organizing the campaign is charging, each player is then expected to join and pay membership dues ($20/year)?

Luckily they're not charging people to pay if they are a) not charging people or b) collecting only enough money to cover the costs of the event itself, like location rental, etc.

Honestly, I think this will cut down on a lot of people charging players more than the cost of running the LARP just to make a buck. The folks not looking to make a buck, those charging just enough to cover costs or those not charging at all, have nothing to worry about as the licensing issue doesn't apply to them.

 

[DanMcS]

I disagree on the "dumb move of the year" item.

We just finished watching the court case between Marvel & City of Heroes. White Wolf -HAS- to show that they are attempting to enforce their trademark, otherwise they lose the ability to sue other companies over its misuse.

That said, I don't think that WW has anyintention of actually enforcing this contract. In my opinion, it exists exactly so they DON'T have to enforce it in order to maintain their trademarks.

This cannot possibly be to enforce their trademarks. Trademark law doesn't recognize a difference between infringing a trademark for profit and infringing it without profiting. If I write Harry Potter fanfic and give it away, I am infringing upon that trademark as much as if I were attempting to sell my own Harry Potter novel.

If WW is trying to say that pay-for-play games are infringing upon their trademarks and they need to implement this license to protect themselves, then they should be applying it equally to play-for-free games, because those infringe upon WW trademarks just as much as pay-for-play games do. In fact, by specifically excluding games where no money changes hands, they are arguably ignoring trademark infringement that they know about, which is the quickest way to lose any trademarks.

So this really isn't about trying to protect trademarks, because this would be the dumbest possible way to go about that. They're saying it's about IP protection to make it sound like they are legally required to do this, they're really nice guys and wouldn't do this if it wasn't required.

Really, they just want to bully as many people as possible into sending them a yearly membership fee. That's all this can possibly be.