Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Man in the Funny Hat" data-source="post: 2416360" data-attributes="member: 32740">For practical purposes it is indeed BS. The DM's world is shaped by the player characters just as the PC's are shaped by the DM's world. The precise degree is pretty irrelevant. It matters only that neither is immune to influence by the other. However, around the gaming table it is the DM who holds virtually all the control of the game - what race and class the PC's can be, what opponents the PC's will face, how they will interact with the entire game world. In practical terms the players have an almost insignificant amount of control of the game and for that reason alone it's very very easy to assign "ownership" of the world to the DM who runs it - including the player characters that inhabit it at any point.I could, though it would not be in anyones best interests to do so because around the gaming table it wouldn't gain me a bloody thing. Yet I'd certainly have a far stronger claim that would a player who reciprocally tries to claim that they own and control that part of my world that is/was their character and can tell me what I may or may not do with it. - Again, this is in terms of a simple, kitchen table game of D&D. If you want to talk publication rights, IP law and so forth consult an attorney.It's a simple matter of being polite to take the trouble to ask - but it is in no way necessary nor binding upon the DM.Then it seems to me - a non-lawyer - that she hasn't a leg to stand on and you have nothing to worry about. There is a difference between running a game of D&D in private and the creation and control of characters as concerns Intellectual Property law. The latter is FAR less a matter for simple discussion on a web board like this than it is for taking to a lawyer for APPROPRIATE advice and handling. At the gaming table OWNERSHIP of characters is irrelevant. Moot. Meaningless. Ownership is about as applicable to anything as my Moms recipe for meatloaf is to calculations for planetary orbits. But when you start talking about publication and profit you're no longer dealing with issues relevant to my gaming table. You're talking about BUSINESS and LAW in the real world and that is a horse of a different color. Obviously it is best dealt with not as a matter of gaming table ettiquette and a DM's game-control authority, but as a paid author seeking SOLID legal advice from a qualified lawyer regarding somewhat unusual and COMPLICATED matters of intellectual property.</blockquote>

Verification