I think that even they would welcome that. It seems like they are constantly facing some kind of financial apocalypse or another, so the free exposure would be accepted without their historical legal action.
I know you know this, but "trade dress" is just legal shorthand for the tort of "passing off". It's a difficult civil action to win -- and liability is easily avoided if avoidance is your aim. I honestly don't think it is likely to arise in any of the circumstances we are discussing here.
I mean, Wizards does have a sponsorship deal with Critical Role IIRC. But that was under the old regime. A change of execs leads to changes of thinking a lot of the time, which is what's going on now. So getting some video game execs in there means they're trying to apply their video game thoughts to an industry that is only superficially the same.
Could you imagine? I'd actually watch a stream of folks in their 20s grappling with Megaversal rules for the first time after playing nothing but 5e D&D.
Oh god the flashbacks. Ahhhh it's amazing what you retain from games you haven't played for 20 years.
I mean, imagine coming across their famous "mental disorder" table, that they copied and pasted into every book for 25 years, that you get from "doing drugs too much" in 2023?
Oh no lol oh god there's so much in Rifts which just wouldn't fly today
There's a really easy cure. Just like, drag out your Rifts core book and start trying to make a character. If that fails, get Rifts South America (or is it South America 2?) out and start looking at the Psychic Cat Superheros until your brain's reset switch trips.Why do I want to play Rifts now?
To be fair to Palladium, I think they finally edited the mental disorders to remove homosexuality.
