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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pming" data-source="post: 8302411" data-attributes="member: 45197">Hiya!That's not what "ownership" means. WotC can use those ideas whole-cloth...directly or indirectly, or however they want. They own them...not the person who created it. WotC could for example, go to another freelancer and say "Hey, here's an idea [insert contestants idea]. Work that into this adventure, please".I fully appreciate the REASON they insist on "ownership of..." anything you submit, for exactly the reason you stated. That's not my contention. It's that they didn't put in stipulations on "If your idea is ever used by us, we'll give you a mentioning credit as inspiration". As I said...it's an artist thing, really. Basically like "fan art" to some degree: "Here's my artwork! It's inspired by Akira and My Little Pony". Simple, courteous and the right thing to do.No, I'm not at all. You completely misread my concern: that WotC is getting all these ideas....from the horrible to the amazing, with most in between. A GREAT many of them...horrible or amazing...can provide inspiration for, or outright development of, those ideas into a cool product....and EVERYONE who isn't one of those "chosen few", gets...nothing at all if their idea is used to inspire something else. That's just dirty pool, really. At least in my book.It's akin to asking a dozen artists to give you their best artwork...and you'll pay for the best one, but you still get to OWN ALL OF THEM. Does that seem anywhere near fair to you? Probably not. Now, would that person then take the other 11 artworks and just start making prints available for sale? Probably not...but they can. And they can also then take, say, 4 of them to the artist who DID get paid and say "Hey, try and implement these 4 other artists works somehow...modify them and whatnot to make it fit your idea, but use these ideas at least. They're pretty cool"...and then never giving any recognition to those 4 other artists.That's "used car salesman" type of vibe for me.As I said...I think you missed my point. It wasn't about the "legally owning". I think that's standard and a pretty reasonable thing for a company/person to do when creating such a contest. Too many people out there with VERY little grasp on how the law, especially copyright law, works would see their idea (or something they THINK is their idea), and try and cash in.So, again, "we own this" is NOT MY CONTENTION. It's that WotC has a great opportunity to garner some brownie points with their customers and contestants with a simple thing: "Submissions that we gain inspiration for will be mentioned in the publications credits". Something like that. A gesture that says "If you enter, and your idea is good, but doesn't win, and we use it or take inspiration from it, we'll give you a mention".Everyone has great ideas...but usually far more mediocre and some real stinkers. The trick is figuring out which is which. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />The people who will enter this are people who don't care if their stuff is given away. Personally, I'd have no problem entering...but I wouldn't enter some of my best ideas. Because if I didn't win...I loose ownership of those ideas. Even IF WotC did the "Mention" thing I would have liked them to have, I still wouldn't. I'd rather have the OPTION to publish, show, share or develop derivative works from it. But just brainstorming and coming up with a cool idea or three and entering? Yeah, I can see a lot of folks doing that. But I think that ANY DM that has any sense of pride for their work would be a fool to take their best ideas/works and just sign them over to WotC on the hopes of winning $2100 worth of "D&D Stuff".(as an aside, I was in this very position once; regarding Darkurthe Legends; "Well, I can't promise anything, but if you send me/them all your ideas I can send those to them to see if they are interested and they might hire you as a contributor". ...I passed... I still have all my ideas and the company in question that my stuff was going to get sent do went bankrupt about 2 years later...)^_^Paul L. Ming</blockquote>

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