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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Vartan" data-source="post: 5291645" data-attributes="member: 26155">Not to go too far off topic, but to bring it back to an area where everyone might not get so angry, but what Gloomshroud ran into is really a common web design hurdle. You get an idea for a website (in this case, a campaign wiki) and your creative side goes wild...but you aren't a visual artist, so you go around looking for images. If you were building, say, a web site for your anti-virus software product or your plumbing business then you could either get lucky and find a good Creative Commons image or drop a few bucks at a place like <a href="http://www.istockphoto.com/" target="_blank">istockphoto</a> to deck out your site.Unfortunately, licenses for good fantasy art are hard to find. Oh, you can find pretty much any piece of fantasy art you've ever seen on the internet...but the sources of that art violate the artist's copyright and even if you get them right from the artist's official site your use of the images would violate their copyright. You can find some stuff via the legal channels mentioned above but you have to work for it and it will never be as "perfect" as the art Gloomshroud wanted to use. My advice is to use art is for inspiration, not explanation. There's no shortage of desert photos and drawings legally available on the internet, and there are probably some which fit the tone of Dark Sun. A cool-looking desert landscape photo will give your Obsidian Portal page a bit of Athasian flavor, even if it doesn't depict a Mul warrior and his Thri-Kreen buddy marching across it with their bone weapons.As for maps, try making your own. There are free and commerically available map-making programs that you could use to create some nice maps of important campaign areas. Granted, just rebuilding the Dark Sun world map from scratch might (IANAL) violate copyright, but homemade maps of your own, original locations are fair game. I don't mean tactical maps, but rather evocative ones, like an ungridded, more artistic map of the site of the party's first battle, or an "architectural" depiction of the party's home base. I think these might be even better than the official stuff because it will remind the players of campaign elements in which they are invested.I hope those ideas are useful to someone. Now, let's talk about WotC.Wizards is a small part of a large company that, when you think about it, derives all of its value from its intellectual property. They don't sell a service, and they don't manufacture goods: their product is a collection of ideas and the rights to use those ideas (in print, on the internet, on the silver screen, etc.). Compared to other companies in their situation WotC's business practices are very permissive and, frankly, enlightened. In the early 2000s WotC pretty much "open sourced" their entire game system (the OGL) and there are still publishers profiting from that intellectual property: WotC created it, tested it, and brought it to market with the name recognition of the largest brand in the industry, and today they're still competing for market share with game designers who use that same IP. Even though the current GSL is nowhere near as permissive as the OGL, it's still a "user-friendly" license that allows third parties to create derivative works which, in most cases, compete directly with some of WotC's own products (e.g, adventures). Most IP rights holders don't interact with their customers in this way. In the unlikely even that someone wrote a Harry Potter fan fiction that someone would want to buy then J.K. Rowling's attorneys would get an injunction before it ever hit the shelves. Most businesses that derive value from IP are just now warming up to the idea that the occasional YouTube mashup can actually grow their business. WotC has been ahead of the curve in this respect for years. I can't say with any certainty why this is the case, but it's probably a combination of practical business needs (e.g., the business advantages of less restrictive IP policies are numerous, especially for companies who have so few customers that they can't afford to sue too many of them) and genuine benevolence (e.g., the people who work at WotC are gamers themselves, and they love us and want us to be happy and have a special plan for each and every one of us). I'm not saying that either of these reasons explain why WotC does things the way they do, I'm just speculating, but most of us know that the first possible reason is, in some way or another true. It's important to remember that yes, we are the customers. WotC does, in fact, need us. But there's a difference between being treated poorly and not getting your every wish fulfilled. It would be super-duper-awesome if Subway gave me extra cheese on my sub for free, or if every time I went there I got triple punches on my Subway Club Card, and if I really felt like that's what they must do to deserve my fast food dollar then I wouldn't go there. But I wouldn't troll Subway fan forums or stand outside of Subway and tell everyone who walks in that the new bread is far inferior to the old bread. I wouldn't nerdrage (yes, there are sandwich nerds, and in case you can't tell I happen to be one). As a note, I was careful to use terms like "infringement" or "copyright violation" in my post because I thought the word "illegal" ould sound combative to a reader who doesn't know me...but seriously, copyright violation is illegal. Using unlicensed fantasy art on your campaign wiki might be the intellectual property equivalent of jaywalking, but it's still against the law.</blockquote>

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