WotC's Campaign search - Storytime

[Lucent]

It's story time kids...

Once upon a time in the land of Narnia, there was a little band known as "Stiff Biscuit". This band was headed by a gnome known as "Phred Hearse". This ingenious little gnome, having lost the most talented member of his man, the strange devil known as "Wex Morehand" decided a clever way to trick the world into giving him the creativity he needed to write a new album.

Thus, the gnomish musician Phred sent out a call far and wide to gather bards from all across the land to perform in front of Phred and the remains of his musical troupe so that he could rightfully choose a talented bard to fill the void in his band.

Thousands of musicians came and performed their whimsical notes for the gnome, and with each song bit played, the gnome recorded portions of it, letting the Bard's know that they were being recorded, and that their music might be used at a later date...

At the end of the gathering of Bards, the evil gnome Phred gathered up all of the recorded music and snuck off in the night on his horse, "Pryvhat Jhett".

The bards cried out, "We've been fooled!" as they came to realize that the evil gnome had tricked them into giving him excellent samples of music that he could freely use, under the guise of future employment...

The moral of this story folks, is that evil empires will often try to trick creative young commoners into their webs of deceit by offering false positions among their dark ranks...

You may be wondering the relevence of this story towards the WotC Campaign Search. Think about it, and consider the outcome.

 

[Avatar_V]

Erm, good story but WotC only has the right to use the top 3. Even making the top 10 doesn't give them the rights to it. Sure, they can take some inspiration, but they made it clear that the authors kept the rights to everything until they made the cut for the top 3. Will some of 2nd and 3rd places settings be used? Sure, but they're getting 20,000 which is still a nice junk of change!

 

[alsih2o]

i am just waiting for the "hey! i wrote that!" lawsuits to start

 

[Wolfspider]

Wow, he even used the term "evil empire." Impressive.

 

[slaughterj]

i am just waiting for the "hey! i wrote that!" lawsuits to start

Already filed...

 

[Harlock]

Some people missed the boat. There was a clause which you agreed to if you signed the paper that said something to the affect of: If we develop an idea similar to one you submitted later, you agree that we might have thought of it before and we don't owe you squat. I'm not saying this will happen, but the potential is there. And, this is not to say you could not sue for them to perhaps prove that they did think of it before you. I'm obviously no lawyer, but I am a firm believer that corporate America doesn't always play fair. Sure, some do, but if everybody did we wouldn't have anti-trust laws abounding...

 

[BiggusGeekus]

Some people missed the boat. There was a clause which you agreed to if you signed the paper that said something to the affect of: If we develop an idea similar to one you submitted later, you agree that we might have thought of it before and we don't owe you squat. I'm not saying this will happen, but the potential is there. And, this is not to say you could not sue for them to perhaps prove that they did think of it before you. I'm obviously no lawyer, but I am a firm believer that corporate America doesn't always play fair. Sure, some do, but if everybody did we wouldn't have anti-trust laws abounding...

This is standard so corporate America doesn't get their pants sued off. Let's say they didn't have that clause and we each write a setting about floating islands. Yours gets accepted and mine doesn't. A year down the line WotC does Flying Islands d20. I sue WotC for $100,000 because they "stole" my idea. End result, I have money, WotC has no setting, and we're both blackballed in the RPG industry because no one trusts either of us (me for suing, you for stealing even though you didn't) and they can't take a chance because the risk is too great.

It's the same way in TV and in the movies. That's why if you ever write a movie script you NEVER send the script to a producer. You send a one page introductory letter/outline. If a producer so much as opens the package your script comes in, you have the potenial to sue him.

Yes, I realize that due to recent events more people are ready to side with "the little guy" against "the big guy", but in cases of creative entertainment the little guy has a surprising ammount of cards.

 

[Lucent]

I certainly hope that wizards follows through properly with this campaign search, with the financial turbulations and changes going on at Hasbro's behest things seem shaky at times, and I never quite know where the fate of D&D lies.

I'd really hate to see this project bite it.

 

[Vaxalon]

Do you SERIOUSLY think that if they were going to pull this kind of ripoff, they would have delayed the announcement TWICE???

No, they'd have picked their "winners" and been done with it.

 

[Lucent]

Well, that's entirely possible, but it may not have been their intention to do that from the start. Possibly after seeing the innundation of submissions they were staggered by the amount of work that would need to be done to judge them all.

Either that, or they've delayed the decision process as a way to dismiss others thoughts that something might be amiss. It is, of course, heavy speculation based on something really evil that Limp Bizkit did to a bunch of its fans, but possible none the less.