Actually having read through the later postings I begin to
understand the distinction. Certainly it is reasonable to
establish that certain names define your product, just as
Nystul, for example, defines part of the AD&D product.
Neither would we particularly want to confuse say Linux and
Open BSD by applying creating a product with the name BSD/Linux.
In the software community this is handled primarily through
peer pressure. If you choose a bad name for your product
people chastise you publically until you give it up. In
cases where names haven't been very strongly protected (many
companies distribute a 'Redhat' distribution, for example)
other producers are more often than not ignored by buyers
who've been bitten once or twice by a 'Redhat' distribution
that wasn't tested by Redhat the company.
Since Linux isn't story driven it is a lot easier to just
add the same name to each contributed piece. Redhat Package
Manager, etc. It becomes hard not to know where that piece
of look and feel came from.
The only suggestion I have to offer, would be to have establish
another means of tracking credit. An inconspicuous 'Contributed-by',
or 'Rule System', or a Credits listing up at the front of the document.
Alternatively you might consider normalizing the name to a form with
no PI before submitting so that the private (value added) name has
a standardized translation to a universe where e.g: Nystul is a
meaningless name.
Actually adding a credit or rule-system tag in the characteristics
of the contributed text could be quite useful for me as a DM also.
Supposing I thought that all of the 'whosit' system spells were
generally unbalancing my games. Showing the credits would help me
to find all of the spells and either modify them or let the players
know that we were playing without them.
Cheers
-kls
On Sat, Jan 27, 2001 at 03:46:35PM -0800, Clark Peterson wrote:
> Kevin-
>
> The problem is when spell names contain PI'd content
> that are Scarred Lands trademarks. Believe me, we
> hashed this out for a while and this is the best
> solution we could come up with. If anyone sees a
> better way to make the spells open and still preserve
> the PI let us know and we will do it that way in the
> future.
>
> Clark
>
> =====
> http://www.necromancergames.com
> "3rd Edition Rules, 1st Edition Feel"
>
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--
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kls \_/-=\_/
