From: Pasha and Rick Smith <pnrsmith@istar.ca> Hi David, All the legal protection you likely need is to put copywrite and the date on the game. The courts are very good about protecting the rights of authors. Copywrite won't prevent people from sharing rules around if they like them, but no one will be able to publish your rules for money.
Rick,What you say is true. I have considered that. I guess I'm kinda tight fisted with it right now. About the second paragraph I would like to elaborate a little. I want to do it in hard copy. If someone then types it in an shares it over the net there is probably little I can do unless I hear about it. Even then I would probably just ask them to conform to some official guidelines. With a hard copy I can make it the specific form of "artistic representation" I want. ("artistic representation" being part of the official definition of a copyright.) That and I wouldn't have done the work of digitizing it for them. Also it has a better chance of being played if you can bring it to the table with you. I can't see asking people to burn up a bunch of paper and a ribbon on their printer. Plainly stated I have made my publishing strategy and am going to stick by it. I hope I'm not being rude. I really want to send you a copy when there ready.
On a completely different subject, I heard something once. Another bit of hear-say about SJ. Someone once told me that after he published G.U.R.P.S. and was overseeing the source books, he turned into a "real a** h*l*." I was a little taken back by that. I have a lot of respect for his work. So I couldn't figure what the guy was talking about. I figured that SJ had changed something he had written, or just flat out rejected it. Who knows. Oh yeah, and another story I heard. A friend was at a convention playing Car Wars, and SJ stopped by their table to watch. One of the guys there had this little peice of cut out card board that he had made. It was the maneouver template. The one that you lay next to the counter of your vehicle to help make accurate turns on the grid sheet. SJ asked if he could buy it from him on the spot. According to the story SJ got that device, and the rights to it, for $15. Who knows if a word of this is even remotely true.
David Michael Grouchy II _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com ===== Post to the entire list by writing to tft@brainiac.com. Unsubscribe by mailing to majordomo@brainiac.com with the message body "unsubscribe tft"