>>Has material from GAMA Trade Show seminar have been distributed through this mailing list last weekend, or at all? I just want to remind Mr. Valterra of his promise made in March 15.<<
Thank-you for the reminder. I hope, in the future that everyone in the industry will feel free to remind me about things. Currently, I can use all the help I can get (seriously folks, I'm up to my nose here). Below is the text of an article (the *unexpergated version*) that will be posted on our website soon. Attached is the only document, that is not available online in an obvious place, that I handed out. It is my response to peoples concern aobut out conversion document. In addition, to the attchament, and a recent copy of the d20 trademark guide and the latest version of the OGL, was an article that was originaly printed in MacWorld October 1996. You might try to find it online. It covered issues of copyrighting art and design. GAMA Recap By Anthony Valterra Well, GAMA has come and gone for another year. For those of you who do not know what GAMA is, it is an annual convention of game manufacturers, distributors and retailers. Once a year, we all meet in Las Vegas in the fabulous Orleans hotel: seminars are attended, deals are announced, new deals are negotiated, alcohol is drunk, and money is gambled away. All in all, a great deal of fun, and this year was no exception. Wizards of the Coast was debuting its new Star Wars TCG, which met with wide acclaim for its game play. On the RPG side of things, which of course is my arena, we confirmed that miniatures and Avalon Hill are now both a part of the publishing division (which includes RPGs, magazines, novels, Avalon Hill and miniatures). On Monday we had an open meeting for all d20 publishers. It was very well attended. Once again I had to lay the "Wizards is going to cancel the d20 license" rumor low. This rumor, which seems to appear about every month, just will not die. However, I think the announcement of d20 Modern may be the final deathblow (more about that in a moment). The meeting started by covering "trade dress." Trade dress is the identifying look of a product or brand; think of McDonalds' "golden arches" or the Olympics five interlocking rings. When we released 3rd edition, we expected that people would try to tie their products closely to ours, and White Wolf's Creature Collection was exactly what we expected. But as time went on, we noticed that some company's products were beginning to look more and more like ours until they really were almost indistinguishable. Our trade dress was being trampled upon. I made it clear that we would not ask anyone to change the look of a product line they had already established. We are only asking that new lines try to avoid our trade dress and if we create a new line in the future we will specify what our trade dress is in advance. The next subject was violations that we are still seeing to the license. There are two that are the most common. The first is trying to design by using the Player's Handbook rather then the System Reference Document. The problem with this is that there are certain names or descriptions in the Player's Handbook that have been deliberately left out of the SRD because we want to protect them. The second is assuming that since the Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide and the Monster Manual are all open, it must mean that everything Wizards of the Coast produces is free to be used. This is usually an error on the part of the freelance designer and is merely not caught by the publisher. We covered procedures that will be taken when there is a violation. In general we would prefer to be notified as soon as the publisher realizes that an error has been made. We will then work with the publisher to let the industry know that an error has been made and what will be done to correct it. We will be as flexable as we can but we don't want to see a raft of "oops made another tiny error, I'm sure we can work it out" messages. If the error comes to us through our own investigations or a third party then a 30 day fix notice will be sent out. We ask that the industry continue to work with us on this and keep our resource drain in this area to a minimum. Bright and early the next morning (8:00 am, which is real early by Las Vegas standards), we had the d20 Modern meeting. We were surprised and pleased when 27 people showed up. We announced that we are planning on opening up d20 modern in the same manner that we did Dungeons & Dragons. Any company that wants to be a part of the d20 Modern network is welcome to join and can receive the rules early so that they can have product out as soon as they want after November. After that announcement the rest of the con was filled with excitement from an array of manufacturers wanting to do a variety of Modern products. The potential for d20 modern really seemed to increase with each person who expressed interest in the rules set. Note to list - if you are interested in signing up for d20 Modern go to this website: http://d20.freegamingassociation.com/ Finally, on Thursday morning, we made our last big announcement. The Dragonlance campaign setting will return to the world of Dungeons & Dragons via a partnership with Sovereign Press. One of the original creator of the Dragonlance world, Margaret Weiss along with frequent contributor Don Perrin, will work with the Wizards of the Coast design team to create a third edition campaign book for 2003. Once again, we were pleased by the enthusiastic response. Overall the RPG team had an excellent GAMA. Our offerings to the conventioneers were greeted with unexpected, gratifying and wholehearted support. Anthony Valterra
ESDresponse.doc
Description: ESDresponse.doc
