Re: Just a thought (a little long)

At 04:15 PM 8/28/97 -0500, Mark wrote:
>I agree with you, and have been having similar thoughts myself. But
then
>there comes the questions of legal stuff for Jon. And who gets the
royalties,
>credits, etc, etc, etc. Something I'm definitely not versed in.

There's more than just that. First, there's "the vision thing." We came
across this trying to do a fantasy version of FMA. Too many people had
too
many good ideas that were at cross purposes with each other. You need a
firm
hand at the tiller if you want an official product full of coherent
ideas.
If you want an unofficial, zine like compilation of random ideas then
that's
something else entirely.

Second, someone would STILL have to edit the thing. Not just
proofreading
and layout but ACTUAL EDITING for content. Someone would have to say,
"sorry
your idea is not good enough." Worse, someone would have to say, "your
idea
is great, but there's no room for it." I have friends that edited an
anthology of Canadian SF (Tesseracts 3, for those who are interested)
and it
is NOT an easy thing to do. It's hard, long work. 

Third, even assuming someone edits this, Jon will STILL want to look it
over
to make sure that this supplement doesn't clash with his vision of where
the
games are headed. And what if someone proposes an idea that Jon had in
mind
for the future? Jon was worried about this before. If Jon rejects it
this
time, but uses it later himself he could be opening himself up to a
lawsuit
(or he ends up paying royalties to someone for an idea that he came up
with
independantly). Sure, it's all good and fine to be altruistic right now,
but
wait until real money is involved...

My feeling is that this won't work unless it's done ENTIRELY for free by
the
group and Jon blesses it from the get go. I think a better idea is to
produce a zine (paper zine, web zine, e-zine, what have you) with ideas
for
FT, SG2, and DS2. These would be unofficial ideas, but it would get them
into the public domain and open them up for scrutiny. If a rule gains
universal acceptance, and Jon likes it, Jon can always bless it as
"official" after the fact.

Allan Goodall:	agoodall@sympatico.ca 
"You'll want to hear about my new obsession.
 I'm riding high upon a deep depression. 
 I'm only happy when it rains."    - Garbage