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5 years ago ::
May 21, 2008 - 11:01PM
#21
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Date Joined:
Aug 17, 2007
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Them being able to steal your stuff is of secondary importance, as it's hard to prove where ideas come from anyways. The more troubling part of them claiming intellectual rights to anything you post here is that if you post anything here, you can never market it. It no longer belongs to you. I'm actually considering abandoning the forums completely if this position isn't changed. I seriously doubt I'd ever even try to publish anything, but principles still count for something to me.
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5 years ago ::
May 23, 2008 - 6:12PM
#22
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Date Joined:
Apr 11, 2007
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If I saw one of my ideas suddenly show up in a readily recognizable form in an official D&D product, I'd be so happy I'd probably explode in a burst of purple bunnies. Gods help me should they "steal" one of my campaign worlds!
Hey! Guys! Over here! I call it the "Forever Game" and it encompasses damn near everything that's ever hit the shelves! It's half-canon half-homebrew and would probably be considered an absolute travesty by purists of their respective genres everywhere, but it's been running since 1983! *Whistle!* Over here!
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5 years ago ::
May 23, 2008 - 7:36PM
#23
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Date Joined:
Jun 25, 2001
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To post a non-hysterical/non-conspiracy interpretation:
This is a lot like how published authors refuse to read fan submitted material because it opens them up to plaigarism charges. There was already someone on the 4th edition forums who was claiming that Mike Mearls took the 4th Ed Marking mechanic from something he wrote.
The terms of use exist not so that Wizards can steal your work, they generally rely on professional designers, but so that if they develop something that resembles a post of yours on the board you can't/won't sue them for the rights.
There will always be people who are convinced that Wizards is raiding the board to steal ideas from hard-working users but it's kind of absurd. That said if you wish to do professional game design you probably shouldn't be posting it on the internet freely anyways.
Right, pretty much it's impossible to work as a company if it's possible to sue the designers for using ideas that came from the boards, because then the designers must read every single post to see if it's similar to their newest idea, and then track down the person who posted it to see if it's okay to use it in game. If that were the case, it would be impossible to write a new rules edition, because somewhere you're going to be borrowing someone's idea from one or two obscure posts on the boards.
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5 years ago ::
May 23, 2008 - 10:17PM
#24
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Yes, it lets them. However, I'm not quite sure how often they have used it. Do you know of any specific points where WotC obviously stole anything off of their forums?
Your posts seem to be accusing WotC of being plagiarists, or supporting plagiarists.
Not off the forums, but everything in D&D is borne of the ideas of others. "Vancian" magic anyone? All the posts seeing parallels to WoW?
I'd dare to say nothing in D&D is original - it's all borne of someone else's mind, had the serial numbers filed off and put in the game.
If you don't want to see "parallel development" of something you post, don't put it here in the first place.
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