Who Owns Planescape?

The Dimension/Demiplane of Nightmare was briefly described in Planescape's A Guide to the Ethereal Plane.

A more specific Mystara reference could be found in Uncaged: Faces of Sigil. One of the characters in that was a shadowelf from Mystara.

The term *Hin* is also used in Forgotten Realms.. not exclusively Mystara.

And that is why I love this site forum.... You folks know everything that I find interesting. ;D

I am going to look up this Baen publisher.... I also have concepts that I would like to put together... At least until Paizo considers material for a Divine Level Handbook post-Epic publication.

I am also enjoying the idea of toying around with a few japanese concepts and ideas from Magic: the Gathering's 'Champions of Kamigawa' line as RPG elements in my own games.... Plus, their idea of the material world / spirit world is a variant cosmology that I enjoy using certain aspects of.

It does not enjoy any form of privileged or favored status at WotC the way Eberron or FR do, and there is some question regarding if the current WotC writers even *like* the setting.

After slogging through Blood Hostages the last couple of months I can appreciate why _writers_ might have a problem with it. First, because of Planescape's cynical/jaded tone, it is hard to create heroic, likeable characters for it. Second, no matter how much we appreciate the setting's flavor, it is a little too in your face at times when translated to the novelistic medium. After tumbling to the dark of Sigil's slang and peculiar modus vivendi in countless game books I don't need it repeated to me for the umpteenth time in a novel as if it were the author's own recent creation. Third, Planescape is TOO big in scope- it is very hard to come up with a plot for it that is not cataclysmic, existence-shattering in implication without it seeming inconsequential. Yet if the plot is cataclysmic & existence-shattering in implication then it's hard to pull off suspense since the reader implicitly knows that no matter how the book ends, the multiuniverse is not coming to a halt, and that by tomorrow Mechanus will still be clicking, Gehenna still burning, and the Bloodwar still raging. This is the unfortunate conundrum of writing for a popular game setting. You want to do something interesting and big to keep it dynamic, yet you cannot really change it since that's why it's popular to begin with (and so hence the rotating coffin lids on the graves of all those D&D gods who were killed in some epic upheaval only to be brought back because they were too popular to let go).

Personally, I think the problem is not that Planescape is too big, but that many writers would feel so overwhelmed by its enormity that they try to include everything. Part of the charm of Planescape was how it adopted, in part, the look and feel Dickensian London.

Just as Great Expectations did not encompass a world altering plot, I think just as compelling a story can be told. I could easily see myself becoming interested in a Pip-like character that happens to be a tiefling.

Even in A Tale of Two Cities where the setting is the French Revolution, the story of a particular character or group of characters in the Blood War can still be compelling even if they cannot alter the course of the War itself.

Just some food for thought.

Yup, automated cease & desist letters/emails are the standard faire for anyone who emails/mails an idea involving a company's IP to that company, even if your message consisted of nothing more than asking for their permission or to be hired by them.
Another problem is the loathesome IP rights that publishers and distributors gain over the material of developers, musicians, etc.
For example, Richard Garriot (Owner of Origin and creator of the Ultima series) actually looked favorably upon and encouraged fan-works of his creations, but his publishing company, Electronic Arts, would not have any of that. IMO EA should have had no say whatsoever since they are merely publishers, but unfortunately that's not the way the world works.
The RIAA can even tell musicians what software formats/hardware they can and cannot convert their music to! It's ridiculous!

That and the fact that we have an ongoing agreement with WotC as an Official Fansite, under the same agreements as the official fansites for other settings do such as athas.org. It's an old agreement from early in the days of 3.0, and to mutual benefit. We get to fan out over our favorite settings, they get positive PR and clearly labeled ip ownership (see the bottom of the website).

Clueless wrote:

That and the fact that we have an ongoing agreement with WotC as an Official Fansite, under the same agreements as the official fansites for other settings do such as athas.org. It's an old agreement from early in the days of 3.0, and to mutual benefit. We get to fan out over our favorite settings, they get positive PR and clearly labeled ip ownership (see the bottom of the website).

It's good that at least this much flexibility is allowed, so that old settings that are no longer published, maintained, or circulated can continue to flourish and encourage the community surrounding them to remain behaving as active participants, rather than become angry mobs that are untended by their corporate big-siblings who no longer care about their whims and wishes, even though those people are also their loyal and continuing consumer base, and making them happy is in the company's best interests.... Which in all technicality means that WotC and its Hasbro umbrella has committed marketing suicide... But such is their choice to make *cough* - stupidly - *cough*....

I just wish that the portion of the community who can actually work mutually with each other and not fret over IP issues was allowed to still do so without the market tearing them a new rectal orifice... My utopian dream of such a world would include awesome third-party publishers networking and communally participating with freelance writers and artists to produce material for systems, campaign settings, and other material no longer set in established corporate publications and related media, where not only the creators could benefit, but that media could be separated into freely OGL materials and paid-only related media which could be utilized in publications and other concepts, but which would work hand in hand, and not mutually exclude fans and gamers specifically from certain aspects of gaming which are in fact universal in nature and not necessarily linked specifically to a company's profit margins - instead being more linked to the community's overall survival and thriving continuity. Ah, to dream of heaven is to know what it is to lack in life... At least my mind can still dream without worrying about IP issues. Just wait until you receive cease & desist letters after dreaming about your favorite character... Won't that be a lovely era? XP
-will

Mmmm essentially yeah.

That's exactly what we're doing with the PSCS3 and PSCS4 releases as well as the ongoing chatter in the forums here. Boiled down, the primary rules are:

1) No claiming of the IP as your own (by extension this includes no formal publication of work written)
2) No profiting from the work written
3) No plagarism aka no copy'n'paste of text or art

As a sidenote, if you happen to be a sci-fi fan you might want to look into Eclipsephase to throw them some support. They released under Creative Commons specifically to encourage development. http://www.eclipsephase.com

If you want to link it on the forums, the best bets are either to use your own webspace or use Photobucket.

As long as you're not claiming credit for something you didn't do, you should be able to stay out of court. Some people don't like their pictures posted without permission, so if you want to use a picture as, say, a character reference it's usually a nice thing to do to ask the artist if it's okay. Most artists won't mind. Most probably won't find out but it's still a nice thing to do

I can't tell if you're an artist yourself. If not and you want something done, Planewalker has a few in-house artists that might take up requests if they see them. Just post a description in the Civic Festhall and if an artist gets inspired you might get a sketch or a full-color picture out of it.

But bottom line: if it's your own thing, you're safe from court. If it's not, make sure you give credit where credit's due and try to get an official nod from the creator. Use your own webspace or Photobucket to link directly to images or post them in threads. Linking directly from another site is usually considered bandwidth-stealing and is very frowned upon.

Gotcha, on all accounts. I am doing the illustrations myself, but I have been running into a whole lot of copyright issues that I never knew were in place lately.... And now I am IP-paranoid, I think. The Modron illustrations are based on not one but all the images of them I could find. They are not exact copies, but a breakdown of what physical components one would find inside of a Modron (so far, have Monodrone to Tridrone finished, and begun on Quadrone and Pentadrone). So far, because I am using the idea of interchangeable and mass-produced parts, there are a few edits between these ones and AD&D, 2e, & 3e... I am boiling that down to the fact that Primus made some prudent decisions after inheriting a dead deity's station to make some adjustments to how the Modrons are composed and how his own domain is protected (as well as his own 'body').... I think you'll all like how I combined old elements and the new ones - I am trying to keep it as rational as possible, without destroying my creative freedom and still keeping to canon; emulation without congruency or massive divergence.

Case in point: the Tridrones have better, more offensive/defensive arms which both help to stabilize their now top-heavy composition (as pictured in Dragon v.318) as well as to be better manipulated to get at areas they need on themselves (self-reach), as well as to provide a secondary mode of mobility more akin to their original 'spider-like legs' design. Still the same Tridrone as in the magazine, but you'll like the details of this one much more. All changes made between these versions and the most recent versions have been as rationalized as possible, and some play off the death of Primus and the decisions his successor would have made to better align the Modrons with the new way of logic that had to be undertaken to keep their race competitive and superior enough for continuing survival.

Gonna scan them now, and upload them to Elftown - hopefully be back soon enough to post them here - well, not on THIS thread, but on the one I made for technology stuff.
-will