Plaag wrote:
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Needs to be reported.

ShaneG.

A pity though. The guy made a nice work with the artwork.

This is the guy that's been selling the Ares Magazine Archive for years. Are the SPI products legit? Does anyone know if he was in anyway involved with SPI and has permission?

mbassoc2003 wrote:This is the guy that's been selling the Ares Magazine Archive for years. Are the SPI products legit? Does anyone know if he was in anyway involved with SPI and has permission?

I strongly doubt that he has permission.  Since TSR bought out SPI and was then bought out by Wotc and Hasbro, I think Hasbro probably owns the rights to it now.

Some of this sellers other compilations include GDW Twilight 2000 stuff and the TSR stuff so its probably all done without permission.

The biggest clue as to why these compilations are never legal: if the companies that own the rights were interested in supporting a project of this sort, they would back it up with publicity and advertising.

The D&D one, for example: why wouldn't WotC/Hasborg send out a press release to the various news sites (free) and at least advertise it on their own site (free). Answer: they aren't involved; it's a bootleg product.

The Dragon Archive is the only legal one I can think of ... the rest is just random guys with DVD-burning computers.

Xaxaxe wrote:The Dragon Archive is the only legal one I can think of ...

And boy did they pay for that one. We all won with the wonderful Hackmaster, but it's probably why they'll never do a Dungeon compilation.

sauromatian wrote:
They did? What happened with it?

TSR/WotC had to pay half a million dollars to authors etc for royalties.

Plaag wrote:Course it also allowed Kenzer, since the Dragon Magazines had the KotD comics in them, to get special rights for creating Hackmaster versions of old D&D modules.  Course then WotC learned they only had to delay the approval process of those modules and Kenzer was forced to abandon that type of material.

ShaneG.

never knew that. for anyone lazier than i am, here is the wiki entry that seems to nicely sum up the 'whys' of shane's post

"Kenzer & Company received many requests from fans of the comic to produce an actual HackMaster game, but initially they thought that licensing Dungeons & Dragons would be impossible. However, when they asked Wizards of the Coast about creating a derivative work, they reached an agreement that led in 2001 to the publication of HackMaster 4th Edition, sometimes ironically referred to as the most realistic and complete set of role-playing rules in existence.[citation needed]

K&C acquired the rights to produce HackMaster after the Dragon Magazine Archive software was published where Wizards of the Coast failed to get permission to reprint many of the original articles such as the Knights of the Dinner Table comic in the electronic media archive. A lawsuit was settled out of court, and K&C started producing HackMaster afterwards. In part of that ability to use AD&D rules, K&C is required to maintain a higher level of humor than in the Knights of the Dinner Table comic for products that are revised from previous AD&D material.[citation needed] Completely original works for Hackmaster are not subject to this restriction imposed by Wizards of the Coast.

Whereas Wizards of the Coast overhauled the rules for 3rd edition Dungeons & Dragons, Kenzer & Company took the opposite action by revising the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons First and Second Edition rules (including various supplements such as 1st Edition Unearthed Arcana and Oriental Adventures and the mid-90's Skills & Powers supplements) into a more coherent system and adding an element of parody. However, as a nod to the version from the comic, the first edition of Hackmaster was published as the 4th Edition."

Plaag wrote:Yeah basically it all happened last year, Kenzer got fed up with having no response.  Course they then abandoned all d20, even going so far as to sell everything with the d20 logo for cheap.  I don't visit their boards/site much anymore, but I think they are still producing Kalamar stuff though not sure if its their own system or True20.

ShaneG.

Hi, new poster here. KenzerCo decided not to renew their WotC/Hasbro license (for the reasons already mentioned by previous posters).

There is a Hackmaster 5th Ed. in the works, previews have been promised to appear in Hackjournal this year (release date is still unknown, but maybe/probably/hopefully next year). As far as I know, KenzerCo are making Kalamar the officiel campaign world for Hackmaster 5th Ed.

Big lot of Shadowrun pdfs on eBay.uk:


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