beasterbrook wrote in Islandia modules:if you do a PDF/POD of the original products please change it significantly enough to distinguish it from the original (especially the cover)Brette:)
safletcher wrote in Islandia modules:mbassoc2003 - That would certainly be a reasonable plan. I have just been working through the logistics involved in all of it. Nothing was definite at this point.However, after following up with Peter Rice recently, I received a response that he and his wife have decided to maintain full creative control and republishing rights for now, as he wants to make sure everything keeps the 'certain feel' it had before.I do not know what his future plans are at this point, but for now, my plan is on hold.Thanks again to everyone who offered their input.
mbassoc2003 wrote in Islandia modules:Re. They Gygax Estate - They wanted to retain, control, and argue among themselves over who is and isn't going to profit from daddy's work. Ernie screwed everyone who backs him on Kickstarter then sells the rights for a second bite at the cherry to TLG. In the meantime everything that the family think they are protecting is available for free to anyone with a search engine online. They could have licensed Zagyg and Yggsburgh to TLG and taken profit for years to come. They could have put their own money into protecting the Gygax name instead of dragging it through the mud, but instead one is off doing an absolutely fantastic job running GaryCon while the other is using the Gygax name to fleece Kickstarter backers out of whatever it was, $100K?Re. Islandia - The problem here is both a project manager/developer that is focussing on money and profitability, whilst pretending its all about 'preserving the wonderful product', which is classic salesman talk and a disaster for anyone stupid enough to throw money at them. Add to that a delusional OAP who thinks he can compete with the quality of modern day writers, which IMO is just laughable.And neither of them are willing to consider the obvious routes to preserve the products as is, and get them into the public consciousness, namely publishing digitally as they are and making them available PoD, then hit the forums and start conversations, send copies to notable YouTube reviewers, etc. and slowly build a monetary base to hire proper professionals to do a rewrite. Why? Because Mr Rice is too old and cannot be bothered, and the proposer doesn't see any real money in it for himself. Hell, with PDFs and PoDs of the originals online, if you can get enough talk in the community, one of the big publishers would pick the products up, assign real writers to them and commission real artists and cartographers.Or... As would seem to be both parties' preference, Peter Rice dies, no-one gives a F about anything he ever achieved, he goes forgotten and some of us make out big time on products that continue to get rarer and rarer. We're all winners. The PDFs will eventually be available for free for anyone to download anyways, regardless of what they do. Somehow they think they can stop it, like all the muppets in the music industry, but the door is closing, and they have the choice to walk through it and make money, or abandon their work. In Peter Rice's position I can understand abandoning his IP. He's too old to care and that was lifetime ago. And from the poster's point of view, I can understand the attempt to cash in, but its a blatant money grab that cannot possibly succeed. If it were about the product, the project would go ahead with no requirement for money, because no money is required to make this succeed. Only the will of the author and his agent.
mbassoc2003 wrote in Islandia modules:Gail - However, she did inherit his IP and Gary was well aware that she alone would inherit his IP and presumably was fine with that. He chose to exclude his kids for whatever reason from 'the family business', so I won't second guess the family dynamicEGG's body of work may be Gail's pension, so we may see licensing when she gets desperate for medical cover or a change in lifestyle. Peter Rice's works will all be available online for free before the decade is out, and if he's not willing to cash in on it before that happens, then he'll never have the chance to do so. I'm guessing what little effort is needed to proof read something someone else has written for him isn't worth the money he can get for it, and he'd rather abandon the work than monetise it.
mbassoc2003 wrote in Islandia modules:Shannon will record 10-20 as being the decade the old guard bit the dust and the new writers and publishers found their own and moved forward without them. Call it OSR or NuSR or whatever the kids want to call it. I see far more refreshing voices and exciting products in that space, than in what remains of the legacies of the founders and their followers.
mbassoc2003 wrote in Islandia modules:I am wondering whether innovation in writing and products is needed with some of these middle of the road companies, as a larger and larger body of talent is being found outside of the publishing houses now.
Guy Fullerton wrote in Islandia modules:"Needed" for what end?I mean, the major companies produce nothing more than polished shite IMHO, and the masses of new-school D&D consumers gobble it up by multiple orders of magnitude more than the small publishers. What do the major companies have going for them? Branding, distribution savvy, and the built-up momentum of their corporate machinery.Innovation & writing won't make up for that.Sure, maybe innovation & writing could boost sales a little for a smaller company, but it gets easier every year to self publish at high quality.Why would a "talent" waste their time writing what a middle-of-the-road company wants for a comparative pittance (have you seen how little even the big companies can pay!?), generally losing copyright in the process, when they could instead write an independent passion project, make much more, and keep copyright? That's only semi-rhetorical — there *are* reasons for somebody to throw-in with some company so as to avoid the logistics hurdles, but the hurdles get lower every year.