Re: [BNW] How much is BNW?

[Wiels Fabrice <sherinford@chez.com>]

> Technically, anyone who publishes derivative BNW material is in violation of
> the copyright. If you push the material by using the trademark, you're
> infringing upon that trademark too. As the author and former owner of the
> material, I have no special status with regard to this, since I've sold the
> rights to someone else (AEG). Most game companies just don't bother pursuing
> action against anyone who's not selling infringing materials since it's hard
> to prove damages, likely not worth it, and they actually enjoy the support.
> 
> That said, I make my living by designing games and writing. The amount of
> time I have in a day is limited, and I have a family to feed. If I'm going to
> write anything, I'd prefer that it help me with that basic goal. The rest of
> my time I like to spend with my wife and two-year-old son.
> 
> In other words, the chances of me taking a lot of time to provide free
> support for BNW aren't good. It's not that I wouldn't love to. It's just that
> it's not worth my time.

Too bad...
Now we just have to hope someone will buy the damn thing.

Or maybe some very brave new fans could write a NetBook to provide future
support for the game ?

I personnaly doubt any game company will indeed sue people providing
new support material for their game.

Look at www.trekrpg.net and you will see what I mean.

I really like this game, and I would therefore be ready to work on it,
but, since french is my mother language, I would need someone
to translate my work in english...

The problem are the secrets that have not yet been revealed...

Matt, maybe you could give us some pointers on the secrets of
the BNW setting.   It is not necessary to make a long compendium
on the subject : a few pages could be enough, I think.

> If I could, I'd raise the money to buy BNW back and start up my own game
> company. Honestly, BNW wouldn't be all that expensive for me to buy back--in
> relative terms. It would be in the low tens of thousands of dollars. But if I
> were to do that, I'd have to start up a new game company to publish more
> materials for it. Otherwise, I'd be flushing that investment down the drain.

Let's say you need 30.000 $ to buy the game back.
If 1000 gamers and fans contribute, it would be a 30$ contribution.
I can certainly give that money.
But is there enough fans willing to make it ?

> I've given this a lot of thought because it honestly does pain me to see
> something I worked so hard on go gently into that good night. But I just
> don't see it happening. If I was going to go to the trouble of starting a
> game company again, I'd likely be better off doing a new game from scratch.

What about Crossroad ?   Does AEG have the rights for this non-existent game
too ?   If they don't, nothing can prevent you to release it...

> I'm still noodling around some ideas about how to save the game, but the
> risk-benefit ratios would have to be right. Unfortunately, I haven't come
> across the right plan yet. If I do, you'll be among the first to know.

One way to do it is to make a suscription : you sell the next two compendium
of BNW before even writing them.   If enough people volunteer to buy it, you
buy the rights back from AEG, write the compendiums and are sure to sell
a good number of these...   To motivate fans, you can even release 10
special editions (you give them at random ) with your beautiful signature
on them ;-)

> Either way, I'd like to thank you all again for your incredible support. As
> long as someone somewhere is actually playing the game, it's never really
> going to be dead.