White Wolf Withdraws Pay-To-Play Policy

WorselWorsel writes "After almost two weeks of fan outrage White Wolf has canceled plans to implement their Pay-to-Play policy. In a forum post, Philippe R. Boulle writes 'Based on all your feedback, it's obvious that the policy as currently worded is not going to accomplish these goals. So, we are pulling it off the table as a blanket policy. I realize that the proverbial genie can't be shoved back in the bottle, but the guidelines I handed to a few people at ORIGINS and posted here last week clearly need to be reworked and rethought, so please consider them withdrawn.' The withdrawal of the policy can be read in full on the forums."

Poor business model

[kyndig]

This is just poor business modeling. The current solution to alleviate the concerns of the outraged players is to now get with larger organisations charging a fee to seek out contracts or licensing terms. It is clear the developers intentions is to wreap some spending capitable benefits off their products, and rightly so. Doing so in this manner though will lead to a loss in users and community support (IMHO). There are other methods to capitalise on a product. Im not a big LARP fan, but basic business management and a little ingenuity should put some copper in their pocket.

Meanwhile, in Lawyer Land...

[FLEB]

I'd have to wonder if that scheme would even be legally defensible, considering that (or "if", rather... I haven't seen the new edition) this isn't mentioned in the book.

(Analogy-mobile... away!)

It's like charging teachers above-and-beyond the price of a textbook for... actually using the textbook. There might be some sort of leverage along the lines that players are creating a derivative work, but (go, analogymobile, go!) really, that's like "How to make a birdhouse" trying to charge you license fees for making the birdhouse.

Of course, it all comes down to that most fundamental of legal principles: is White Wolf big enough to both execute and withstand the fallout from a steamroller lawsuit against its customers. Well, do you feel lucky... punk?

It's a shame that the developers of one of the better games out there (in my rather-uninformed opinion) had to have such money-grubbing bastards (or, I might also accept "egotistical micromanaging bastards" depending on their true motive) at the helm.

So, is the Fifth Edition going to come with a EULA?

Re:Like candy from a baby.

[damiangerous]

Well, yeah, gamist. I look for that in a game. White Wolf has some good fiction, but as game rules it leaves an awful lot to be desired. Pretty much everything beyond the most basic concepts is left to the Storyteller to deal with. Thanks...if I wanted to write my own game system I would.

WoD is a bit of a paradox to me. It seems to be targeted at people who like storytelling and drama, yet generally those are fairly creative people to begin with. WoD goes to great lengths to provide its own built in story, history and rich world, yet what's the one thing creative types are weakest at? Solid and balanced game mechanics. WoD's failure is that it's designed by right-brainers AND targeted at right-brain gamers. There's no left-brain in there to give them some logical base. It's far easier to put a pretty world on solid rules than to try to backport rules hacks onto an existing game, and that's where WoD falls down.

The beauty of (current) D&D is its relative straightforwardness. It scales well from beer & pretzels up to moderately simulationist. It caters mostly to the gamist crowd, sure, but you can leave out so much that it covers without sacrificing anything. Nearly any situation can be resolved with a single d20 roll...or you can choose not to roll any dice without damaging the intergrity of the system. I don't think most dramatist gamers realize that because it's cool to hate d20. You claim that D&D is gamist, but what you're not seeing is that that's what dramatist gamers need. d20 provides a solid, fairly well balanced structure for right-brain gamers to do what they do best: create a rich, well developed world that already has a rules structure to be hung on. D&D isn't perfect, but it has very little in common with the 1st and 2nd editions everyone loves to hate.

Re:What is it?

[NBarnes]

He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes. He who does not is a fool forever.
- old chinese proverb

White Wolf is mostly a table-top 'old school' RPG publisher. Their IP has been pretty dramatically successful, so it's gotten licenced a lot.

They're still in business?

[RM6f9]

After the horrible mangling they put "Vampire: The Masquerade" through in order to get more $$$ for "Vampire: The Requiem", I (and several of my associates) voted with our wallets and our feet, i.e., departed. Any game-administrating company that shows as much callous disregard for the wishes of its customer/players as White Wolf has deserves to crumble into the dust.

Re:Ha... interesting

[Pendersempai]

"What White Wolf are saying is that if people run and use White Wolf games at conventions and charge people money to play for a *profit*, then they need to obtain a license to make said profit using White Wolf's material as the key engine for doing so."

Yes, but on what grounds? Running a game using WW's rules doesn't require a copyright license, since you're not making a copy or performing the work publicly or creating derivative works or anything else that falls under the aegis of copyright. It doesn't require a patent license, because they don't have patents to cover their games. It's not trademark infringement, because the only use of their trademark in your materials legitimately refers to their trade. And it's not trade secrets, because they publish the rules.

You'd be in favor of a law that said that anyone who "profits" off of someone else's "IP" should have to pay royalties? I guess that'd be the end of libraries, book critics, etc.