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License to Thrill

So, last year my old tabletop roleplaying group, as part of the actual-play podcast “Knights of the Tabletop”, played a crossover game in the “World of Darkness”. You never got to hear these sessions, though, because of White Wolf’s newish copyright policies. Basically, they want you to label any podcast, video, or other medium you use their products with the “Dark Pack” image, linking back to them, and so forth.

That isn’t a problem. The problem lies in their statement that they can retract their approval of your copyright license at any time, even if you comply with their policies.

I was not having that, and as such, scrapped all of the WoD shows we had already done, replacing them with the “Cyberpunk 2020” shows we did in January.

Anyway, I was so irritated by WW’s “Dark Pack” policy, that I not only vowed not to use their products anymore, nor to feature them on any of our shows, I also vowed never to use any licensed products at all! By this, I meant I would avoid using licensed games like “Star Wars”, “The Witcher”, and so forth. I simply wanted to avoid the possibility of having copyright issues down the line, were we to record a show using such games.

Well, I’ve decided to step away from that particular cliff.

While I am still not going to ever use or feature another White Wolf product on a show I produce, at least as long as their bullshit copyright policy remains in place, other licensed products are now on the table again. After thinking about it for a while, there is no reason I should avoid using other games, just because some other company is being jerks regarding their copyrights.

What really changed my mind is R. Talsorian’s game, “The Witcher RPG”. I picked it up several months ago, and have all of the current products in that line. I would love to play it, and fully intend to do so, but why not do it on an actual-play podcast? R. Talsorian isn’t a bunch of dicks, when it comes to the use of their games on podcasts and such. In fact, the only company being dickish, to my knowledge, is White Wolf. So as far as I’m concerned, everything else is available to be used for my podcast.

This is of course dependant upon other companies remaining cool about their policies, and whether or not WW wise up and let people play their games without the Sword of Damacles hanging over their content.

Anyway, so that’s it. I look forward to playing most everything in my RPG library, in good time. Everything but White Wolf products, that is.

Scormus
I'm the editor, publisher, and primary "talent" here at Scormey.com.
https://scormey.com

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