Quote from: TristramEvans;724615BESM
GoO went out of business a while ago, but BESM 2e remains one of my favourite little systems. A few years ago White Wolf's now-defunct Arthouse division put out a rather disappointing 3rd ed. Does WW currently still own the rights and any plans for a new edition?

I think CCP (of Eve fame), who bought WW, probably own it.  I don't think they sold it to Onyx Path, they seem to have only picked up the WoD type stuff.

Quote from: Simlasa;724663Can't there be a DC Heroes retroclone? Rewrite of the rules with the names changed and that's all?
The whole 'you can't copyright rule mechanics' thing.

From my understanding that basically what "Blood of Heros" is

Quote from: Brander;724667I think CCP (of Eve fame), who bought WW, probably own it.  I don't think they sold it to Onyx Path, they seem to have only picked up the WoD type stuff.

I could be wrong but I think Mark MacKinnon still owns the rights to BESM 2e/Tri-Stat. Arthaus/Onyx whatever owns the rights to BESM 3rd.

Quote from: JeremyR;724660Star Wars D6 has a similar copyright notice. "R TM and Copyright (year) Lucasfilm LTD. All Rights Reserved. Trademarks of LFL used by West End Games under authorization"

And yet, the D6 system was West End Games, not LFL

Well, the before-mentioned Ray Winninger said that Greg Gorden (creator of the MEGS system) believed he owned the system, but Ray could never find any contract stating such. The contracts he saw all stated that DC Comics owned the game, system and all.

The last time Pulsar Games made any noise was when they said there were some legal issues with the ownership of the system. No doubt this was the case.

It's relatively legal-easy to make a retroclone of a d20 product because of the OGL. Making one based on a game owned by Time-Warner is another matter altogether.

Quote from: Ronin;724705I could be wrong but I think Mark MacKinnon still owns the rights to BESM 2e/Tri-Stat. Arthaus/Onyx whatever owns the rights to BESM 3rd.

Could be, I'd be curious to know for sure.  Had I a little more extra $$$ I'd be tempted to inquire and potentially make an offer.  BESM 2nd was a very good system; BESM 3rd, not so much, though it tried very hard.  Something around a 2.5 would have been my preference.

Quote from: Endless Flight;724710It's relatively legal-easy to make a retroclone of a d20 product because of the OGL. Making one based on a game owned by Time-Warner is another matter altogether.

Yeah, Im not sure Id risk it. Right now Im working on an adaption of FASERIP, and the changes Ive needed to maje to stay away fron the original presentation are significant enough that its going to be hard to keep it compatible with the original system, which was a goal for me. And with that at least I have 4c and Icons to hide behind, legally. But Im hoping obscurity will keep it out of the eyes of Disney Lawyers regardless.

DCH was a system I admired a lot. That one extra chart in resolution kept it from surpassing MSH for me, but it was a very nicely structured game for supers of disparate power levels. It deserves to be available in some form.

Quote from: Simlasa;724663Can't there be a DC Heroes retroclone? Rewrite of the rules with the names changed and that's all?
The whole 'you can't copyright rule mechanics' thing.

There are aspects of the DCH system that are non-obvious and not easily replicated without running afoul of copyright

I love chart systems, but they're kind of a bitch to clone, because if the chart's been designed in such a way as to actually take advantage of the form, it also makes it a distinct expression.

If there were a clear formula behind the chart, you could get away with it I think (like 4C kinda did, though that one was weird about distributing the chart; some versions didn't have it at first). But attempts have been made in the past to put a formula to the thing, and the result makes Alternate Realities look like Fudge.

So you're pretty much stuck replicating the chart, which means copying it wholesale, and that's a no-no as far as I can see.

Quote from: Brander;724667I think CCP (of Eve fame), who bought WW, probably own it.  I don't think they sold it to Onyx Path, they seem to have only picked up the WoD type stuff.

Actually, so far as I am aware CCP are only really interested in controlling WoD and Exalted - this is why Onyx Path only has a licence instead of owning those lines outright. Onyx Path owns Scion and Aberrant/Adventure/Aeon outright, presumably because CCP had no interest in keeping the properties.

The various Arthaus games like Pendragon and BESM seem to have a more mysterious status. I know Greg Stafford was able to simply pull Pendragon and let another publisher do it because he never sold it outright to WW, just gave them a licence, so I do wonder whether BESM 3rd is in a similar situation.

Quote from: Endless Flight;724632If you look in one of the 1st edition DC Heroes RPG books it says "DC Heroes Role Playing Game is a trademark of Mayfair Games, under license from DC Comics, Inc." It also says under credits: "Copyright 1985 DC Comics, Inc."

I think Greg Gorden said he was "sure" Mayfair actually owned the system and just the specific implementation was owned by DC, which is why Pulsar was able to publish Blood of Heroes. Which means nothing for us as DC/Marvel can employ better lawyers than anyone would could hope to challenge that copyright. DC Heroes is still my favorite superhero rpg, and that fucking abomination BoH didn't do anything to help.

Isn't BoH mostly made up of fan rules posted on the mailing list (still going strong and still impenetrable to newcomers in terms of trying to converse or figure out what is going on)?

It kind of bloated the rules in the way Hero system starting seeing in 4e and by 5e it resembled a breeze block in size. Yeah, sure, the art made it rancid to look at, and that game world thing tacked onto the back - has anyone ever used that, ever? Aside from that the game plays pretty much the same, but there's plenty I'm not keen on over 3e, and some that I'm ok with.

It is really dry, like school textbook dry, reading mind

Quote from: APNIt kind of bloated the rules in the way Hero system starting seeing in 4e and by 5e it resembled a breeze block in size. Yeah, sure, the art made it rancid to look at, and that game world thing tacked onto the back - has anyone ever used that, ever? Aside from that the game plays pretty much the same, but there's plenty I'm not keen on over 3e, and some that I'm ok with.
(

I pull the book out every now and then just to marvel at how Lefield-esque the character designs / write-ups are;  that sort of shit is one thing I don't miss from the 90's for sure.

Quote from: APN;725000Isn't BoH mostly made up of fan rules posted on the mailing list (still going strong and still impenetrable to newcomers in terms of trying to converse or figure out what is going on)?

More or less, yes.

The problem is that writeups.org has pretty much come to dominate the culture around the game. Because of the mechanical stigma of the tables and their difficulty in online play, actual play culture has dwindled, leaving mostly just a lot of nerds tinkering about trying to simulate every conceivable superhero ever recorded.

This meant a lot of the rules modifications that've become semi-canon amongst the writeups and DCH list crowd are largely uninformed by any actual play concerns, and BOH was written with pretty much all the standard fanon changes.

So even casting aside the bad art and laughable setting, even the rules themselves are a pointless waste of paper. They're still 95% the same as DCH3, and the other 5% has nothing to offer anyone wanting to play the thing.

You're better off just hunting down a copy of 3e or 2e, really.

Quote from: J Arcane;725020More or less, yes.

The problem is that writeups.org has pretty much come to dominate the culture around the game. Because of the mechanical stigma of the tables and their difficulty in online play, actual play culture has dwindled, leaving mostly just a lot of nerds tinkering about trying to simulate every conceivable superhero ever recorded.

I'm with J Arcane here; too much inbreeding of ideas and no oversight, or you know playtesting to see how they work..

I corresponded briefly with Mark McKinnon just now about BESM, he wrote:

   As far as I know, nothing has changed for the past eight years and CCP still retains the property.

Quote from: fuseboy;725041I corresponded briefly with Mark McKinnon just now about BESM, he wrote:

   As far as I know, nothing has changed for the past eight years and CCP still retains the property.

I really cant stand it when companies sit on IPs.