Does Classic Traveller need an update?

[Dragoner]

... a publisher trying to make money.

A crucial distinction. If one does not charge anything, Drive thru does not give you the same benefits as a paid publisher. Stock art might seem a bit cheesy, to even with a bulk subscription, it is $2-4 per pic. Affinity is cheap, and a good value in general, probably like to have photo, and designer w/o being a publisher. I am old school and like to have physical books too, hard bound is nice because they lay open on the table. A lot of other costs in there as well.

The IP, copyright, trademark discussion is for someplace else.

 

[Marcatlas]

So take the LBBs and make an update for what you feel is a better rules set. Make PDFs or even POD if you like. I "updated" Cepheus for what I thought is a better rule set and made PDFs for my group to use. I don't think my ideas are better for the market than what is being sold on Drivethru. Just better for my group. Otherwise, I'd put it online.

 

[Meteoric Assault]

The controlling law is out of a Texas based case. Don't remember the name. Our company's I.P. law firm briefed us on it a number of years ago. It was from ~2012

2016 DaVinci Editrice SRL vs Yoka Games— Federal law is above state. Supremacy clause.
The court pointed out the major statutory limitation to copyright protection, which is that:

In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.

The court points out that “Unlike a book or movie plot, the rules and procedures, including the winning conditions, that make up a card-game system of play do not themselves produce the artistic or literary content that is the hallmark of protectable expression.” They note that past game copyright victories were won by parties based on infringement of visual appearance or other protectable elements. Pac-man’s gameplay, they recall, was not considered protectable back in 1982.

 

[kilemall]

Big deal for software, they tended to copyright rather then patent because longer and originally treated with more protection.

 

[Marcatlas]

2016 DaVinci Editrice SRL vs Yoka Games— Federal law is above state. Supremacy clause.
The court pointed out the major statutory limitation to copyright protection, which is that:


The court points out that “Unlike a book or movie plot, the rules and procedures, including the winning conditions, that make up a card-game system of play do not themselves produce the artistic or literary content that is the hallmark of protectable expression.” They note that past game copyright victories were won by parties based on infringement of visual appearance or other protectable elements. Pac-man’s gameplay, they recall, was not considered protectable back in 1982.

Yep. Ultimately this is why WotC drew back from its position in early 2023. Hasbro did not want another flogging by 40 or so State AG's like happened about 20 years before over anti competitive business practices.

 

[Marcatlas]

Big deal for software, they tended to copyright rather then patent because longer and originally treated with more protection.

yes, this is why our company had our I.P. law firm thoroughly study this area of law as we were going to be publishing games.

 

[kinnerc]

Geeze, if I didn't know better, I would have thought this poll was for the US Presidential election, it's billed as so close!

That it was so close honestly surprised me.

I might be nostalgia talking, I realize, but I think that Classic Traveller hit the sweet spot between giving you just enough rules to be able to structure something and more rules than you could drown in.

The LBBs were my 2nd RPG (after, of course D&D) back in 1979. I still have them, but for day-to-day use I got a copy of what I like to call the Long Book Reprints from Marc who re-published them that way a few decades ago. While I've tried to move over to Mongoose T1 - and I did so because it so reminded me of the LBBs - there are times when I still pull out my Long Book Reprints.

I also say this because, for example, I found T4 on the "more rules than you could drown in" end of the scale as I was reading "Pocket Empires" this afternoon. Great concept, but as I was reading it, it just screamed to me of the need of a Commodore 64 BASIC program to handle the rule set. (OK, fine, we can upgrade it to Visual BASIC. Perl? OK, Python, but that's as far as I go!)

 

[Echo]

Any update of a ‘classic’ means it is no longer classic.

 

[whartung]

Any update of a ‘classic’ means it is no longer classic.

Back in the day, the radio station 97.1 KLSX showed up in Los Angeles. It was the first time I heard the term "Classic Rock".

And we were all avid listeners because they were playing basically 70's era album rock, stuff we had not heard on the radio in some time (in contrast to "oldies" which was mostly 50's and 60's at the time).

The fun part was, it was probably the next year when the coined the term "It doesn't have to be old, to be classic" so they could play modern tracks from "classic rockers". And so the slide began.

 

[Condottiere]

It's classic, if you heard it in your early teens.

 

[Timerover51]

It's classic, if you heard it in your early teens.

If I heard it in my early teens, it is not "Classic", it is "Classical" or "Ancient".

Seriously though, if you think that Classic Traveller, i.e. The Little Black Books, needs an update, I would recommend one of the varieties of the Cepheus Engine.

 

[Grav_Moped]

And so the slide began.

KROQ 106.7, Pasadena/Los Angeles.

They've been broadcasting stuff from their 80s-90s heyday on their digital sub-channel for years....