Paging former HIWG Members
- Thread starter Zparkz
- Start date
Sorry for being dense: what do you mean by "misused"?
Sold or used commercially in some way.
But the real reason I do not know.
BTW: I was just contacted by Martin Rait from HIWG-NZ. He asked me to pull the Meshan Saga content from the HIWG CD which I have done. A new file is just being uploaded as I write.
To quote the mail I got from Martin:
"Some time ago, one of the authors who contributed to that fanzine
removed from us the rights to continue to use their Traveller material.
To comply with that request I must cease using it, and hence, remove
the publication out of circulation in it's current form (this is
largely why our own website and that of HIWGNZ was removed)."
But the real reason I do not know.
BTW: I was just contacted by Martin Rait from HIWG-NZ. He asked me to pull the Meshan Saga content from the HIWG CD which I have done. A new file is just being uploaded as I write.
To quote the mail I got from Martin:
"Some time ago, one of the authors who contributed to that fanzine
removed from us the rights to continue to use their Traveller material.
To comply with that request I must cease using it, and hence, remove
the publication out of circulation in it's current form (this is
largely why our own website and that of HIWGNZ was removed)."
I thought I might provide an update here...
After Clay Bush's death, the family contacted the gaming convention that he ran many games at over the years and offered to let them review his notes and materials.
That game convention coordinator contacted me, as I'm the Chairman of Winter War, and also have a great Traveller interest.
I felt that the material was too much for myself (5 banker boxes worth), so I contacted Jeff Zeitlin (Freelance Traveller) about the situation. I know that they are continuing to work towards making sure Clay's notes and materials are not lost to the Traveller community, and that he retains proper credit for all of his ideas.
I'll try to pay more attention to this forum, and update when there's more news on this material...
After Clay Bush's death, the family contacted the gaming convention that he ran many games at over the years and offered to let them review his notes and materials.
That game convention coordinator contacted me, as I'm the Chairman of Winter War, and also have a great Traveller interest.
I felt that the material was too much for myself (5 banker boxes worth), so I contacted Jeff Zeitlin (Freelance Traveller) about the situation. I know that they are continuing to work towards making sure Clay's notes and materials are not lost to the Traveller community, and that he retains proper credit for all of his ideas.
I'll try to pay more attention to this forum, and update when there's more news on this material...
When I managed to contact Clay Bush regarding posting his HIWG material to the Traveller Wiki, he told me no because he had sold all the rights to his material to Marc Miller. From his note to me:
fspacerpg
SOC-3
For those wanting to know about The Meshan Saga, it's original 10 issues can still be gotten hold of, because they were included on several CD products I published. Our FSpaceRPG 2001 CDROM has issues 1-10 on it. Copies of those can be sourced from Noble Knight Games, or via Trademe here in NZ. Some FSpace book game packs include the CD as well.
As issues 1-10 are in certain libraries and have been earmarked by Google in their Books project I need to look at the future of these issues and be respectful of the rights expression of one of the authors, and of course Marc Miller himself.
I also found my partially completed issues 11 and 12, which is when we planned to switch from pure Traveller to a multiple game format. I am considering what to do with this and other unpublished Traveller content.
fspacerpg
SOC-3
Oddly enough this isn't actually true. The HIWGNZ group I pulled together for Meshan was centred around the team writing and playing FED RPG/FSpaceRPG and my AD&D group who helped frame up the world I've spun off into it's own game based on the FSpaceRPG engine.
HIWGNZ existed before I took over and had members not associated with the Meshan project. And several members in NZ contributed to The Meshan Saga with articles who weren't part of the Meshan Sector team.
The Meshan work has several influences dependant on writers. Richard did his own thing, not related to the FSpace work - and he went his own way. Philip was very pure to the setting and rules. My own work got influenced by my own work elsewhere.
I do admit as the genesis for FSpace, it is influenced by my earlier gaming for Traveller (particularly MT with the influence of DGP), but I can also say 2300AD, Palladium's Robotech, Star Frontiers and Space Opera all greatly influenced what FSpace is. At the time I wrote that game I owned not a single piece of gaming material from elsewhere. I sold the lot, then sat down and wrote short stories, story intros and the like before writing some rules and taking things from there.
To do my HIWGNZ work several years later I had to buy some Traveller stuff again and borrow the rest.
Many years later I had acquired a commercial publishing licence from Marc for doing Meshan CT, but during the editorial process of the first book Richard and I decided to go our seperate ways, so that project never got published.
Philip, Aaron and I have been considering what to do with all the writing and art we accumulated for that project.
Although I queried Marc about investigating this again (especially since he got a royalty advance), he was too busy with T5 and hasn't gotten back to me for quite some time.
So if we can't publish for Traveller, we probably are going to repurpose the material and publish either something OGL and/or FSpace so we have clear commercial rights. So in that sense, FSpace could well feed directly off that work.
As for Australians in the FSpace/Meshan group, they are all ex-NZers, even our UK members were all NZ residents at one point. No member of HIWG Australia was ever been involved in FSpace, nor can I recall them pitching into Meshan either. On the other hand NZers had contributed to Australia's Yiklerdanzh project.
Hopefully that provides a little history - especially since I've been vacant from the scene for several years.
fspacerpg
SOC-3
Interesting.
As a side note I used to host a couple of HTML converted versions of AABP for Clay back at the turn of the century.
Given this info I'll make sure that material, and some other bits I've had from Clay never make it back as part of a website based on HIWG NZ's old material.
With this and Richard gone his seperate way, it is unlikely we'll get a site back based on the remainder of the material. But you never know, Philip, Aaron and I might change our minds. I've also got a far more sophisticated server environment compared with 9 years ago.
FreeTrav
SOC-14 1K
Followup on this - the project has largely been stalled; I'm still willing to take the load and go through it myself, beating things into appropriate shape where needed - but the bottleneck appears to be at the Estate's end of things. Don, if you could ping them again for me...
Can you e-mail me (don.mckinney@gmail.com) about this, and I'll get Marc's attention on it? I'm probably part of the reason he missed your query, so it makes sense that I get him back on it.
Thanks!
fspacerpg
Citizen: SOC-2
history and background...
Thanks for the clarifications...I had always felt the Meshan vibe in the FSpace. As Traveller is older, I assumed that FSpace an outgrowth. Combined with the kangaroo, as I stated before. So, please consider my heartfelt appologies for the misdirection.
I know that Shannon Appel was writing a history of RPGs and Robert Kuntz is doing a history of TSR. I wonder once that T5 is over and done with that someone might want jot down some documents concerning all the paper trails.
I don't know, I always find the history of RPGs both as they develop but also the personalities (egos) interesting. I remember when I queried Loren about Designer Notes, he was somewhat surprised now it is part of the Industry norm to include some of the thought processes that go on or at the very least blog about it.
Citizen: SOC-2
history and background...
Thanks for the clarifications...I had always felt the Meshan vibe in the FSpace. As Traveller is older, I assumed that FSpace an outgrowth. Combined with the kangaroo, as I stated before. So, please consider my heartfelt appologies for the misdirection.
I know that Shannon Appel was writing a history of RPGs and Robert Kuntz is doing a history of TSR. I wonder once that T5 is over and done with that someone might want jot down some documents concerning all the paper trails.
I don't know, I always find the history of RPGs both as they develop but also the personalities (egos) interesting. I remember when I queried Loren about Designer Notes, he was somewhat surprised now it is part of the Industry norm to include some of the thought processes that go on or at the very least blog about it.
I must admit I understand where Clay was coming from - a couple of years ago some of my Signal-GK material ended up being posted on a number of traveller websites and attributed to someone else. When I tried to reclaim authorship of the material I got ignored both by the theif and by the webmaster. It's one of the reasons I decided to only allow the Dagudashaag material I personally wrote to be distributed as part of the original issues of Signal-GK.
Theophilus
SOC-13
Any chance the rest of the issues of Signal GK might make it onto the web?
I lack the time (and the OCR software) that Leighton had to properly translate the originals into pdf's but I might be able to at least provide scans if that would help.
See what I can do over the next few days... OK, my scanner's not up to the task - anyone in the UK happy to scan say issue 13 for me and I'll post them a photocopy???
See http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=11307&page=3
See what I can do over the next few days... OK, my scanner's not up to the task - anyone in the UK happy to scan say issue 13 for me and I'll post them a photocopy???
See http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=11307&page=3
Last edited:
fspacerpg
SOC-3
fspacerpg
Citizen: SOC-2
history and background...
Thanks for the clarifications...I had always felt the Meshan vibe in the FSpace. As Traveller is older, I assumed that FSpace an outgrowth. Combined with the kangaroo, as I stated before. So, please consider my heartfelt appologies for the misdirection.
I know that Shannon Appel was writing a history of RPGs and Robert Kuntz is doing a history of TSR. I wonder once that T5 is over and done with that someone might want jot down some documents concerning all the paper trails.
I don't know, I always find the history of RPGs both as they develop but also the personalities (egos) interesting. I remember when I queried Loren about Designer Notes, he was somewhat surprised now it is part of the Industry norm to include some of the thought processes that go on or at the very least blog about it.
I think a history of each RPG does need to be tracked. It's important to keep a track of who does what, both commercial and non-commercially (where fanzines, supplements etc are concerned).
As we've seen the availability of information is transient on the net, and rights issues often see material lost. Along with the non-visibility comes a loss of history.
Lately I've been reflecting on my own gaming history and going through 12 years of email, some fragments of older email archives, and various documents to reconstruct just what I've done.
In the modern digital age it easy for an individual to track things with a Blog and a CMS taking care of the material they crate. But the good old days are not quite as clear cut.
Hopefully someone can right the 'biographical' history of Traveller one day - or someone set up the right kind of CMS where people can properly contribute their part of the Traveller history.
Cheers
FSpacerpg,
my site tries to do just that. Let everyone contribute to Traveller regardless of setting and rules. When I started this thread I was hoping that enough former HIWG members would answer and hopefully put the HIWG CD material back on the net, with the benefit they retain better control over their own material and at no cost for them as the hosting will be free.
Jae,
if you need a home for Signal GK, there is plenty of space on my site.
I'll also attend Travellercon 2011 in UK, as I did this year. So hopefully I get to see some of you Brits that are on this forume.
my site tries to do just that. Let everyone contribute to Traveller regardless of setting and rules. When I started this thread I was hoping that enough former HIWG members would answer and hopefully put the HIWG CD material back on the net, with the benefit they retain better control over their own material and at no cost for them as the hosting will be free.
Jae,
if you need a home for Signal GK, there is plenty of space on my site.
I'll also attend Travellercon 2011 in UK, as I did this year. So hopefully I get to see some of you Brits that are on this forume.
Theophilus
SOC-13
Zparkz,
Signal GK is hosted on two sites at this time, I'm still waiting for the last two issues to come out. At this time there has been some discussion about bringing SGK back as an annual. But the Dagudashaag Encyclopedia Project is currently on the front burner.
Signal GK is hosted on two sites at this time, I'm still waiting for the last two issues to come out. At this time there has been some discussion about bringing SGK back as an annual. But the Dagudashaag Encyclopedia Project is currently on the front burner.
