Quote:
Originally Posted by Jason Weiser
Herein lies the question? Will this product be sold? If so, then we're yeah, trampling over the copyright like a herd of elephants. If however, we're honoring the terms of the FFE copyright language for fan products, then we are golden. That said, it's kind of a pain in the ass to to this for free.
I do however, have an idea.
Ok, in the early part of the oughts, FASA went under and Battletech had gone on a bit of hiatus. Meanwhile, Whizkids had gone and come out with "Mechwarrior", or as we in the community derisively called it..."click tech." It was not met well by a lot of the old hands and try as they might, we really didn't want anything to do with it.
Needless to say, "clicky tech" died screaming, and now, you can get the stuff for bargain prices on ebay and at cons. But, TPTB realized, there was a lot of vocal fans with money who wanted their old Battletech back. So what did they do? They came up with "Classic Battletech." Like Classic Coke, it survived where New Coke did not.
So where am I going with this? We need to make a case for "Classic T2K, by the fans, for the fans." Marc's done this before. He made Foreven Sector in Traveller a referee's preserve, for ref's to do with as they will. I am sure, with the right approach, we could get a similar outcome for Twilight: 2000.
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First just a semantics thing, my understanding is that FASA did not go under, they thought that the gaming industry was going to die so closed up shop when the going was good. But regardless I think that there are two other issues to use the BattleTech example, first BattleTech (or Classic BattleTech) was never out of production/Dead when FASA closed up shop FanPro got the license and keep making stuff (with a lot of the same staff), and later Catalyst Games (who holds it currently) so it has been in production from creation to now (with possible exceptions for very short times when one company closed/lost license and next took over).
Also you are correct that lots of old hats did not like MechWarrior Dark Age (or clicky tech) but some of us thought it was OK, overall it lasted for six years. It was still selling when Tops (the baseball card company who owned Wizkids) shut down Wizkids.
So not saying that this is a bad way to look at going, but saying it may not be as easy as it sounds.