A Crazy Idea for the Guild

[Robbie]

This very discussion (or one similar to it) has come up numerous times in the community leader discussions...And every time it comes up I start leaning towards it. There's a few problems with it though...

A) I'm not a businessman, just a guy with a hosting plan and bandwidth
B) I'm not a lawyer nor do I have access to one
C) All of the above in regards to international issues since this site caters to everyone

To do this I'd basically end up turning this into a business that will have to pay taxes more than likely, and keep records as well as ensure I have legal protection from disputes over content rights and publishing rights and monetary exchanges.

At this point it sounds great to say hey all, lets make maps and adventures and sell them to the world to make money for the guild...and the very real problem with that is that when you say that you are saying...lets make Robbie some money...which while I am totally flattered that you'd want to do that...I'm pretty sure you wouldn't expect that to continue to be a one-way venture...eventually, if not right frm the start I'm going to have to start paying people for their work so I can publish it and make money off of it...even if the money isn't even profitting me, only helping the site stay afloat, there's still the issue of rights and pay. How long would you guys make maps for me to publish and make money off of? Not long I imagine.

Also there's staffing issues...at this point, Its me running the website side of things...and my community leaders run the community side of things...I'd have to bring in additional site admins, possibly programmers, and of course the aforementioned lawyer, all of which are going to want a cut of the sites proceeds and all of which are going to require tax information and employee or contractee legal processing.

***

Keep in mind...I'm not saying any of the above is impossible...Its just a lot more daunting and involved than saying "lets sell pdf's to help pay for the site". Your hearts are in the right place, and it honors me greatly...

Because of that honor, I'm going to start digging into this...I'm going to start with what I consider my mentor site (CGSociety) and see if I can get in touch with their administration and find out what they had to do to get things rolling...That site basically does exactly what I'd like to do.

Thanks go to you all...I'll keep ya posted

[hans_worst]

If I were you I start looking at your product first. Have you ever created a map pack? or a d20 adventure? d20 is nice, because you can use the rules if you do it right. That's not terrible difficult. I can help you with that.

I think it's a good start to see if we can do it for free. Under a Creative Commons Licence for example. see here for licences

Then if this is succesfull, you can see if there is some money in it.

[Robbie]

Now that I'm all for...definitely.

[hans_worst]

the d20 system has it's own license. If we for example make a pdf. All the d20 stuff we use for it should be in a box. Everything in the box is published under the terms of the Open Gaming License. For all other work we could use the normal copyright or a Creative Commons Licence.

[Redrobes]

Theres some good points here.

First let me reply to the point above about content. I would only be interested in making maps or at most some short descriptions but not so much in the style of a full module and I think most of us are leaning that way in this guild. But I thought be we co-joined at the hips with a group who has more interest in the writing and back story so thats where I thought the module aspect would come from.

In terms of site design w.r.t selling modules I would not think that we need worry about that as RPGNow et al handle all of that. You are right about the money tho in that it would have to be accounted maybe even taxed. Personally I don't give a hoot about the money as I know its going to be very little. Maybe Arcana is right in that if we were shifting many hundreds+ of free modules then there would be more temptation to charge. The difference in take up between stuff thats free and very cheap but not free is drastic tho believe me.

To have a physical product has its downsides too. Unless we have somebody who can print on demand or run small quantity then you end up with stock which has to be stored, posted and accounted for. The digital route is much easier and you can update or make changes to it.

The licensing issues is a little more tricky too. Some applications restrict some content based on it so you would have to be sure that you were able to use the art correctly. Most shared art has a requirement for non-commercial use. I have stated that anyone can use icons from my set as they wish as part of a map but the downloads from the site are creative commons with non-commercial attribution & share-alike. So fine for the CC content but not if you charge for it. I don't know if Kepli is listening to add whether DJ & CC2/3 art is likewise but I see a lot of that on these maps too.

and I am in full agreement with keeping it small to start. When your faced with a large amount of work it can seem very daunting. The skill most required more than any artistic type is just sheer tenacity. Its just so easy to give up on it.

[NeonKnight]

CC3 issues for maps is very....liberal, with their licenses.

The way it was explained to me is as follows:

A CC3 map is like a printed document. You have the right to make and sell the document using the program, but instead of FONTS you have IMAGES. As long as you are only selling the final Image of the finished map and not providing access to the 'fonts' you are OK. Lots of smaller companies out their using CC3 to make and sell map packs, or even image libraries for use with that software (i.e. MS and ADOBE Does not care if I write a document, and then sell said document in WORD or PDF format, as long as I do not provide licensed material/intellectual property to others who did not pay for it).

Does that make sense?

[hans_worst]

But when you download new IMAGES for CC3. The owner of those images may not be so liberal? I believe this is the answer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_...omputer_Images