License / copyright / permission with regards amateur fan made VTT adaptations of classic traveller adventures for free for use distribution?

[classictraveller777]

Hello

I put up a post on the on the Traveller subreddit seeking answers with regards to the question in the post tile. It was suggested that I best post the question here on the Mongoose Forums

I have developed a Foundry VTT module based on the classic Traveller adventure shadows to be used with the Foundry module Twodsix so that GMs can use this to run the adventure using whichever ruleset they choose that is supported by Twodsix.
The module consists of handcrafted maps that replicate the floorplans of the pyramid complex in shadows, I have also included additional self designed floorplans for the ventilation system, which was referred to in the original adventure that players could crawl through, but the floorplans were not included in the original adventure.
Also included are notes for the GM with regards to running the adventure based on the logic / concepts presented in the original adventure. for example, considerations such as damage from falling, and concepts not included in the original adventure such effects of exposure to atmosphere from loss of vacc suit integrity etc.
The README.md includes the note that states :
The GM also requires a copy of the published Traveller adventure Shadows for the adventure background information and location descriptions within the pyramid structure to be able to run this adventure.
NOTE I am not recreating the adventure content, only quoting in some of the GM notes, short passages from the original content. For example - quote a section with regards to throws to resolve falling from a seismic tremor, which in the original content was roll under, and how this can be replaced with a roll to throw over using a target number if using an alternate rule set such as cepheus or retrofitting back to classic Traveller the task resolution system that was formalised in MegaTraveller.
The module is comparable to someone developing a custom map pack of the pyramid complex as jpeg / png / webp files and posting it on drivethrurpg so that others can use those maps.

I would like to be able to distribute this module for free online through Foundry, for fans of the original adventure, and as the basis for GM's new to Foundry and Twodsix to learn Foundry and run an adventure, without having to do most of the work to setup the Foundry world scenes, actors, etc. The GM would have to do the last part of adventure prep such as place all NPC tokens, encounters on the maps and potentially add additional scenes / artwork etc to customise the adventure as the GM sees fit.
I am somewhat confused as to the current state of fair use policy? / licensing of classic Traveller content. One of the responses to my reddit post informed me that recently ( 2024 ? ) Mongoose acquired all rights from Marc Miller.
On the reddit post one of the responses pointed out the drivethru rpg classic TAS but that policy applies specifically to drivethru rpg.

I did receive one response on the reddit post from a redditor that had created a free online central supply catalog which i note is using creative commons license using content from Traveller 5.

What I am seeking from Mongoose is answers with regards to the following questions :
1. Is it permissible for amateur fan made recreations of classic Traveller adventure content such as floorplans intended for use either in printed out in person on a table top or developed into a VTT module to be distributed for free ?
2. If yes, what is the license / disclaimer text that needs to be included to state that all rights to the original adventure remain the property of Mongoose ?
3. If yes, is there any limitation on what the adventure can be called ? for e.g. If i title my module twodsix shadows adventure - a clear homage to the original is this permissible ? The TAS policy states :

You may not use Classic Traveller series titles (such as Book X, Supplement X, Adventure X, or Double Adventure X, etc), but may certainly create your own series for Classic Traveller!

For example if someone wrote a TAS adventure module. Shadows 2, the return to Yorbund, and rewrote a new adventure revolving the original floorplans of the pyramid complex would this be permissible?

Lastly, I know that person/s at Mongoose are currently working on a MgT2e ruleset Foundry module, as well as modules for MgT2e adventures.
To this end if someone at Mongoose wants to contact me ( send me a private dm on this forum ) I can provide the url from which my module can be downloaded and then installed in Foundry so that Mongoose can evaluate the module contents.
Note I have no plans to develop Foundry MgT2e adventure modules my interest is in classic Traveller.

Please advise

Thanks

 

[classictraveller777]

FYI I had some issues submitting the post and had to remove urls to bypass the spam / inappropriate content filter
The reddit post I refer to is

https://www.reddit.com/r/traveller/comments/1jlnicl/license_copyright_permission_when_it_comes_to_fan

 

[MongooseMatt]

1. Is it permissible for amateur fan made recreations of classic Traveller adventure content such as floorplans intended for use either in printed out in person on a table top or developed into a VTT module to be distributed for free ?
2. If yes, what is the license / disclaimer text that needs to be included to state that all rights to the original adventure remain the property of Mongoose ?
3. If yes, is there any limitation on what the adventure can be called ? for e.g. If i title my module twodsix shadows adventure - a clear homage to the original is this permissible ? The TAS policy states :

You may not use Classic Traveller series titles (such as Book X, Supplement X, Adventure X, or Double Adventure X, etc), but may certainly create your own series for Classic Traveller!

For example if someone wrote a TAS adventure module. Shadows 2, the return to Yorbund, and rewrote a new adventure revolving the original floorplans of the pyramid complex would this be permissible?

1-3. At this time, no. VTT's are a bit of a wild west at the moment and we have not yet settled on policies for them.

An adventure called Shadows 2: Return to Yorbund, however, sounds perfect as a PDF for Classic TAS!

I would read it

 

[classictraveller777]

Edit - I'm again having some issues posting this through the spam filter ( so will try strip out some urls and see if this resolves the issues.. )

@MongooseMatt
Hi Matt

Whilst No was not the response I was hoping for thanks for responding.

Perhaps as a positive outcome this post can be used as the basis for an update to the fair use policy <link to the mongoose fair use policy > licensing section 5 with regards to use of maps and VTTs ?

You cannot scan entire sections of art in an attempt to
reproduce a book, but if you want to display a map on your
web page to annotate an adventure you are writing, or you
need to display a tank for an article that you have composed
about it, then its OK to use it. You also must still have the
site-wide copyright/trademark acknowledgment/disclaimer.

i.e. if reproducing the map on a public website is permissible then is this not similar to a computer generated ( or hand drawn ) recreation of the same map, for public distribution, either standalone on a web page or bundled within a VTT map pack?

section 1 from the fair use policy states

1. May I create my own, original works and put them
on a web or ftp site or share them with my friends?
Yes, however the Copyright/Trademark holder, Mongoose
Publishing, requires the following.
a) You don't charge for it.
b) You include the following site-wide disclaimer in the text
of a story or article, on a web site:

The definition of my own, original works should be clarified. i.e. clearly if I use software to draw a VTT map of moonbase alpha on planet zeta this is my own and original. if I scan a black and white map from a classic traveller module ( e.g. the shadows pyramids external aerial view ) - this is not my own, nor original. But if i was to use map making software to draw my own recreation of the aerial view, only in colour and with more detail, is this a copy of the original, or my own original work ? To use an analogy, lexus made a car that clearly, even to the average person, when put side by side with with a mercedes, resembles a mercedes, but because it does not look exactly the same, then is it really a copy ? ( i guess the lawyers argue this one out in courts if it comes down to deciding this ).

For now I'm going to have to shelve my Foundry module from public release and work on some other traveller adventure that was not Marc Miller / GDW or an adventure of my own creation - which if i understand correctly - Shadows 2 the return to Yorbund is only permissible as a PDF through classic TAS on drivethrurpg and not a VTT map pack - given that it would be using the floorplans from the original adventure.

I'm hoping that Mongoose considers an update to the fair use policy that allows for fan made recreations of deck plans / floor plans for non commercial use for VTT modules with maps and tokens that still require the original adventure PDF to play which is how i modelled my Foundry module.

 

[classictraveller777]

@MongooseMatt

My apologies, had to split the post, part 2
Fair use policy aside, my observations with regards to VTT's and traveller and the wild west scenario.

The best supported VTT by Mongoose when it comes to official rulesets and adventures is Fantasy grounds. This is MgT2e specific. There are 'free' community fan made rulsets for classic traveller on FG but this is only the rules ( similar to what Twodsix is for Foundry ).

Roll 20, has nothing other than some character sheets. But this hasn't stopped people using it to play traveller ( see cyborg games youtube series on how to play traveller on roll20 some of which date back to 2020.. that is 5 years old now )

Foundry - the ruleset for MgT2E being developed by samuel penn a.k.a unotsnark ( on the official Mongoose github so I can only assume samuel is either a Mongoose employee or contracted by Mongoose as a freelance developer and he has access to the official repo as from his blog I see he has also written code to support running traveller on roll20 on his own repos ) - no adventures.
Foundry - the twodsix ruleset with permission from Mongoose to include some / all of the classic traveller rules.
...and there are other VTT's out there

In the case of roll20, Foundry etc anyone that wants to play traveller using those VTT's is going to have to setup the adventures from scratch. Which at a minimum requires some VTT maps or import some black and white images from the original pdfs for e.g. I've seen online fan made custom floorplans of the research ship in death station drawn in table top map making software, in colour and with more detail vs the black and white originals.
Then there is the no small task of setting up the scenes, tokens, journal notes ( much of which can be scanned in reproduced from the PDF products ), code / macros to model special effects ( I can only speak for Foundry I have no experience with roll20 or FG ).

From what I understand Mongoose is only a small team of people, how many of those are in house programmers, with hands on VTT knowledge ? but if I was at Mongoose and wanting to maximise sales of Mg2Te PDF / published products this is what I would suggest

1. Focus on the VTT maps and tokens and sell these as a package per adventure through drivethrurpg or the Mongoose site - this is VTT agnostic and also ruleset agnostic i.e. the same floorplan can be used in roll20 as can be used in Foundry. ( ok this might not be 100% true when you consider multi level maps and if Foundry and roll20 implement this differently e.g. Foundry uses image transparency ). But likely, most floorplans / deckplans would be single level.
I'd wager most people already have purchased PDFs before moving onto VTT's and don't want to repurchase the PDFs through the VTT market place and most are tech savvy enough to be able to import those maps and setup the world / scenes etc and run the adventure from the PDFs.
Some adventures are more map focused ( e.g. death station, shadows ) vs others ( e.g. mission on mithril the classic traveller version all that would be required is a big enough set of generic artic themed scenery encounter maps as that adventure runs for days / weeks in game time with possibility of encounters every day, and tokens for the players, animals, and a large token for the tracked vehicle. Other than the downport which in the original adevnture is not part of the plot, there are no buildings / floorplans as such ).
Map perspective could be 2D or isometric but I'd suggest 2D as there is likely to be more support / assets for 2D maps than isometric. ( isometric maps in Foundry for example is a 3rd party module which apparently supports use of 2D maps )
This would more likely get people into playing traveller as some GM's don't want all the bells and whistles of JavaScript macros and special effects and less is more i.e. all they want or need is a map and some tokens.
If Mongoose plans to revise Shadows to Mg2Te ( magic 8 ball says highly unlikely it's only been 40 plus years since it was published ) then the same map pack could also be used for the classic traveller version assuming the floor plans remain unchanged.

2. Much the same as how Mongoose got Seth Skorkowsky to rewrite death station and distribute this for free then this could also be bundled with a set of free jpeg / webp VTT deckplans. A referee that wants to run this adventure using a VTT has options,extract the deck plans from the PDF and scale these up and export for use in VTT ( which will be very pixelated when scaled up ), or use some map making software to recreate the floorplans. If Mongoose provided the referee with the VTT maps then this saves the referee that additional work and potentially is an incentive to attract new players to traveller who are currently playing other RPG's on VTT and want to try a traveller one shot or campaign.

3. The next step up from the VTT map packs to use those as the basis for ready to run adventures for GM's that don't want to do all the configuration and preparation which means creating a specific package / module for the specific VTT and the specific ruleset. This would be MgT2e specific as this is the flagship ruleset by Mongoose .
Fantasy grounds is already supported,
For Foundry, is the MgT2e official module a precursor to official adventures on Foundry ? I assume yes, otherwise why invest in developing the ruleset for Foundry.
Roll20 without an official ruleset from Mongoose is a non starter.
I cannot speak for the other VTT's but my personal experience with Foundry is that maintaining these adventures is a lot harder given the rapid pace of change with Foundry itself, i.e Foundry v13 is round the corner, with each new Foundry release that adds more functionality to the core code ( sometimes taking concepts from 3rd party modules and rolling those into the core - and thus those modules become redundant ), combined with add on modules by 3rd party developers that are either no longer actively developed, or need to be updated to stay inline with foundry core and thus many Foundry gamers hold back on upgrading Foundry until the modules support the new Foundry version, adventures that use many add on modules can end up broken when trying to run in the latest Foundry releases.
I don't see any business case in Mongoose developing VTT modules for classic traveller adventures given there is no official ruleset for classic traveller, and whilst there is Twodsix, which although has permission from Mongoose, is unofficial, so any adventures would either have to be fan made but only for personal use and not for public re-use for free unless Mongoose reconsiders this in the fair use policy.

VTT's have been round for 10 to 20 years now, people have been using them to play traveller with official and unofficial support ( as an example of shadows being played in spanish using Foundry and Twodsix

). My module is basically the same thing as this but with more detailed floor plans and use of Javascript macros to automate some of the mechanics in the adventure such as doors randomly closing, and new concepts such lights randomly toggling on / off to maximise the tension / horror ambience of the adventure for players.

As a side note, fwiw, my offer still stands, if people at Mongoose working on the VTT side of things with Foundry want to take a look at my module as an example of what could be done with Foundry send me a message here on the forums.

 

[MongooseMatt]

Hey there,

Thank you for tasking the time on this.

More Traveller is coming (some of it really quite soon!) on other VTT platforms, so that will begin to sort one side of this.

In terms of Fair Use, we are not against those changes, but we need time (and headspace!) to sit down and figure out what to do and what the implications would be.

Sorry for the slowness on this, we just have rather a lot on the plate right now