[Matt/Legal] Forevens in different timelines?

[EDG]

Well they're letting us do it for Foreven, aren't they. It'll be interesting to see if anyone else does come up with any other versions of Foreven set in a similar era after the Hells Creek one is released. I have a feeling that they won't.

The OGL side of Traveller is a good license and one that I can see getting a lot more use by third party companies (and indeed, it HAS got a lot more use by them already). The Foreven one... not so useful IMO - personally I think it's too restrictive for doing much with the Charted Space setting. I think it's too obscure a sector, has very little to do with the history of Charted Space, and it's too far off the beaten track to be really interesting to people. I think people would be much better off just using the FUP for that, which lets them publish their take on any sector that is located anywhere in Charted Space for free. OK, so they don't make money off it, but that's what people have been doing with Traveller for the past 30 years anyway so it's not like that's changed.

And I think you're mistaken about what one can or can't do in Foreven. I see nothing restricting you from mentioning or referring to events that happened outside it - you just can't change those events in your product. The question I guess is whether you're allowed to refer to previous versions of Traveller or if you're just stuck with what MGT has said - and if the latter is true then that rules out anybody doing anything in other eras.

It does say that we are not allowed to "Publish material for older and out of print versions of Traveller, and release them commercially." To me that says that you can't publish (for example) a Megatraveller sector that uses Megatraveller rules, but what does that say about publishing a sector that is set in the Megatraveller timeline but that uses the Mongoose Traveller rules (which is what the Hells Creek supplement seems to be)?

And bluntly, dmccoy1693 - you're not Mongoose, and you don't work for them, so you are in no position to be so authoritative about it. I would like answers to these questions directly from Matt or someone else at Mongoose who is in the know.

 

[Anonymous]

This tell you how it works.

2.  Original Traveller Universe material produced under this licence may only be made with direct respect to the Foreven Sector.  References to other sectors and areas of the Original Traveller Universe may be made, but only in direct relation to the Foreven Sector.

For example, you can produce material that describes what the Zhodani are doing within the Foreven Sector, but you cannot describe changes to the Zhodani central government.  You could describe someone as being born within District 268, but you cannot create a new planet or town within district 268 he hailed from.

This is best summarised as;

You are free to reference any Original Traveller Universe material you wish, and you may create new material based on this so long as the new material is set in the Foreven Sector.

You cannot produce anything that changes or creates Original Traveller Universe material outside of the Foreven Sector.

3.  You are in no way restricted by the timeline of the Original Traveller Universe, and may produce Foreven Sector material set in any time period.

 

[kristof65]

Sorry if I came across a bit snippy there. But from my prospective, I see this as the best license to ever hit the RPG market. Ever. I've never heard of anyone allowing someone else to make stuff for someone else's setting with no approval or payments at all of any kind. And you're complaining that you want more. Sorry, but do not have much sympathy for that.

It's not more, it's clarification.

Let's say the OTU is the current world, and the Foreven sector is the United States. It's very clear that I could write up a description of Boston under the Foreven license. What isn't clear is how much I can reference outside of the United States, when writing about the history of Boston - because a large part of Boston's history - particularly around the Revolutionary War - is tied to events in Great Britain. How would you describe the causes and events leading to the Boston Tea Party if you're not allowed to reference anythng pertaining to Great Britain?

What's being asked here isn't why we aren't allowed to do something, but if we are allowed to do it at all. Best to know before hand.

I think the license is great, too. But it's not clear cut enough on some things, and for certain products/ideas, you clearly wouldn't want to create something, market it, and find you are in violation.

I've been looking at it, and I think in many ways, they might have been better off making a series of more restrictive OTU licenses. Frex, a "World" license that would allow one to create and detail a single world/system, but place no reference to where it was physically located beyond mentioning a general reference like near Zhodani space, or Rimward of Core would grant more freedom for world/system designers, even though it wouldn't allow someone to say specifically where a world was, or give it a name that's defined in Canon.

Then you could have specific licenses that could cover certain things - like megacorps, starships, etc, and what you could/couldn't do with them, thus allowing more opening up of the OTU, while at the same time locking down the definitions of what's allowed for various things.

 

[dmccoy1693]

Just a tad over the top there me thinks.

Think of my original post as a first draft. It needed editted. Alot.

Best advice here is if in doubt ask the bossman in this case Matt.

Always. But my grasp of the licenses (all the open licenses relating to Mongoose Traveller) has been for the most part spot on thus far. I've worked with some interesting licenses in the past. I'm no lawyer, but I'm no slouch either.

Some things that may help:

• Pretend that there were no previous edition of Traveller for just 1 moment. Pretend Mongoose's was the first you read or heard of. What can you do with that? Anything. You do not have to assume a static universe.
• So what can happen in a non-static universe? Rebellions. Governments collapses happen. You can detail a collapse of the Zho government if you so wish. But the license only allows for you to detail stuff that happens within Foreven. Work with it instead of against it. Detail how the collapse of the Zho government in Foreven occurred. Detail how there is no information, funding, or support coming from the larger Zho government anymore, how the subsector capitals were unable to provide for their people anymore and people stopped paying taxes to them or obeying their laws. Congrats, you have a rebellion.
• What else can happen in a non-static universe? A virus that ... (I have no clue what the virus time period in the OTU did and for the purposes of this, it is not important). But if the same effects happened and roughly the same time period, coincidence. Getting the idea?
• Now go back to having the OTU as previous editions of Traveller. Because the Foreven license grants use of OTU terms, you can use those same terms when talking about stuff that happens in Foreven. But if you're changing stuff in the OTU as presented in the Spinward Marches book that do not take place in Foreven, that's a no no.

 

[Anonymous]

One of the problems is that most people are not lawyers and may (unlike you and me) have seen licenses before.

Read the license again from that fresh perspective some parts dont seem to gel that well, take for example this part near the end.

Official publications detailing the Original Traveller Universe, whether in print or not, may never be listed in this box.

This is the section telling you what needs adding on your first page to list references etc.
My Foreven is in the 1200 peroid using the history of TNE, reading this statement I cant put TNE in the box on the first page BUT can I say anyway else its related to the TNE history ?

 

[dmccoy1693]

OK stupid example, my setting is set 10,000,000 years before the Third Imperium and so before any OTU things could be referenced (like say hmmm ancients), its pretty clear that I need to make background history/fluff up that doesnt exist already and so big text dump in my product.

Alright, lets run with this:
If you're bound and determined to use the Foreven license but do not want to use the races, 90+% of the established setting, but still have things like the map, you're looking at the wrong clause in the license: You can make your own setting. The ancients would have their own names for their sectors, their own names for planets, etc. You can detail your own universe all you want. The only resemble between Foreven today and Foreven 10,000,000 years before the 3I would be map.

 

[EDG]

Ok, but let's say you wanted to set your Foreven in the year 1300, so you have all the races and worlds from the Charted Space setting, but it's set after all the published material... then what?

Is is allowable to refer to TNE or 1248? Can you say that the Zhodani consulate has collapsed by this time? Or is that out of bounds?

I think having a clause in there that says "you can use up to 1000 words to describe what is happening outside of your Foreven" - with the caveat that you also have to include something saying that this section is NOT canonical - might be a good middle ground.

Again, I'm not really interested in other people's opinions or guesses about this - I would like a definitive response from Matt.

 

[Klaus Kipling]

One thing the Foreven license would be good for was equipment and vehicle books that could reference OTU megacorps and worlds/polities.

So you could have an LSP sports flyer and an Intellarms RF ACR.

Wrap it up in some sort of "Foreven Import/Export Business" brochure or "Bippo's Foreven Trading Post" catalogue, and that should be ok.

Same for doing starships with OTU referencing: a shipyard based in Foreven, doing custom versions of vessels common in the 3I or Sword Worlds, maybe.

For instance, you could also detail an Imperial Marine Battalion, as long as it was a specific one stationed on a lonely outpost in the Foreven sector. There's quite a lot of rope.

A whole 5th Frontier War campaign could be be set there, over 2 or 3 subsectors, as long as it was a sideshow and didn't alter the major events.

Basically, you can do an awful lot and keep in OTU fluff. It's just that sector building gets a bit tricky when it comes to overt setting building too, but that's less about gaming and more about scifi background, more of a purely intellectual pursuit.

Really, I don't see the point in a Foreven sector book. Adventure writers would be better off sticking to the subsector or world scale. Then hopefully we could end up with multiple Foreven's, allowing refs to pick and mix what they want.

 

[Sylvre Phire]

LOTS OF NEAT THINGS

Klaus, you're part Zhodani, right? Right?! QUIT READING MY MIND!! You're giving away Hell Creek's entire product line plan! :lol:

And yes, we also have an equipment book in the works: Sovima's Interstellar Bazaar and Techdex. The book will go a little deeper into cybernetics and hacking as well, but that's all I'm willing to give away on that one, folks.

*puts his battle dress psi-shield helmet back on*

Pax et bonum,

Dale Meier
Creative Director
Hell Creek Sanitarium
Omaha, NE

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

This tell you how it works.

2.  Original Traveller Universe material produced under this licence may only be made with direct respect to the Foreven Sector.  References to other sectors and areas of the Original Traveller Universe may be made, but only in direct relation to the Foreven Sector.

For example, you can produce material that describes what the Zhodani are doing within the Foreven Sector, but you cannot describe changes to the Zhodani central government.  You could describe someone as being born within District 268, but you cannot create a new planet or town within district 268 he hailed from.

This is best summarised as;

You are free to reference any Original Traveller Universe material you wish, and you may create new material based on this so long as the new material is set in the Foreven Sector.

You cannot produce anything that changes or creates Original Traveller Universe material outside of the Foreven Sector.

3.  You are in no way restricted by the timeline of the Original Traveller Universe, and may produce Foreven Sector material set in any time period.

Number 3 seems to answer it. You CAN do a 1248 Foreven or a 1130 Foreven or a 650 Foreven if you want.

You cannot change the history of the OTU but you can use it.

You want the current ruler of the Avalar Consolate to have been born on Cronor, no problem, you just can't make up the name of the city he came from; if you use a previously published name, you are fine, but cannot make up a new location name outside of Foreven. The fact that he drives around in a fire-engine red Air/Raft made by Ling Standard Products is also OK.

I think the rules are pretty clear when we read them, people seem to be reacting emotionally to material that they haven't read again recently.

 

[EDG]

How is "Original Traveller Universe" defined though? Is that just what Mongoose Publishing has released for the Charted Space setting? Or does it encompass everything that GDW or any licensee has ever published in the Charted Space setting?

It seems particularly muddy given this clause in the Foreven license:

16.	The materials produced by other Traveller publishers or licensees remains their intellectual property; their publications may have been produced under agreements independent of the Open Gaming License. Publishers must ensure that their works do not infringe on the intellectual property rights of those publishers.

 

[RandyT0001]

Did ya'll read the Appendix I, section 3 of the Foreven Free Sector Logo License v1?

3. You are in no way restricted by the timeline of the Original Traveller Universe, and may produce Foreven Sector material set in any time period.

The intention of this is to allow people to be fairly wild in what they produce, if they so wish. You can set Foreven a million years in the past, or a million years in the future, if you so wish.

 

[Vile]

Did ya'll read the Appendix I, section 3 of the Foreven Free Sector Logo License v1?

3. You are in no way restricted by the timeline of the Original Traveller Universe, and may produce Foreven Sector material set in any time period.

The intention of this is to allow people to be fairly wild in what they produce, if they so wish. You can set Foreven a million years in the past, or a million years in the future, if you so wish.

Oops! I think we all need to take a closer look at the Developers' Pack before posting questions to Matt! :lol:

Especially as he must be extremely busy preparing the High Guard SRD ... :wink:

 

[EDG]

Did ya'll read the Appendix I, section 3 of the Foreven Free Sector Logo License v1?

3. You are in no way restricted by the timeline of the Original Traveller Universe, and may produce Foreven Sector material set in any time period.

The intention of this is to allow people to be fairly wild in what they produce, if they so wish. You can set Foreven a million years in the past, or a million years in the future, if you so wish.

Oops! I think we all need to take a closer look at the Developers' Pack before posting questions to Matt! :lol:

I was aware of that, but it doesn't really answer my latest question (about how it meshes with clause 16 in the Foreven license). It appears to say that we can reference any OTU material, but then says that if it's produced by another licensee then it's not necessarily available for reference?