Systems you can write for

[calithena]

1. Most of our articles are, and always will be, for GFS - the Generic Fantasy System - a generic class/level system that represents a vague composite of various GM home-written role-playing systems as well as games like the Arduin Grimoires, Bunnies & Burrows, the original Dungeons and Dragons, the original Empire of the Petal Throne, Thieves' Guild, Warlock, etc. etc. It is understood that creations are not for any of these systems specifically unless you have permission from the owner of the IP (see below), but for the author's own home role-playing system.

2. Our current policy is that no OGL material will appear in the pages of Fight On! Some OGL systems, for example Castles and Crusades, Labyrinth Lord, Basic Fantasy, and OSRIC, are ones whose material translates so effortlessly into GFS notation that you could certainly submit anything you wanted that you had done for those systems as an article for the magazine. And we'd love to have it! However, we will not take submissions specifically for those systems as they are OGL and we would then be forced to include the license, etc. in the magazine. We don't want to get into that whole confusing ball of wax if we can avoid it. So, we love all these games, and Fight On! material is consistent with them, but submissions relating to those games will have to have their system/product identity stripped and be translated (again, effortlessly, and we'll in fact do this for you - authors don't need to worry, just send wht you've got) into GFS to work in the mag.

3. The following game system creators have given permission for authors to submit articles for their games to the fanzine. We will take articles explicitly for these games and with stats, etc. as such. I believe (though I am not a lawyer!) that such creations are legally derived works and so you will need to get the game designer's permission if you want to sell or otherwise republish such submissions; I believe they are considered owned by the author but rights belong both to the author and to the person whose work it is derived from. I know this doesn't matter to most of you but I wanted to make it clear. Anyway:

- M. A. R. Barker, the original Empire of the Petal Throne (Only material for the original game will be considered, and it will be marked non-canon; material for Phil's other Tekumel games could find a home in the Seal of the Imperium fanzine, for example.)

- Oliver Legrand, both original and revised Mazes and Minotaurs

- S. John Ross, Encounter Critical

- The RPGPundit, Forward: to Adventure!

I will update this list as more permissions become available.

[calithena]

There are other systems on this list too, I just haven't updated it. There are some license issues but basically Labyrinth Lord and the Broadsword 1 pg rpg have also given permission. Also, you don't actually need permissions for many kinds of magazine articles, but I want to proceed cautiously and invite people in as friends, but for example I think systems like Tunnels & Trolls are probably in principle within our purview too. Stay tuned!

[robertsconley]

Is Labyrinth Lord and not OSRIC included because of the pre-AD&D focus?

[dwayanu]

That is really splendid! Thanks again to those game creators!

My guess is that Ken St. Andre and Rick Loomis would be pleased to give their blessing to T&T material. It might be worth asking.

[calithena]

In theory most of what we publish will probably be usable with LL and OSRIC. What Dan Proctor tells me is that the LL license doesn't require LL content to be OGL, which circumvents a complicated issue. But actually I'm sort of confused about that - I don't quite understand how it would work. Dan has given his blessing at least though. Anyway, I'm not sure it matters, since most of our content is usable with both OSRIC and LL (and about three dozen other games) with or without a specific system acknowledgement, but I at least wanted to record his goodwill.

Nothing I say here should be construed as focusing the mag around these particular systems in any case, it's really just a record of our having talked to a system's creator and that creator having given their blessing for us to indicate compatibility etc. with their work.

[calithena]

Also for the record, I think OSRIC is great, if people want to send in stuff they did for OSRIC we can take it and publish it, I'm just not sure we can publish it _for OSRIC_ because of various licensing issues and the magazine's broader-than-OGL overall focus (I'll try to explain our 'policy' on this at some point, but I have too much to do and we have great content regardless, next issue ROCKS!, but I'll try to get to it someday).

[edsan]

Thanks for dealing with all the legalese and posting this for us Cal!

[grodog]

Sean: I'm heading to CA again next month, do you want me to ask Tadashi for official permission to publish for the Thieves Guild system?

[calithena]

Sure, that would be nice. Don't know if we have anyone planning on writing for it (though there is one contributor I know of who might have interest) but it never hurts to bring more folks on board!

[geoffrey]

Everyone has my permission to write Carcosa materials and submit them for publication to Fight On!. My only requirement is that you put at the beginning of the article/module/whatever the following text:

For use with Supplement V: CARCOSA by Geoffrey McKinney
Available here: carcosa-geoffrey.blogspot.com/

That's it! No licenses. No red tape. Nothing like that. Just the above two lines of text. I eagerly await to see what other people do with Carcosa.

[calithena]

You heard it from the man himself!

[sham]

I had forgotten about this thread, so I'm glad it was bumped. I'd love to write some M&M or Carcosa stuff for a future issue...still working on one large submission, but after that I'll see what I can bash out. Thanks for the offer, Geoffrey. FO! is the perfect place for some Carcosa stuff.

[calithena]

I talked to Greg Stafford. If fan material for Runequest/Glorantha passes the Issaries standards (I need to check these out, I'll post the link later) then we can put it in the magazine.

[kesher]

Holy Crap. I think that's an amazing opportunity!

Glorantha stuff could easily be system neutral, but are we talking about the BFRP system?

[calithena]

Here is the promised link:

www.glorantha.com/inc/fan_policy.html

[dwayanu]

Check out in particular Publisher's Invitation to License.

"Fan Publications: If you want to publish an article, magazine or original work for sale, you need to get Issaries' permission. The short answer is you need to get a license, and may be expected to send in a final copy of your work for Issaries' review. But read on."

I'll note that while Issaries owns the RuneQuest trademark, Chaosium owns the copyrights to the first three editions of RQ rules (apart, I guess, from the Glorantha-specific portions). The Mongoose rules are a sort of "retro-clone," like OSRIC (more of a "retro-mutant" perhaps, given the degree of difference).

[calithena]

Greg told me that the license requirements were very loose (basically you're allowing other people to use your ideas and to contribute them to the maelstrom that is the broader penumbra of Glorantha canon). He also told me that he himself once again has the rights to Runequest.

Authors who want to pursue this will have to do their homework to make sure everything's kosher though, and I will probably double-check actual submissions with Greg before publishing them.

[kelvingreen]

Would the magazine accept material for BRP fantasy, or does it have to be Runequest? Technically, the ruleset is old-school, even if it hasn't appeared in a generic form until relatively recently.

By extension, and very much as a separate point, would Call of Cthulhu material be suitable for the magazine? And going further afield, how about Little Black Book Traveller?

[calithena]

If we have to reprint more than a paragraph worth of licensing stuff with the article, we generally don't want it. I don't know what the current deal with BRP is. I will say that given BRP's publishing history and current multiple instantiation (Greg, Chaosium, Mongoose, maybe WotC) it's probably fairly safe to do Generic Basic Roleplaying (ie your own somewhat tweaked version of that kind of system)...but I am sort of not sure why someone would want to. Pitch me an article by email if you're interested in following this up.

[kelvingreen]

The attraction for me is that I'm not familiar enough with the systems of D&D or the setting of Runequest to write for either, but I'd be quite happy with BRP fantasy. I'm nowhere near ready to pitch anything, so I was just putting some feelers out, really.

[dwayanu]

Howzabout just presenting a scenario and leaving "coding" up to folks familiar with "systems" and all that?

[calithena]

That's always possible, Dwayanu.

[coffee]

Mar 6, 2009 3:56:33 GMT -6 dwayanu said:

Howzabout just presenting a scenario and leaving "coding" up to folks familiar with "systems" and all that?

Actually, I think this is the best of all possible worlds. This way, you can make your scenario vision known to all, and the users will each interpret it in their own way. Now that's old school. Have an exalt!

[calithena]

James Wallis has graciously given us permission for people to submit Dragon Warriors content for future issues.

[busman]

Cal, do you mind editing the initial post to be current with all of the systems that can be used? That would make a single very useful resource. Thanks!

[kelvingreen]

Apr 23, 2009 19:34:36 GMT -6 calithena said:

James Wallis has graciously given us permission for people to submit Dragon Warriors content for future issues.

Oh, now that is very tempting indeed!

[chgowiz]

Apr 23, 2009 22:32:41 GMT -6 busman said:

Cal, do you mind editing the initial post to be current with all of the systems that can be used? That would make a single very useful resource. Thanks!

On top of that, you might want to put an explanation of the keys/terms in each issue. I spent a few minutes trying to remember what WD was.