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Wizards can still fight the trademark, just like they fought Evil Hat, who had the trademark for about a year before they dropped it. Best case scenario for “TSR” is making a new Star Frontiers, but it won’t look anything like old Star Frontiers.
 
Endless Flight said:
Wizards can still fight the trademark, just like they fought Evil Hat, who had the trademark for about a year before they dropped it. Best case scenario for “TSR” is making a new Star Frontiers, but it won’t look anything like old Star Frontiers.
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In some countries, like the UK, don’t you have to vigorously defend Copyright and Trademark to keep it? WotC certainly did neither with regards to TSR and Star Frontiers. They might be better off moving to England.
 
Being work for hire WotC would own it not the original authors. I still think it's a ham-fisted publicity stunt. They've probably got a universal house system they'll tack onto a science fiction game and a western game. I'm sure these guys are just dying to find a way to cash in on the family name but I think bold new work would be a better path for them than carnival huckster tricks and regurgitating classics they don't own.
 
Endless Flight said:
You don’t have to defend a copyright in the US. There’s no way “TSR” can use old Star Frontiers IP without paying for it.
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That’s not really the issue, the issue is, WotC is using a Trademark they let expire which now belongs to someone else. WotC can just outspend nuTSR to keep things going forever, but the options TSR could be hoping for is...
1. Take the TSR trademark off of every old pdf they sell.
2. Just let TSR have Star Frontiers copyright in exchange for keeping the TSR trademark on the old stuff.

2. Would be more cost effective, for WotC I would think. They’ll pay more just to the Legal Clerks the Lawyers will use for this case then they’ll make off Star Frontiers Copyright.
 
David Johansen said:
So, to leave off on the legalities of the thing.

If nuTSR brings out a new edition of Star Frontiers, will you buy or back it? How much do you want to change? What do you want kept? What's the breaking point?
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I never got it in the first place. One of my pals who did noted that the Sathar (the antagonist alien race) were wormlike things that moved by hydrostasis. And when my other friend heard "hydrostasis" he went "They're WALKING DICKS!"

jg
 
Ernie did an interview, and it's not great.



For those of you not interested in listening to an hour of discussion, there's a transcription summary here. Interesting key points...

On Star Frontiers

It would not be the same game. It would be a complete remake, sadly, or at least enough, as they told my dad when they did 2nd Edition, that I'm sorry you don't deserve any royalties from this because we changed it more than 10%. We're just a small company, we're defiantly not going to go to bat against WotC, that would be a stupid move, we'd just lose.

This is to fill in, and take all those holes where they've thrown back and said 'we don't want that'. So, OK, we're picking up apple cores and panting seeds.

On Cooperating with WotC

I would hope so but they just put out a big disclaimer recently trying to divorce themselves from the ethics and style of play that was involved in the origins of the game. They're basically trying to say 'we're a better company and a better type of person' than those who started playing. At least that's somewhat of the impression they've given and 'please switch over and be part of the new wave'. You know. Join the pack of lemmings, oh yeah!

.... and the problem is my fighter returns antagonism for antagonism. So that's where we start getting into some difficulties and I'm having to throw a protection from evil up. [Can't make out words] here and there, end of the party, and hopefully someday I'll be able to throw a fireball [can't make out words].

More on Star Frontiers

Unless for some reason they will allow us play royalties and things. We would still like to be friends with WotC for old things. We want to pick up things that were tossed in the dirt, brush them off, but if needed we are not incapable of creation. We'll create and we'll allow people to have things that aren't the method they are prescribing for people, it is not happiness for everybody, though it is happiness for many millions.
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On Crowdfunding & Late Kickstarters
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I had a problem because when I did a crowdfunding on something called the Marmoreal Tomb, we are now just starting to deliver five years late ... its an incredible work! But I brought in an artist, a man of great talent, and more ambition than possibly foresight at the time. He's still cracking the whip, we have received years of hate from some people [can't make out words] Marmoreal Tomb, but not the whole thing, we don't have all the stretch goals, I'm saying that I have a burned hand from Kickstarters. But they do work. The reason that they really work is not just the money that they bring in, because you don't get all of it, maybe 7-10% of gets stolen by banks and other people, because that's why they do this crowdfunding thing, they say 'oh great, yeah, we'll handle your money' but it's gone.

But the idea is that we are going to be doing a membership drive, and a membership will be for playing at the museum, for buying products, and also conventions, probably having conventions where we have no fee, or a very reduced fee, if you're a member. And memberships will be lifetime memberships. A copper membership for like $50, there's a mitral or something for a grand. I don't know. That's something I don't have to worry about.

... [can't make out words] about $64,000 out of 125 or whatever they started with. I think I got 113 or something after Kickstarter peeled off their top. I've been paying for artists, I've wasted money on some accountants, I've got a gamer accountant now to help, and governments, and some people say 'oh you've got to pay tax on this, and oh no we didn't have to, the federal returned some money, the state said you give me money [laughs].
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The artist he's referring to is our old associate Benoist, and I think those of us who'd seen his work can agree he was doing a fine job of it. But ultimately, as project manager, the buck stops with Ernie; he scoped out the project, he's responsible for it going as long as it did. If the work was taking too long in his opinion, he's the one that should have dealt with it, by hiring more artists or paying enough for Benoist to work full-time on it. What he probably shouldn't be doing is throwing his colleagues under the bus like that.

While I also wouldn't expect a project manager to be an expert in taxes, I would at least expect them to understand the concept and the existence of transaction fees if you're going through a middleman like Kickstarter.
 
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@ Ladybird Ladybird Thanks for the post. The transcript filled in some blanks for me and I wouldn't trust this guy to run a lemonade stand. I can't imagine WotC wanting to have anything to do with him.

The best thing he could do would be to cut a deal with the likes of Frog God or Troll Lord who would be happy to slap "Gygax" on their product in return for a small royalty.
 
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CRKrueger said:
Paging robertsconley robertsconley...

So WotC has Copyright to all the Star Frontiers material.
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Yup and will until 2077 (1982 + 95 years for work for hire works)


CRKrueger said:
and making no challenge to people violating the copyright, for years.
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Which likely means they lost the right to sue for damages for those years but once they asked the folks hosting the remastered Star Frontiers materials to take it down then the clock starts ticking. And they were within their rights to tell them to take it down. In this case it was so they can start selling Star Frontiers PDFs on DriveThruRPG.


CRKrueger said:
WotC started selling said material again, after letting the Trademark lapse
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To be clear they let the registered trademark lapse.

CRKrueger said:
nuTSR has the TSR Trademark that is on the covers and inside that Star Frontiers material.
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So the point of Trademark is to identify a brand. So that the consumer is not confused by the source of the goods or material. That what the courts look for when adjudicating trademark dispute. Registering one's Trademark confers several benefits the most important of which is proof that it is really something that marks your wares as a distinct brand. It absence doesn't mean a company doesn't have a trademark but rather they have to do more in a court case to prove that yes indeed it an important name or mark for a brand they sell.

Also another important benefit of a FEDERAL trademark that it cover the entire nation and has international implications as well. Otherwise the courts may hold that the brand name only has importance locally like Acme Shoe Store in Pittsburgh wouldn't have a case against Acme Shoe Store in Buffalo.

Also Justin Alexander Justin Alexander tweet is right but not the complete story.

So for nuTSR and Star Frontiers there are several things to consider.

  • TSR hasn't been selling Star Frontiers until recently and even then it is just selling older material and not actively developing it. So it likely Wizards doesn't have cause to complain about another RPG with the Star Frontiers name.
  • But TSR still owns the copyright in the Star Frontiers Title Logo, and still owns the copyright in Star Frontiers Trade Dress. So nuTSR would be foolish to duplicate that without a license from Wizards. This will be the point of contention if there are any.
  • Likewise because of oldTSR Star Frontier it would be hard for nuTSR to get a general trademark covering all variation of Star Frontiers. I believe they will only be able to control a very specific variant in the long run.

CRKrueger said:
Break it all down for us, Sifu.
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I hope the above helps. The thing to keep in mind is that the basic principles will this product be confused by the consumer as part of the brand of another product. NuTSR by tapping into nostalgia about Star Frontier and attempting to use the original is definitely entering "this could be a problem" territory. But... old Star Frontiers never seemed to be part of anything that Hasbro or Wizards is trying to do other than being one more old product to sell as PDFs.

So who knows how this will play out.
 
With the best will in the world... this whole thing seems to be just lazy pandering to the nostalgia market. Hyping up nu-TSR as a revival of the old one and using the logo, fonts, trade dress etc. not only seems a little shabby when the majority of the original TSR team are not involved (and are too retired or dead to be likely to become involved, even if they wanted to), but it makes the whole thing seem very rinky-dink when it's more or less the only thing that's particularly interesting about the endeavour. I'm 99% sure that Giantlands wouldn't be coming across our radar if it didn't have these shenanigans attached to it.

And it doesn't really seem to be capturing the nostalgia crowd that much. Giantlands raised $8001 on Kickstarter from a grand total of 77 backers. It passed its target, but the target was a measly $100, and running a Kickstarter for a product print run with such an astonishingly low base goal seems incredibly shady (to the point where I really think Kickstarter should have done more due diligence before greenlighting the project). Say the projected ended up funding with only 1 backer, who pledged on the $100 tier. Would TSR really have then gone through the whole production process to produce a single copy of the limited edition boxed set to hand over to that one backer?
 
Warthur Warthur What people don't get often is that in today market it all about what you do. Not what you say. Sure that always been kind of true but the connection hobbyist make these days more of a patron (the hobbyist) and client (the author) relationship than the old producer (company/author) customer (hobbyist) relationship. Personal reputation is all with the Client/Patron relationship. Good reputation, regular work of good quality will lead to patronage by hobbyist paying money.
 
Warthur said:
Say the projected ended up funding with only 1 backer, who pledged on the $100 tier. Would TSR really have then gone through the whole production process to produce a single copy of the limited edition boxed set to hand over to that one backer?
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You wouldn't make a profit but you wouldn't lose your shirt either other than time. Why? Because you would use the more expensive but available print on demand services not only for the books but the components as well. But you may be right in that their plan could be only handled by traditional print runs in which case the only option are refunds.
 
Also to be clear about what I mean by copyright in the title logo. Everything about the look this image is copyrighted by TSR and now owned by WoTC. The only question is the Larry Elmore image I see in the center. But since it has a specific Star Frontier Alien in the picture I think it would be problematic to use for another project.

1624537993128.png

Even something like this is copyrighted by the copyright holder. Despite being so minimal.

1624538553395.png 1624539058383.png

So Mongoose would have needed permission to do the below.

1624538607894.png

But on the other hand I would not need permission to do the following although it clearly inspired by the original.

1624538999843.png
 
On Cooperating with WotC

I would hope so but they just put out a big disclaimer recently trying to divorce themselves from the ethics and style of play that was involved in the origins of the game. They're basically trying to say 'we're a better company and a better type of person' than those who started playing. At least that's somewhat of the impression they've given and 'please switch over and be part of the new wave'. You know. Join the pack of lemmings, oh yeah!
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Oh, he's one of THOSE.

Yeah, he can go right ahead and fuck himself right in the ear.
 
FYI, TSR says they've acquired the license for Star Frontiers so the weird, "What a bunch of plagiarists of IP bought by the big megacorporation long ago" can thankfully be dropped.
 
robertsconley said:
Warthur Warthur What people don't get often is that in today market it all about what you do. Not what you say. Sure that always been kind of true but the connection hobbyist make these days more of a patron (the hobbyist) and client (the author) relationship than the old producer (company/author) customer (hobbyist) relationship. Personal reputation is all with the Client/Patron relationship. Good reputation, regular work of good quality will lead to patronage by hobbyist paying money.
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Very, very true. It's what's kind of cargo cult-ish about this new TSR thing: they're trying to take on the appearance of a successful publisher from yesteryear (albeit one which kind of succeeded despite itself a lot of the time and largely coasted on its strong first mover advantage)

robertsconley said:
You wouldn't make a profit but you wouldn't lose your shirt either other than time. Why? Because you would use the more expensive but available print on demand services not only for the books but the components as well. But you may be right in that their plan could be only handled by traditional print runs in which case the only option are refunds.
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True, though arguably the potential reputational blowback from "Kickstarter succeeds with only one backer, provides only 1 product/refund" shouldn't be discounted either.

I mean, that isn't how it happened. But 77 backers isn't exactly setting the world on fire. I guess they wanted to be able to proclaim stuff like "8000% funded!" for the promotion, but when you dig into it and realise how low the bar they were setting themselves was, it comes across as not really having confidence in their own product.
 
He’s probably referring to the disclaimer that Wizards put on DTRPG about older TSR products possibly being insensitive to discriminated groups of people.

Honestly, it has nothing to do with play style of older games and we can’t talk about that here anyway.
 
Endless Flight said:
What’s Jeff Easley been up to? I figured if “TSR” wanted to really come back and make a splash, they’d get the guy who did all the awesome covers I remember from the 80s.
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Hopefully chilling on his porch with a cold one. At least that's what he deserves in my mind, after all the great art he has made. Which I grew up loving.

Seriously though, according to his official website his doing freelance work. Jeff Easley
 
More from that transcript of the Ernie interview that Ladybird Ladybird linked:

Why A New TSR?

TSR has been gone. There's a ton of artists and game designers and people that play..... and recently they were dissed for being old-fashioned, possibly anti modern trends, and enforcing, or even having the concepts of gender identity (laughs).

All I'm trying to do is fill in the stripmine, allow this old fertile soil to produce more games and products again. We're not gonna be able to get back the diamond that was Dungeons & Dragons. We'll be able to make things that might have chips of diamond material... we're never gonna see that great D&D diamond again, I don't think.
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This is another example of what you were saying, robertsconley robertsconley, where Ernie's making it all about what he says and not what he does. Regardless of where anyone stands on these issues (given RPGPub rules), I think we can all agree that answering this question like this does new-TSR absolutely no good for a bunch of reasons:

a) The first paragraph pointlessly alienates a bunch of potential customers who might have been more interested had Ernie not chosen an answer that seems designed to antagonise them. You don't agree with some people's ideas about gender or whatever. Why court the controversy when you can just ignore it - unless, that is, you aren't confident that anyone will talk about you at all without that controversy. If you really want to wink to people who specifically want a publisher who comes down to that side of the culture war stuff, other people already kind of went there and did that. It's not going to make you stand out. From a pure business perspective, setting aside the politics, it is a bad use of the publicity.

b) Talking about all these "artists and game designers" but not mentioning any specific names sounds like hot air. I mean, they seem to have Jim Ward doing design on Giantlands, that's something - but he's not mentioned. A name would at least be something concrete, something the answer totally lacks.

c) The second paragraph pours cold water over any expectations of actual good product. Obviously claiming that they will make the new D&D would be absurdly hubristic. But it's still saying more about what new-TSR can't do than it does about what it can do.

d) It doesn't really answer the question. What does the TSR name allow this lot to do in terms of game design and publishing opportunities that any other name wouldn't? Why does it need to be specifically TSR and not any other name? If it is all about the artists and game designers, why not base the brand around them? If it's all about getting access to that "old fertile soil", what does having the trademark do which operating under a different name would not allow you to do? (From my own legal perspective, the answer to the latter is "sweet jack shit".)

e) It's basically kind of negative in tone. "We're a haven for people who've been cancelled, boo cancel culture! We're going to grub around in the dirt but don't expect anything amazing!"

If this is the best answer Ernie can come up with, I think Ernie should have thought more before jumping onto this project. I've [probably put way more thought into analysing the answer than he did into giving it, to tell the truth. But FFS, this is a theoretically professional member of a new game company giving an interview about his new project. Isn't this exactly the sort of thing he should be putting thought into? Shouldn't he have a far better answer to this question ready to go?
 
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CT_Phipps said:
FYI, TSR says they've acquired the license for Star Frontiers so the weird, "What a bunch of plagiarists of IP bought by the big megacorporation long ago" can thankfully be dropped.
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That helps. Next up is to see how they deal with the Star Frontier die hards that kept it alive with the remastered editions and and Star Frontiersmen.


But it been three years so I am not sure how many of them are involved now.

And there is the more current Frontier Explorer

Frontier Explorer

frontierexplorer.org frontierexplorer.org
 
CT_Phipps said:
FYI, TSR says they've acquired the license for Star Frontiers so the weird, "What a bunch of plagiarists of IP bought by the big megacorporation long ago" can thankfully be dropped.
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All I've seen is that they say that they own the name, and that's it. They intend on creating something entirely new, but name it Star Frontiers. No licensing involved.
 
Apparition said:
All I've seen is that they say that they own the name, and that's it. They intend on creating something entirely new, but name it Star Frontiers. No licensing involved.
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I caught a reference to a guy on Facebook saying their Discord admin said they licensed it, then apparently deleted that comment, so who knows?
 
Incidentally, I never did get an answer from the Gangbusters B/X guy about whether he was licensing the name or not. Anyone know if he just scooped up the abandoned trademark? It's been a while since I looked at the Gangbusters B/X book, but I don't think it carried over any of the old TSR Gangbusters material other than just being about the same general subject matter.
 
Gabriel said:
Incidentally, I never did get an answer from the Gangbusters B/X guy about whether he was licensing the name or not. Anyone know if he just scooped up the abandoned trademark? It's been a while since I looked at the Gangbusters B/X book, but I don't think it carried over any of the old TSR Gangbusters material other than just being about the same general subject matter.
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Mark Hunt has owned the Gangbusters trademark since 2018. TSR abandoned the trademark in 1984.
 
Gabriel said:
Incidentally, I never did get an answer from the Gangbusters B/X guy about whether he was licensing the name or not. Anyone know if he just scooped up the abandoned trademark? It's been a while since I looked at the Gangbusters B/X book, but I don't think it carried over any of the old TSR Gangbusters material other than just being about the same general subject matter.
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Gangbusters is one of the games WotC does not have up on Drivethru. That doesn't really mean much but it would make sense if they have licensed it or given up the trademark.
 
Ladybird said:
Ernie did an interview, and it's not great.



For those of you not interested in listening to an hour of discussion, there's a transcription summary here. Interesting key points...




The artist he's referring to is our old associate Benoist, and I think those of us who'd seen his work can agree he was doing a fine job of it. But ultimately, as project manager, the buck stops with Ernie; he scoped out the project, he's responsible for it going as long as it did. If the work was taking too long in his opinion, he's the one that should have dealt with it, by hiring more artists or paying enough for Benoist to work full-time on it. What he probably shouldn't be doing is throwing his colleagues under the bus like that.

While I also wouldn't expect a project manager to be an expert in taxes, I would at least expect them to understand the concept and the existence of transaction fees if you're going through a middleman like Kickstarter.
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Yup, the more we learn the more this looks like a train wreck in the make.
 
Warthur said:
With the best will in the world... this whole thing seems to be just lazy pandering to the nostalgia market. Hyping up nu-TSR as a revival of the old one and using the logo, fonts, trade dress etc. not only seems a little shabby when the majority of the original TSR team are not involved (and are too retired or dead to be likely to become involved, even if they wanted to), but it makes the whole thing seem very rinky-dink when it's more or less the only thing that's particularly interesting about the endeavour. I'm 99% sure that Giantlands wouldn't be coming across our radar if it didn't have these shenanigans attached to it.

And it doesn't really seem to be capturing the nostalgia crowd that much. Giantlands raised $8001 on Kickstarter from a grand total of 77 backers. It passed its target, but the target was a measly $100, and running a Kickstarter for a product print run with such an astonishingly low base goal seems incredibly shady (to the point where I really think Kickstarter should have done more due diligence before greenlighting the project). Say the projected ended up funding with only 1 backer, who pledged on the $100 tier. Would TSR really have then gone through the whole production process to produce a single copy of the limited edition boxed set to hand over to that one backer?
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Granted Giantlands is basically just a what if from the past, but it is a what if known to the D&D community probably the largest RPG community there is.

I've backed some pretty niche RPG products, $8000 and 77 backers is tiny. I guess just slapping TSR on a product and hoping for nostalgia to get you the sales isn't a wining plan.

Acmegamer said:
Yup, the more we learn the more this looks like a train wreck in the make.
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Indeed

 
Ladybird said:
Ernie did an interview, and it's not great.



For those of you not interested in listening to an hour of discussion, there's a transcription summary here. Interesting key points...




The artist he's referring to is our old associate Benoist, and I think those of us who'd seen his work can agree he was doing a fine job of it. But ultimately, as project manager, the buck stops with Ernie; he scoped out the project, he's responsible for it going as long as it did. If the work was taking too long in his opinion, he's the one that should have dealt with it, by hiring more artists or paying enough for Benoist to work full-time on it. What he probably shouldn't be doing is throwing his colleagues under the bus like that.

While I also wouldn't expect a project manager to be an expert in taxes, I would at least expect them to understand the concept and the existence of transaction fees if you're going through a middleman like Kickstarter.
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The problem with Marmoreal Tomb isn't the length of time it's taking. I'm a Kingdom Death Backer, I can deal with long waits.

It was the blatant dishonesty to backers and the shutting down of communication. It's not AS BAD as Far West, and it does look like somethings are going to get delivered, probably not everything promised, but at least some stuff, maybe enough to satisfy the backers.

In other words, damnation through faint praise.


I would, just as a warning to anyone here at The Pub, not participate in any crowdfunding or "membership drives" for the new company - let them come out with the product and then purchase. E. Gygax has not shown the werewithal, management skills, or upfront honesty to be trusted with your money.
 
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