Friday, March 02, 2007

What do you want first?

The bad news or the worse news?

It seems Chaosium and GenCon are having a spat. The official word from GenCon:
Unfortunately, we will have to keep all events for Chaosium products on hold until on-going negotiations between Chaosium and Gen Con LLC have been resolved. Events can be submitted, but they will not be marked as “Accepted for Consideration” until everything has been resolved. Badges and hotel arrangements will not be based on these Chaosium events.

This specifically affects any events for Chaosium-published products. It does not affect related games from other publishers (such as Call of Cthulhu d20) or the more general overall Lovecraft mythos.
I don't really know what this means, but I don't like the sound of it. It seems either GenCon is using this as leverage to force something out of Chaosium OR Chaosium is asserting some sort of rights over games run with their IP. Both options hurt the fans first and foremost. Whoever is responsible for this decision needs to own up and explain themselves.

(Thanks to theRPGsite member kregmosier for this item.)

In other depressing news Necromancer Games seems to be going under, and they are doing it in the same super-classy way that the story of Guardians of Order's demise broke: Somebody let it slip that Necromancer was going down, but the announcement was unauthorized and ahead of schedule. Now everyone is backpedaling, saying that the company isn't necessarily dead. Best of luck to everyone involved with Necromancer. Too bad it had to go down like this, especially so soon after someone involved with GoO pulled the exact same thing, twice. Here's the EN World thread on Necromancer's woes.

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous3:03 PM

    WTF?

    GenCon is pretty much the only chance I get to play CoC every year, and I always look forward to at least an event or two. They're also crazy popular events -- so yeah, like you said: fans last, some other consideration first.

    Weak.

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  2. The more I think about the harder it is for GenCon to come out of this squeeky clean. Even if Chaosium was ultimately to blame because some dipshit lawyer had asserted IP rights over games played, then GenCon should have told them to bring on the lawsuit. Running games is a con's bread-and-butter. If even one company tried to horn in on that action then the whole house of cards will come tumbling down.

    So I've revised my position. Chaosium might be jerking the fans around but GenConLLC is definitely jerking the fans around.

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  3. Anonymous2:43 PM

    The problem with Necro was that when WW sold out, that ended their effective distribution, and switching to Kenzer did not change that.

    I never understood the alliance with Kenzer -- everyone reads KoDT, everyone knows about Hackmaster, but the sad fact is that the audience for Kenzer's Kalamar is tiny. They needed to hook up with Fiery Dragon or Goodman Games (or both -- that would be a great alliance), and since no one is getting their books, they aren't selling any books.

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