So Much for Freedom

The worst thing about Luke's DMing was the way he rolled the dice... with an evil grin. And he had good reason. He was a demon with the d20. "Hah-ha!! A natural 20!" I groaned, watching as he pulled out Hargrave's Crit Table. This was where things got nasty. Limbs torn off, chunks of gore in your eye, it was pretty much the standard fare in Luke's game. But all of a sudden I remembered. "Wait a sec. You have to make sure it's a crit." He rolled again and ended up getting a 5, gritting his teeth in frustration as he rolled normal damage. "14." Not bad out of 2d8. Nonetheless, I was thankful for our new house rule which just possibly saved my character's life. We'd batted it around after last week's session, after Mark's mage got his leg lopped off by a kobold. After that, we decided that a second hit would be required after the natural 20. That way, not only would crits be less common in general, but they'd be less common for kobolds than, say, for dragons. Luke even promised to check out some alternate crit tables from the Internet's archive sites, since Mark was so vehemently opposed to the Bloody Ardy rules which he spliced in whenever possible. "How could a kobold with a dagger lop off my leg?" Luke had shrugged at the time, "You're a mage. You have skinny legs. Er... one skinny leg." Mark looked at me, a slightly envious gleam in his eyes. "After the fight, Melchizedek limps over on his crutches to see what sort of treasure they have." Luke, meanwhile, fumbled through his notes. "You find... a scroll." "A scroll?! What sort of scroll?" "You unroll it?" "Yeah." "It says, 'The DM is tired. Go home.'" We glanced at the clock. 3am. After some heated debate, we decided to pack it up for the night, Luke cleaning the glasses of coke and the bowl of potato chips off the table, Mark and I getting our bags together and throwing on our shoes as we openly made plans on how to dispose of our main antagonist in the adventure. "Man, that new rule saved my ass," I commented, after Mark had trudged off into the cold, dark night. "Yeah," Luke agreed. "I'll have to do something about that." I didn't much like the sound of that. "By the way... did you ever get those other crit tables from the net?" "Uh... it's too late." "Huh?" "Yeah," Luke nodded with a brief yawn, washing out the cups one by one. "The archive sites are closing down. TSR has been threatening to sue over copyright infringements and so forth." "No way. You're joking." "I wish." I dropped my bag and started helping with the dishes. This was weird. I mean, I'd heard from Luke that the various RPG publishers were starting to get active on the net, but it never occurred to me that they'd begin shutting things down. No wonder people were pissed off at TSR. "What assholes," I concluded. "Oh, it's actually not so simple as that. I mean..." he let the thought trail off, however. "What?" "Well, they have a semi-legitimate point of view. I guess." "Semi-legitimate?" "It's like this," he said, stashing the leftover potato chips back in the cupboard. "TSR is like any other company. It's interested in making money, right?" "Yeah?" "And it does that by putting out books and games. In the process, it gets this huge mass of... intellectual property. I mean, take the Forgotten Realms, for instance." "The Forgettable Realms?" Luke smiled, cleaning his books off the table. "Suppose you came up with it, you might not like people writing stories or modules or whatever for it. You'd consider it as belonging to you. Right?" "That depends. I might not mind if the people writing the stories or modules were just fans... not even trying to make money off their work. Besides, they'd only be adding 'optional' stuff to my world. None of it would be 'official', so why should I care?" "Well, TSR does care. I'm not saying they should, or that they even have a moral right to. All I'm saying is that they do, and they're exercising their legal rights to care. Which equates to shutting down ftp sites." I flopped down in a sofa chair, considering the argument for all of five seconds. "Like I said... assholes." "Maybe they feel they have to be," Luke stacked the last couple tomes onto his bookshelf. "They've got stockholders to consider. They're in this for the money, not the fun and adventure." "Yeah, but it seems to me that by pissing so many people off, they're just gonna end up doing themselves more harm than good." Disgruntled consumers translate to a hit in the profit margin. Just ask my economics prof. "Maybe. Maybe not," Luke flopped down into the chair across from me, leaning over to wipe the table one last time. "The thing is, the net's expanding like crazy, but at the moment, it's still relatively small... at least compared to where it will be in ten years. Way I see it, they figure they have to set up some norms. Ways of doing business. They see the net as an opportunity to communicate with their consumers and advance the hobby, but they also see it as a threat." "Why? What's so threatening about people sharing their creativity?" It suddenly struck me as ironic. Only a few years ago, TSR was under heavy fire from the religious fundamentalists who wanted to suppress role-playing. These were people who saw too much shared creativity as a bad thing, and who focused the brunt of their public criticisms against the inclusion of devils and demons in the monster manuals. TSR promptly caved-in by changing a few names here and there. But now the company was on their side, in a very weird sort of way. Not only had they caved- in. They'd turned-coat. "It's the uncontrollable aspect they're afraid of," Luke answered. "What if a bunch of people create a public domain city like Talboport for the Forgotten Realms? What if, in ten years, half of the Forgotten Realms DMs are basing their campaigns there? They suddenly have no control over their direction of their consumers' interests, and that scares them. It's not that they want to stop people from being creative. They just want to have complete control over the public distribution of that creativity. Because if they have control, then they call the shots. They're in the driver's seat. The way they see it, it's their game, they own it, and nobody... nobody... has the right to produce or distribute any derivative work, even if done for free. The only people they'll let in are those who pay to be in. This is about money. Pure and simple." I thought about it for a long moment, thinking it strange how Luke could defend them one minute and lambast them the next, and all without admitting any contradiction. TSR was like a shark in his mind. If it chews off your leg, do you blame the shark? Of course not. So how could I blame TSR for being motivated by profits? That, it seemed to me, was the gist of what he was saying. They weren't assholes. They were sharks. But that didn't change the fact that they were pissing people off. "So how is TSR gonna control all this electronic distribution without any ftp sites?" "They're 'licensing' one to be the official ftp site for all TSR related material." "Are they charging people for access?" "Not yet." "You think they will?" I could see where this was leading. "I dunno. It's not really the issue. Net traffic is so high that one site can't possibly do the job... particularly as the net continues to grow. But even that isn't the real issue." "Then what is the real issue?" I looked him straight in the eye. "The real issue," Luke held my gaze, "is very basic. Should people be allowed to produce and distribute derivative works?" "As long as it's not for money." "I agree. But TSR obviously doesn't." "So that's their right." "Is it?" Luke took a deep breath, and I could see he'd been thinking about this for some time. "Suppose Bill Gates wakes up one morning and decides that all software based on Microsoft operating systems is suddenly in violation of his intellectual property rights." I laughed. "In the first place, that would never happen." "True. He got where he is in large part because many people adopted DOS as a standard... just as many roleplayers have adopted AD&D as a standard. Ourselves included." "It's not just that. Computers and publishing are different industries. What goes in one doesn't necessarily apply to the other." "Are they so different? I mean... if I write a story and you use my characters... that's a violation. Right?" "More than likely." "But if I write a roleplaying system and you write a module for it... I mean... that's what we're supposed to do, isn't it? The whole point is to create and to build... continually. They were giving us permission when they told us to create our own adventures." "So it's create all you want... just don't publish any of it." It made a certain amount of sense. After all, TSR couldn't have possibly envisioned anything like the Internet back in the days when D&D was hot off the presses. Back then, publishing was a big deal. But now, with everyone posting articles to the net, publishing was easy. So easy that they felt legitimately threatened. "But how can they tell us to create but don't share?" Luke looked a little pissed. "I mean, the whole point is shared fantasy. You read a book, the point is just to read. But you write a program or play an RPG... the point is to create. That's the whole idea." I took a deep breath. It was typical Luke-logic. Delve to the core issue and climb out from there, only in this case even the core was rotten. "I guess TSR is saying that when you buy a game like AD&D, you are suppose to play it, not make modules for it, and that if you do make your own modules..." "...Then they aren't really _your_ modules," Luke finished the thought. "They're their modules... because it's their game. Because it's their money. And they want to keep it. For themselves. Even if you aren't charging a dime." Luke definitely had some strong opinions on this one. It didn't take any genius to sense that. He'd told me about how he'd posted modules to the net, gotten some feedback and so-forth. Now all that would have to stop. Either that or he'd have to put his work on this TSR-licensed site, and probably include some form letter saying they have the right to control its distribution. No wonder he was pissed. "So you gonna play sheep?" "I dunno," he folded his hands over his belt, slouching back into the thick chair. "If I do, I have to include this form letter... and once I do that..." "Once you do that, you don't have a legal leg to stand on." "Exactly," Luke nodded. "They could just close up shop. Or worse, they could selectively nuke whatever files they feel violate their unstated editorial standards. Suppose some story I write features a homosexual character, and some pressure group gets upset about it. How long do you think it would take TSR to cave in and remove my story from public access?" "If the past is any indication of the future... not very." They caved in when the religious fundamentalists got on their case about non-existent demons and devils. I could scarcely imagine what would happen concerning such controversial issues of homosexuality, abortion, euthanasia, or hack and slashing hobbits from hell. "Once anyone slaps that form on their work, they're effectively agreeing not to distribute it through any other channel than a site licensed by TSR. If they do, TSR can sue, and they can win, because all that have to do in show the judge that voluntary agreement." I nodded, seeing the point all too clearly. TSR wasn't a shark. It was a child. A spoiled child who owned the sandbox. They'd let you in for awhile, but then they'd take your toys and kick you out. Not the kind of kid I'd want to associate with. The roleplayers on the net would no doubt eventually bow down and lick their boots, just hoping for the best. The bottom line: TSR would have its way. Only PC issues allowed in AD&D, and the PC wouldn't stand for Player Character. "The whole thing boils down to the personal freedom of people to create derivative works," Luke continued, now on a veritable roll. "They get away with it in software publishing. Why not in games publishing?" "Because a game is more like a novel than a program." "Is it?" "Games and novels are both for entertainment. Programs involve other applications." "But not all of them," Luke countered. "Somebody on the net posted about the Nintendo versus Atari case." "What case?" "You know how Nintendo makes those game machines. Right?" "Who doesn't?" "Well, Atari made some games for them. But in order to do it, they had to acid-strip the chips to duplicate copyright codes which need to get passed back from the software to the Nintendo chips in order for the whole thing to work the way it's supposed to." "So?" "So Nintendo sued. They said that nobody could do that... at least not legally. They built the whole damn machine so that you had to duplicate parts of the chip software to write games that would work on it. Basically, they didn't want anybody producing games for the Nintendo systems but Nintendo." "So what happened?" "The court ruled that it was a restraint of free trade. Atari ended up winning, and now it's opening up the whole industry to more competition... better games at lower prices." I sat back for a moment, thinking about all this. No wonder TSR didn't want to let budding amateur game designer get their foot in the door. It would just open up a whole can of worms later on. They were actually afraid of the net's gamers. Not now. Not in their present form. But in the future. What would the market be like with thousands or even millions of people posting modules instead of just a few dozen? What sort of collaborative efforts would be realized? They wanted to snuff all that, or at least restrain it from getting out of hand. They were very scared, and they had good reason to be. "So let's cut to the chase," I chewed the edge of my lip. "What will TSR do if people just ignore them?" "People aren't going to just ignore them." "You think they're gonna start suing FTP sites? Universities?" "They don't have to. All they have to do is threaten legal action and the administrators will back down. I mean... who really cares about a bunch of gamers?" "Good point," I conceded. "What really sucks about this is the damage it's causing. I mean, there were years worth of work online, and now it's all being dumped into the bit-bucket because nobody wants to stick their neck out. Many of the authors aren't even around anymore to give their consent to TSR, even assuming they'd want to, which is unlikely. All those years worth of work are just disappearing, and once it's gone, it's gone." We parted company a short while later, after shifting topics to something more congenial, like dead babies and whatnot. But as I drove back to my apartment, I couldn't help but wonder about the whole, strange, idiotic situation. No doubt this would never become a political issue, and hence the final decisions would be made in the antiseptic environment of the courtroom, with judges who wouldn't know what a d20 is, much less an RPG. In the meantime, TSR was doing so much damage to the hobby, it was un- fucking-real. Such gloom and doom, no wonder Luke wanted to quit early. Now TSR would rule the information highway, at least so far as it concerned anything related to AD&D. All roads lead to Rome. So much for freedom.