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Category: Gaming

Ask me no questions

There is always more White Wolf v. Sony. Here’s Danny McBride’s declaration, as promised (the third screenwriter).

I also have White Wolf’s interrogatory of 9/18 for you. The relevant bit seems to be the five questions asked, which I will reproduce for those who scorn PDFs:

  1. Identify all sources for the items listed for Underworld on the comparison chart attached hereto as Exhibit “A.”
  2. Identify all documents read, references or used at any time by anyone with any involvement in creating or contributing to the script, screenplay, treatments, character studies, script or production notes, movie, comic book or novel for Underworld.
  3. Identify all persons involved in the creative process for any version or draft of the script, storyboards and/or script or production notes for any version of Underworld.
  4. Identify all vampire and werewolf books or sources reviewed (including Internet search engines), read or consulted by Wiseman, McBride, Grevioux or any other person involved in the creative process for the script(s), storyboards and/or script or production notes for any version of Underworld.
  5. Identify all persons who may be used by you at any hearing in this case and/or upon the trial of this case to present evidence under Rules 702, 703 or 705 of the Federal Rules of Evidence and provide the disclosures required by Rule 26(a)(2) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

And a few notes:

Exhibit A is a long list of purported similarities. It’s more or less the same as the list in White Wolf’s original complaint, except that it cites specific pages in both White Wolf’s books and in the script. It’s at the end of the PDF linked above.

It strikes me as slightly odd that question 2 doesn’t specify computer games, since the subtitle “Bloodlines” is one of White Wolf’s claimed points of similarity.

Rule 702 says expert witnesses may testify, Rule 703 describes when an expert witness can testify, and rule 705 says an expert witness can testify in terms of opinion or inference without first testifying to the underlying facts. Rule 26(a)(2) calls for disclosure of expert witnesses. I.e., if you’re gonna call expert witnesses, you gotta tell the other side in advance.

Lawsuit schedule

The schedule for discovery in the White Wolf v. Sony case is currently as follows:

Each party can serve 5 interrogatories and 4 document requests. Responses are due within 15 days of the services. Following that, White Wolf can take depositions from Wiseman, Grevioux, and McBride; Sony can take depositions from authors of the copyrighted works. Depositions have to be completed by 10/24/03. (Perhaps the cause of the recent subpoenas on White Wolf authors?)

White Wolf has till 10/31/03 to file a new or supplementary brief based on the depositions, and Sony has till 11/19/03 to respond. White Wolf has till 11/28/03 to respond to that. The hearing on a preliminary injunction is to be scheduled after 11/30/03.

Underworld will be out of theaters by then, but since Underworld 2 has been signed, the matter is still of importance to Sony. And, of course, there are DVD revenues.

WISH 68: There can be two

WISH 68 wants to know about something I don’t have a lot of experience with:

Have you ever played in or GMed a game with more than one GM? What was your experience with it? What were the strengths and weaknesses of having multiple GMs? Was it positive or negative? Would you do it again? If you’ve never tried it as a GM or player, would you like to? Why or why not?

Answer: not really. A couple of sessions of From Light To Darkness and that’s it. It was good; Neil and Soula clearly agreed on how things were meant to work.

In the back of my brain I have a game design which requires multiple GMs. One GM sets background, and one GM plays all the NPCs. I wanted to make some kind of point about narrativist versus simulationist and how a game can satisfy multiple urges, but I forgot what the precise point was, so I’ll never actually write down the design.

Oh, and my game Into the Sunset is pretty much a multiple GM game, come to think of it.

Hightened tension

The White Wolf Underworld lawsuit has involved Ken Hite. Fresh from his bi-weekly column comes the news:

Or, in my case, with a subpoena, subcompetently served on my wife while I was out running my GURPS game. I’d like to thank everyone involved in the White Wolf-Sony lawsuit for that. Having seen Underworld (and thoroughly enjoyed it, in a cheap and tawdry fashion), and keeping in mind that I’m not a lawyer, I don’t think it was worth pestering my wife over.

Shocking news. Who’d have guessed that he plays GURPS? (Yes, I know, GURPS Cabal.)

Addendum: Looks like Bruce Baugh got subpoenaed as well.

Declare and depose

It’s document time in the ongoing White Wolf v. Sony saga. First off, here’s Mike Tinney’s deposition as described here. At no extra charge, we’ll include Andrew Zaffron’s declaration. It covers more or less the same ground as did Mike Tinney, with a little additional commentary. Paragraph 8 is amusing.

Moving on to new material, we have declarations from Len Wiseman and Kevin Grevioux, two of the three guys who wrote the screenplay. (And of course Wiseman directed it.) Both note explicitly that “I had never heard of any of the Plaintiffs’ works before early in 2003, after the movie Underworld had been shot.”

I should grab Danny McBride’s declaration — he’s the other screenwriter — and I will at some point, but I don’t expect it to much differ. Thanks to Chris S. for hosting these PDFs.

Monday Mashup #12: I Am Legend

Today’s Monday Mashup concept was contributed by Eric McErlain, who runs the excellent Off Wing Opinion. He suggested Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend some time ago, but I put off using it for a while because I thought it was a little close to Body Snatchers. But time has passed and here we are.

If you haven’t read I Am Legend, allow me to strongly recommend it. It’s the story of the last man on earth, beseiged by a horde of vampires. He defends himself, despite the fact that he has nothing to live for. In the end, he realizes that to the new society of vampires, he’s the legendary monster. My brief summary doesn’t do it justice, but it’s a start.

Mash!

WISH 67: Tell me

WISH 67 is all about the story:

How do you tell stories in your games? Are there character stories, overarching stories, and/or other kinds of stories? Could you tell a coherent story from games you’ve GMed or played in? Does it matter to you? Why or why not?

I don’t ever strive to tell stories, but it’s nice when it happens. I’m really more interested in exploring the story space than I am in setting out to tell a story. I like it when things happen to my characters and I like it when my characters do things, but I find plotting for a story to be restrictive.

My characters sometimes have goals, but I regard those as plot hooks for the GM rather than indications of where the story must end. I expect goals to change in play. My goals in real life certainly do.

The Dear Brother letters are a solid example of this. Reese actually didn’t have a goal; he had a desire. He wanted to show America the true road. I didn’t know how it was going to play out, and in the end it’s been a little darker than I envisioned. People have told me that it works as a story, and I think it does, but that’s more because I’m making an effort to write the letters as stories — I’m subscribing to the conventions of fiction rather than gaming.

It means that sometimes I talk about things Reese didn’t see, and I take a few liberties here and there, and I leave out great swathes of things that make the campaign interesting. In the end, the differences between Rob’s campaign and my Dear Brother letters illuminate the differences between playing in a campaign — even a story-oriented campaign — and telling a story.