Gaming

Mike Sullivan’s Magipunk (original) concept is deeply cool and I want to play in it. GMs, take note.

Not a lot of interesting new filings in White Wolf v. Sony this week. Lots of paperwork to get all the lawyers accepted in the court. The only real scrap of interest (and it’s only tangential) is the joint certification of interested persons, which lists those people who are either a) a party to the action or b) have a financial interest or other interest which could be substantially affected by the outcome of the case. ...

Fairly dull, but here’s Sony’s initial disclosures (original) in White Wolf v. Sony. If you didn’t already know the basic argument Sony will be using, here it is: To the extent any similarities exist between Plaintiffs’ works and Defendants’ Underworld movie, any such similarities concern material that is not original, not protectable expression, lies within the public domain, and/or constitutes unprotectable ideas or scenes a faire. (I define scenes a faire here — “ideas that are inherent to the conventional telling of a given sort of story.”) ...

Jack Gulick is the man when it comes to stats and gaming. He also plays a lot of Amber; go figure. Anyhow, he followed up my earlier post about dice here (original) and I wanted to make sure nobody who was interested missed it.

More hot White Wolf vs. Sony action! The plaintiff mandatory disclosures have been filed; I’m not going to further disseminate the PDF because, well, there are home addresses in there and I don’t see any reason to make ‘em more public than they already are. I’ll do a fuller transcription later if I have the chance. In the meantime, here’s a no doubt inadequate summary of the bits which are interesting to non-lawyerly me — i.e., what’s White Wolf asking for? ...

One of my rules of thumb for evaluating RPG combat systems is the number of times you have to roll to resolve an attempt to hit, on average. For example, in D&D, you have to roll twice — once to hit, and once for damage. In Vampire, you roll at least three and often four times — once to hit, maybe once to dodge, once for damage, and once for soak. In Feng Shui, you roll once — the roll to hit is also the roll for damage. ...

I was gonna do a long review of Gamma World, but, well, here. I liked the design of the book much more than that guy, but his comments on the mechanics are right on target. The community rules are both really inspiring and kind of disappointing. The idea of using PC stats to represent a group of people is great; I can’t remember where I first saw it (might have been Vampire, actually) but this is a really good implementation of it. Except that several of the stats have no game effect, and there’s no meat behind most of the ratings — no explication of what they mean. ...

There is always more White Wolf v. Sony. Here’s Danny McBride’s declaration (original), as promised (the third screenwriter). I also have White Wolf’s interrogatory of 9/18 (original) for you. The relevant bit seems to be the five questions asked, which I will reproduce for those who scorn PDFs: Identify all sources for the items listed for Underworld on the comparison chart attached hereto as Exhibit “A.” 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. ...

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?) ...

The White Wolf Underworld lawsuit has involved Ken Hite (original). 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. ...