Guardians of the Faith, a PDF VTES Set by PCK

Can you really ask for copyright?, when some of the characters used in the crypt cards are taken from classic world of darkness products. Aren't those by extension CCP's?

Thank you all for the feedback thus far. I wanted to briefly clarify a few common misperceptions:

None of us (Carl / Eric / Jeff) signed any sort of non-disclosure agreement with the V:EKN. We also never signed any agreement that transferred ownership of our intellectual property nor were we ever asked to sign any such formal agreement.

We are only asserting creative control over the cards that we designed. We have absolutely no interest in claiming any cards that we did not design. The majority of our cards were designed and developed between August and November 2011, part of the period during which the Design Team Leader was conspicuously absent and the Inner Circle (other than Eric Chiang) was uninvolved.

There is no monopoly on designing and publishing a complete set for V:TES. In April 2012, we stated our intention to do exactly that and asked that the V:EKN refrain from using our cards without our explicit permission. It has been over 4 months and there have been no attempts to contact us regarding this matter. During that time, we continued to playtest and refine our cards for "Guardians of the Faith" and create new cards for our forthcoming Laibon-themed set, while the V:EKN came up with "Danse Macabre."

We are cautiously optimistic about Johannes’ recent assurances that the V:EKN will not be using our cards for their separate fan expansion. This is what we asked for back in April 2012. Many of the recent controversies could have been avoided if the V:EKN had acknowledged our request at that time.

brandonsantacruz wrote:

This is reckless. You guys just took a big dump on the good news we received recently. I am very disappointed in the way you decided to handle this and that you let bitterness and a misguided sense of fairness guide your decisions. I really hope that this poison pill won't derail efforts to get the game back into production.

I'm sorry that you feel this way Brandon.

In August, we offered the V:EKN the opportunity to review and sanction our set and asked for a decision by early September. Our plan was to publicly release our set after that September date.

The recent news posted on September 6th is certainly interesting, but it ultimately had no impact (positive or negative) on our decision to publicly release our set on the 8th. We discussed whether that news should affect our timetable but came to the conclusion that it would be better to stick with the original release date (which had been decided on well before the V:EKN announcement) and deal with the inevitable controversy sooner than later.

Dorrinal wrote:

I'm impressed with your moxie, but not with these cards. They're bland and underpowered. Where is my Parity Shift?

Dear Izaak, Dorrinal, Ohlmann, and Reyda, thank you for sharing your feedback even if it was not what we had hoped. Also kudos to Juggernaut1981 for his thoughtful card analysis. We would have greatly appreciated your participation in our playtest process when your input would have been even more valuable. We encourage you to try these cards out in actual games and to let us know if your opinion has changed after fully exploring them.

Our design philosophy was intended to not upset the delicate game balance of V:TES with any blatantly overpowered cards. We take it as a compliment that there is no Parity Shift equivalent in our set. Many players have repeatedly suggested that Parity Shift be banned, so introducing a card of that power level would be, in our opinion, reckless.

We look forward to continued discussion of the actual cards. Thank you for your interest and participation.

Jeff wrote:

Thank you for your interest in the “Guardians of the Faith” PDF expansion.

Are you sure you're not confusing "interest" with "scepticism and general dislike"?

Are you sure you're not confusing "expansion" with "a bunch of artless pseudo-random card ideas with a copyright thrown in out of spite"?

blackday wrote:

Can you really ask for copyright?, when some of the characters used in the crypt cards are taken from classic world of darkness products. Aren't those by extension CCP's?

Legality aside, this is the internet. You can't publish something and write "look guys, I GOTS T3H COPYRIGHTS SO BITE MEH!" and expect it to have any value. The world doesn't work like that.

echiang wrote:

We are cautiously optimistic about Johannes’ recent assurances that the V:EKN will not be using our cards for their separate fan expansion.

Why on earth would they? I mean, really...

I guess if their goal is to create more wallpaper, fringe cornercase cards or overly complicated and/or overcosted cards, then I guess they could get some ideas.

Somehow I doubt that.

And that's coming from someone that has next to no faith in this whole fan expansion thing. If this is "PKC"'s (wtf...) idea of a good addition to the game then I'm glad they kicked you from the design team.

We are only asserting creative control over the cards that we designed.

I, for one, genuinely hope this is true. If it were, it would go a long, long way to maneuver what you've done (and how you've gone about it) from 'dick move' to 'potential misunderstanding,' at least in my eyes. other's mileage may vary.

as for your creative commons license, i'm not sure it works they way you think it does. I'm not a lawyer, let alone one that specializes in patent and copyright law, but i would be EXTREMELY hesitant to have any confidence or expectation of copyright when designing cards for Vtes. Between the fact that one must use White Wolf intellectual property, and the fact that it must be within the framework of the Deckmaster game system, it seems like quite the long shot by my totally amateur analysis. kudos to you if y'all can actually get it to stand in court, though.

I second you Izaak. I have also many good ideas for cards. Why should your card ideas become official and mine not. And because I am such a great guy, I dont mind if someboday is using my cards. Maybe I should do that. So you can start a revolution and split the community or maybe just shut up and let your bruised ego grow a pair.