Game Historian: Gygax Swiped Fantasy Rules From a Forgotten 1970 Wargame (blogspot.com)

And that guy by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 07:55 · Score: 4, Insightful

... And that guy stole it from something else, which got it from some other dude, who took it from the Bible, which stole it from the pagans, who got it from Ancient Aliens.

Re:And that guy by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 08:47 · Score: 4, Funny

Ancient Aliens who got it from time travelers from the future, who got it from the library of congress of The Disney States of the Western Hemisphere, who got it from Disney Games, who got it from Parkbro, who got is from Hasbro, who got it from Wizards of the Coast, who got it from TSR, who got it from Gygax.
Re:And that guy by argStyopa · 2016-01-22 01:20 · Score: 1

Notice that article even says "...it was a game based on J.R.R. Tolkien's trilogy of fantasy "Lord of the Rings"."
DID PATT PROPERLY ATTRIBUTE *HIS* RULES TO THE TOLKIEN PROPERTIES? /sarcasm
First, the entire world of 'gaming' back then was syncretic and collaborative. Chainmail was never (by anyone knowledgeable) considered to have sprung wholly formed from the forehead of Gygax.
Further, attribution wasn't anywhere near the priority then that it would be once these actually took shape as commercial products and an industry began to grow. Nobody familiar with the personalities of the early role-playing game world would be at all surprised that Gygax in particular would fail to credit someone else; just ask Dave Arneson.

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-Styopa
Re:And that guy by Big+Hairy+Ian · 2016-01-22 01:27 · Score: 1

I always thought the game developers at TSR were a bit of a Rogues Gallery

--
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.

And... by __aaclcg7560 · 2016-01-21 07:56 · Score: 3, Insightful

Shakespeare stole everything he read for his plays, including making up new words for the English language. In short, so what?

Re:And... by mujadaddy · 2016-01-21 08:09 · Score: 4, Insightful

Headline is pure bait: the blog poster makes no generalization such as "swiping", as wargaming rules were in constant flux, even from session to session.

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Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
Re:And... by Hognoxious · 2016-01-21 08:35 · Score: 1

Shakespeare stole everything he read for his plays, including making up new words for the English language.

I'm not sure it's possible to steal something you yourself made up.

--
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Re:And... by gstoddart · 2016-01-21 08:38 · Score: 1

Shhh ... the copyright cartel can't have that ... they need to retroactively say they invented it first and you stole it from them.
Otherwise the whole thing falls apart.

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Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Re:And... by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 08:42 · Score: 0

This. The actual article has all kinds of nuance about the open and collaborative rules environment of the time, and is more about how we forgot this guy Leonard Patt than it is about swiping anything.
But of course poster has to make this an attack on Gygax. Gygax did make a lot of enemies with his treatment of Arneson et al so it's no surprise I guess.
Re:And... by __aaclcg7560 · 2016-01-21 08:49 · Score: 2

I'm not sure it's possible to steal something you yourself made up.
I stand corrected. I should have wrote "misappropriating foreign words" for the English language.
Re:And... by space_jake · 2016-01-21 09:09 · Score: 4, Funny

It wasn't swiping. Swiping is clearly defined on page 125. The ability Gygax used mimiced this power but isn't defined as swiping and therefore not subject to defined swiping rules.
Re:And... by mujadaddy · 2016-01-21 09:26 · Score: 2

I see what you did there...
...and it makes me want to talk about how creating a "Book of Law" propagated the "Rules Lawyers", how publishing a 'zine and charging mimeograph money was a better environment for creative play than selling a million copies and having it adopted as some kind of standard, and maybe how rules meant for fair war gaming between equivalent sides really have no place in a roleplaying game...
...but that's kind of depressing, so never mind.

--
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
Re:And... by The+Grim+Reefer · 2016-01-21 09:46 · Score: 2

It wasn't swiping. Swiping is clearly defined on page 125.
Also, he made his saving throw vs. swiping.
Re:And... by PlayingAtTheWorld · 2016-01-21 10:04 · Score: 5, Informative

I wrote this article (sorry, I have no karma here, so I imagine this comment may plummet into the void), and I am frustrated to see the clickbaity way it's presented here. Wargaming was a very open and collaborative environment where ideas moved quite fluidly: this is the fun of studying it, actually, as tracing ideas over time is quite a challenge. The message I was trying to get across here is that Chainmail, to say nothing of the many, many games that built on its system and setting, owes an unacknowledged debt to Patt. I think this is big news for people who care about the origins of gaming today.

The debt isn't the idea of a fireball or whatever; fireballs are something that have long existed in fact and fiction. But identifying the original fantasy game to feature the fireball mechanic is an important historical question. The fireball that Patt seems to have invented has a lot of very specific features: it explodes at range (24 inches in game), you get a saving throw against it, but no save if you're a dragon as it instead drives you away for one turn, and so on. These are all system mechanics that Chainmail used, and which thus inspired D&D. That we owe some amount of the credit for that to someone other than the stated authors of Chainmail is noteworthy.

It would be like if we hadn't known that Shakespeare had relied on Holinshed for his stories, and someone had just now proved it by a textual analysis. Well, okay, Chainmail isn't Shakespeare. But you get the idea. Shakespeare didn't "swipe" Holinshed, he built on that narrative and other influences to make something new and amazing. Everything is a remix. But that makes discovering what got remixed exactly all the more important.
Re:And... by TWX · 2016-01-21 10:20 · Score: 3, Interesting

Sounds to me like the idea of refining a set of rules, then someone else looking at those rules and refining a new set of rules based on what they saw. I admit that I am not a tabletop gamer, but when I've been around where people have been playing I haven't seen them use inches in-game as units. I've seen some battletech tabletop gaming where distance and vector were employed, but converted to units to scale in the game rather than in human terms.

Another consideration is how codified the gaming rules were prior to Gygax's part. If Patt's rules were not hard fixed rules but were more along the lines of guidelines or house rules that spread organically through play with random people, then while it could be argued that Gygax shouldn't have owned any intellectual rights over those rules, Patt also might not have been able to claim rights either.

In some ways look at games like Tag or Hide and Go Seek, or any other of a multitude of kids games where guidelines exist but hard-fast rules are only adopted when the games commence. Depending on how Patt's rules spread, they may have been a lot more along those lines.

--
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Re:And... by PlayingAtTheWorld · 2016-01-21 10:27 · Score: 2

The articles doesn't make any claim about intellectual property or copyright, it's about the path of transmission of ideas, of what built on what. If no one today knows of Patt's rules or their relationship to Chainmail, they won't be able to even ask the sorts of question you're posing. The article's purpose is to rescue Patt from total obscurity.
Re:And... by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 10:58 · Score: 0

Or another way to think of it is if a work wasn't derived from something, who the fuck would understand it.
Re:And... by interval1066 · 2016-01-21 12:21 · Score: 2

The ownership of ideas has gotten way out of whack in the US.Here's an example of before copyright, and after: the blues has a long tradition of authors "using", "stealing", call it what you want, from earlier authors. Robert Plant penned the lyrics to Killing Floor from an older classic by Howling Wolf, who cribbed his lyrics from Son House. Eric Clapton blatantly "stole" from Robert Johnson, who also borrowed from House, and before that House borrowed from "Negro Spirituals", slaves working cotton and singing about redemption. Where would the rich history of the Blues be if everyone enforced copyrights on ev everything. I really don't have a problem with Gygax and his legacy, it wasn't until he introduced a game that I loved to play in the late 70's that I ever heard of it, and I'm richer for it. I don't know if he blatantly stole the game from Avalon Hill, Barney Rubble, or the tooth fairy. I'm indebted to him for giving a teenager a place to escape to from the difficulties of being a stupid teenager.

--
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Re:And... by rossz · 2016-01-21 12:33 · Score: 1

*cough*
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

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-- Will program for bandwidth
Re:And... by rtb61 · 2016-01-21 14:47 · Score: 0

No, they are stealing from everyone. By stealing from the public domain and then claiming it as your own, you are in fact fraudulently stealing from everyone by claiming copyright rules to enable you to actively destroy other peoples content. This based upon the false claim they stole original content from you, in spite of the reality when that they claim to draw it from the same original public domain content, this for no other reason that corrupt greed.
By stealing first you can build up a financial war chest to pay lawyers to destroy struggling newcomers (no point in them proving to steal it from the same original source as, well, they also have to give it back to the public the falsely claimed content).

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Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Re:And... by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 17:01 · Score: 0

I not only have no karma here but not even an account. Regardless, thank you for setting the record straight here and especially for delving into the history of one of our favorite pastimes! Looking forward to seeing what you dig up next.
Re:And... by stjobe · 2016-01-21 17:41 · Score: 1

“This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don’t give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that’s all we wanted to do.”
- Woody Guthrie, typescript to "This Land Is Your Land"
Also, perhaps not so incidentally "The melody came from a tune that A.P. Carter had found and recorded with Sarah and Maybelle Carter prior to 1934 and was not original to Guthrie." (Wikipedia)

--
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
Re:And... by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 19:28 · Score: 0

"In some ways look at games like Tag or Hide and Go Seek, or any other of a multitude of kids games where guidelines exist but hard-fast rules are only adopted when the games commence...."
Indeed. In the game "Red Light Green Light 1 2 3", quite detailed discussions occurred both before and during Play, that involved what constitutes "Moves" while "It" is watching. For instance, if one sneezes, does that constitute a "Move"? Usually, involuntary movement is allowed, but the more players there are, the more strict the rules tended to be. Are "Snitches" allowed? Over the years, as traffic increased, the Game moved from the streets to the sidewalks, crowding out the Hopscotchers and Double Dutch skippers, and the use of actual Traffic Lights lessened. Now, "Red Light Green Light 1 2 3" is practically extinct.
(For my Sister's 21st Birthday, when the booze was gone, we went out and played "Red Light Green Light 1 2 3", under Moonlight. The police were called. We haven't played it since.)
What happened was that Adults got involved, the nosy bastards. Little League and Pop Warner football replaced those spontaneous street games like Stickball and Conkers, Skipping Rope became _competitive_, instead of _cooperative_, and such stupidity like Dodgeball was encouraged.
This whole article about Wargaming, and who did what first is incredibly Childish, yet Adults are discussing it. Grow the fuck up, the lot of you.
(I was an early Wargamer. I started with four Lead Knights, meticulously painted, and about three inches tall, representing the Houses of Lancaster, York, Anjou, and Berry. Behind was a row of twenty lesser Lead Knights, from the Napoleanic era, in red and blue. Against them was a bag of green plastic WWII Soldiers. Man those guys were dumb, and with the aid of some lighter fluid, burned beautifully. Yes, I suffered Casualties, so I learned to Solder. I was seven years old...)
Re:And... by Big+Hairy+Ian · 2016-01-22 01:29 · Score: 1

I write music in my spare time and I can guarantee I plagarise everyone who ever inspired my pretty much like every other composer/artist

--
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Re:And... by tepples · 2016-01-22 01:54 · Score: 1

This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years
Explicitly disclaiming all subsequent renewals and extensions, I see. That was tried again later under the name Founders Copyright
Re:And... by tepples · 2016-01-22 01:56 · Score: 1

So what do you and your lawyer plan to do if some songwriter sees your spare time music, finds it too similar to his own work, and sues you for $150,000?
Re:And... by __aaclcg7560 · 2016-01-22 03:17 · Score: 2

Do what any good musician would do: start singing the blues. :)

We get it by JackieBrown · 2016-01-21 07:59 · Score: 4, Insightful

Gygax had something of a reputation for borrowing things without giving proper credit, and this latest revelation shows how the open and collaborative environment of early gaming was quickly exploited for commercial purposes.

We get it. Commercial is bad. Everything should be non-profit. We should all make the same wage. We should all have the same stuff.

Re:We get it by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 08:05 · Score: 2, Funny

Information wants to be free, provided you roll a 13 or above.
Re:We get it by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 08:14 · Score: 0

I'm 12 and what is this?
Re:We get it by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 08:15 · Score: 0, Troll

Pretty much, yes. There is no reason for profit except that it allows weaker people to be exploited, and no reason for unequal wages except that profit motive means that many people are employed not because they want to work but because they have to work.
I'd be happy to sit here as a PhD-educated mathematician making the same as a street sweeper because I love my job. In fact, I give away about 50% of my salary, and live comfortably.
Re:We get it by __aaclcg7560 · 2016-01-21 08:29 · Score: 2

If you have to ask, you failed in the quest to find a bag of weed.
Re:We get it by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 08:33 · Score: 0

Information that involves the visual depiction of naked ladies gets a +12 roll bonus of course.
Re:We get it by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 08:34 · Score: 0

And you have a halo and the angels sing your name. We get it, you're a saint.
Re:We get it by NotDrWho · 2016-01-21 08:46 · Score: 2

Shut up, Karl.

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SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Re:We get it by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 08:50 · Score: 0

Making the same as what street sweeper? Who would want to sweep the streets in your fantasy world. Would the government have to force someone to do it, and have everyone around him spy on him to make sure he actually makes an effort?
Re:We get it by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 08:55 · Score: 0

Pretty much, yes. There is no reason for profit except that it allows weaker people to be exploited, and no reason for unequal wages except that profit motive means that many people are employed not because they want to work but because they have to work.
I'd be happy to sit here as a PhD-educated mathematician making the same as a street sweeper because I love my job. In fact, I give away about 50% of my salary, and live comfortably.
No reason for profit?
How, pray tell, would new ideas get funded and be built?
For example - Apple Computer?

Apple was incorporated January 3, 1977,[23] without Wayne, who sold his share of the company back to Jobs and Wozniak for $800.[12] Multimillionaire Mike Markkula provided essential business expertise and funding of $250,000 during the incorporation of Apple. ...
Without profit to pay back such investors, there's no reason to fund new products.
LIKE THE TYPE OF COMPUTER YOU MADE YOUR POST FROM.
Idiot.
I'm curious - what color is the sky on your planet?
Re:We get it by Dracos · 2016-01-21 09:05 · Score: 1

Save vs Proprietary, nice.
Re:We get it by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 09:14 · Score: 0

Nah, how about we just take your stuff without your permission?
Re:We get it by Princeofcups · 2016-01-21 09:16 · Score: 1, Flamebait

Gygax had something of a reputation for borrowing things without giving proper credit, and this latest revelation shows how the open and collaborative environment of early gaming was quickly exploited for commercial purposes.
We get it. Commercial is bad. Everything should be non-profit. We should all make the same wage. We should all have the same stuff.
That's not the issue. Gygax represented himself as the sole creator and writer of D&D. He removed Arneson from the credits in a typical Stalinistic purge. I remember meeting him when he was sitting behind the counter at the Dungeon hobby shop in Wisconsin, and he was a complete jerk. But when you are copyrighting everything that you can to lock in revenue, you just don't give anyone else credit. Bastard. Cashing in on other people's work. But hey, it happens in IT all the time.

--
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
Re:We get it by painandgreed · 2016-01-21 09:21 · Score: 1

We get it. Commercial is bad. Everything should be non-profit. We should all make the same wage. We should all have the same stuff.
Not sure where you're getting it from. Statement is pretty obviously about Gygax's habit of rewriting stuff to cut others out of the credit and royalties. Dave Arneson being the big one. Just from reading the linked articles, it turns out the rules for thieves were supposedly borrowed from other people's published articles too.
Re:We get it by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 09:30 · Score: 0

The idea that it's ok for someone to do a miserable job as long as it's not you is utterly repulsive.
The answer is simple: do you clean your own home? your front porch? Yes. Why? Because you have a sense of ownership over the space. A few prissy or disabled people get someone else to clean their homes, but most people have no problem unblocking their toilet/drain. Well, street sweeping is a similar job, further afield. If you have a sense of participation in your community, it's just helping to clean up your own space. If a town of a hundred thousand people needs, say, fifty people on part time street sweeping duty, sign me up. I bet there'll be 49 more people found, don't you?
In fact, cleaning is a fairly therapeutic rest from active brainwork, and gives time for the mind to tick over things it needs to think about. So it'd benefit my primary employment too. I suppose I already do voluntary cleaning, in that I help older neighbours with their gardens, and muck out at the local cat shelter, but it stands to reason that people can be paid for the job of civic sanitation, since it's so fucking important. As long as I was being employed directly by local government, and not a third party private contractor, I'd immediately set aside two four-hour sessions.
Re:We get it by avandesande · 2016-01-21 09:34 · Score: 1

That's just dumb. As niche as D&D was, do you think I would of had the opportunity to play it if it was a 'free' pile of notebooks somewhere? Would the cost of my time be worth more to write my own set of monsters and rules? Being a DM alone was hours of work, even with the purchased materials.

--
love is just extroverted narcissism
Re:We get it by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 09:36 · Score: 0

>If you have a sense of participation in your community, it's just helping to clean up your own space.
Well, that's not my space. Common property is for everyone to shit on. If only people were angels...
Re:We get it by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 09:38 · Score: 1

And in the end, DDO has memorial gravestones to both Gary and Dave, in regions belong to quest packs where both men's awkward voice acting is semi-immortalized. Additionally their contributions to the game are further recognized with the Voice of the [game] Master (Gygax) and the Mantle of the Worldshaper (Arneson).
Re:We get it by cfalcon · 2016-01-21 11:36 · Score: 1

Failing by less than 5 sometimes lets you try again...?
Re:We get it by tsotha · 2016-01-21 12:02 · Score: 2

Pretty much, yeah. If Gygax hadn't "commercialized" it, the game would have just been thrown out with the rest of his unwanted stuff when the creator died, and a generation of kids would have missed out on a fun experience.
Re:We get it by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 12:19 · Score: 0

We get it. Commercial is bad. Everything should be non-profit. We should all make the same wage. We should all have the same stuff.
Strawman arguments are lies.
Re:We get it by khallow · 2016-01-21 12:20 · Score: 1

There is no reason for profit except that it allows weaker people to be exploited,

Even if your assertion were true, that would be a very good reason in itself to have the profit motive. Exploitation is just a negative connotation label for being useful to someone else. And the existence of profit indicates an endeavor that has a positive benefit. There are still a few preconditions you need in addition before it's a net benefit to society, but this is a good start.

and no reason for unequal wages except that profit motive means that many people are employed not because they want to work but because they have to work.
Unequal wages for unequal work and ability. And I'd rather those people work than starve too.

I'd be happy to sit here as a PhD-educated mathematician making the same as a street sweeper because I love my job. In fact, I give away about 50% of my salary, and live comfortably.
Funny, I have very similar circumstances, except that I save about 50% of my salary. That reduces the likelihood that I become a burden on someone else as I see it.
Re:We get it by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 15:15 · Score: 0

That's pretty much the definition of a strawman argument.
What's actually being claimed is that commercial motives caused someone to claim undue credit.
Sorry, but corruption seeks money, not its absence. It is possible to argue that people should be paid in accordance to their actual contributions, and simultaneously to argue that they often are paid in in accordance to their claimed contributions.
People have this need to overattribute things to single individuals, to idolize; it's as if reality is too complex for people to understand.
Re:We get it by Newander · 2016-01-22 04:53 · Score: 1

If the lord didn't direct the peasants to grow crops, how would any of us have bread to eat?

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Jesus saves and takes half damage.

Where Was Leonard During All This? by GTRacer · 2016-01-21 08:02 · Score: 2

I get that Mr. Patt may have had no way to know his work had been appropriated, but once D&D became the national craze it did, why didn't he wonder to himself at the similarities?

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Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!

Re:Where Was Leonard During All This? by gstoddart · 2016-01-21 08:16 · Score: 5, Informative

Maybe he did, and maybe it wasn't something he thought as entirely unusual?
I remember reading Dragon magazine and going to the stores with the little lead figurines to paint ... this stuff was self-referential and constantly incorporating things from one another.
Cartoons pulled in things from multiple sources.
I sure as heck wasn't aware of all of it, but it seemed like at the time it was more of a fan-driven "hey isn't this cool" kind of thing, and the cross-pollination was kind of expected.
And then it became greedy bastards like Wizards of the Coast who tried to decree like they'd invented the whole damned thing in a vacuum, when nothing could be further from the truth.
These things were still being iterated and adapted.
Acting like these things sprang into existence without the stuff around them is idiotic, unless of course you're a lawyer arguing copyright for someone who just bought something someone else built.
Making it sound like Gygax ripped someone off is probably a little unfair to what actually happened.

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Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Re:Where Was Leonard During All This? by Zak3056 · 2016-01-21 08:29 · Score: 2

The story is just flamebait. In the linked wikipedia article (with the label "Gygax had something of a reputation for borrowing things without giving proper credit") the very first paragraph after the index references Gygax giving credit for it: "In his article "Jack Vance and the D&D Game", Gary Gygax stresses the influence that Vance's Cugel and also Zelazny's Shadowjack had on the thief class."
I really, really dislike people that submit stories like this, and the "editor" that posted this should be ashamed (I'm looking at you, Timothy).

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What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
Re:Where Was Leonard During All This? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 08:51 · Score: 0

The poster was prolly referring to what's in the very second paragraph, the section where it talks about how some fans shared the idea of making this into a D&D class with Gary over the phone and he didn't credit them when he published the idea. No one's saying there weren't theify guys in fantasy literature, but making them into a D&D class wasn't his idea.
Re:Where Was Leonard During All This? by Sir_Eptishous · 2016-01-21 09:36 · Score: 1

And then it became greedy bastards like Wizards of the Coast who tried to decree like they'd invented the whole damned thing in a vacuum, when nothing could be further from the truth.
Where are all the WoTC apologists to counter such an inflammatory statement?!?

--
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Re:Where Was Leonard During All This? by mattack2 · 2016-01-21 10:27 · Score: 1

And then it became greedy bastards like Wizards of the Coast who tried to decree like they'd invented the whole damned thing in a vacuum, when nothing could be further from the truth.
Huh? They bought TSR in 1997 [cite wikipedia], long after D&D had been popular.
Re:Where Was Leonard During All This? by alvinrod · 2016-01-21 10:48 · Score: 1

Perhaps he did notice and simply didn't care, or he in turn may have lifted it from some other more obscure source, in which case it wouldn't be prudent to raise a fuss about it.
Re:Where Was Leonard During All This? by painandgreed · 2016-01-21 12:06 · Score: 2

And then it became greedy bastards like Wizards of the Coast who tried to decree like they'd invented the whole damned thing in a vacuum, when nothing could be further from the truth.
Where are all the WoTC apologists to counter such an inflammatory statement?!?
Here I am! Or at least, I have no idea what they're talking about.WoTC bought TSR and keep D&D alive basically as a pet project because they love the game. It certainly doesn't make enough money to keep their Hasbro masters happy, but they are allowed to have such pet projects as long as Magic does bring in the money.
Re:Where Was Leonard During All This? by Zak3056 · 2016-01-22 04:13 · Score: 1

The Wikipedia page doesn't say he didn't credit them. In fact, the footnote for that paragraph (footnote four) leads here, which includes scans of the material where the thief was introduced. Once again, in the very first paragraph credit is given. I'll quote: "Recently, I received a telephone call from Gary Schweizter [bits about California removed]. Anyway, during our conversation, he mentioned that his group was developing a new class of character--thieves."
So I'm wondering what constitutes "credit" to you guys. Does it involve bold 72 point font on every D&D product ever released that says, "Dan Wagner created the original thief rules in 1974?"

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What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
Re:Where Was Leonard During All This? by anyGould · 2016-01-22 07:21 · Score: 1

Here I am! Or at least, I have no idea what they're talking about.WoTC bought TSR and keep D&D alive basically as a pet project because they love the game. It certainly doesn't make enough money to keep their Hasbro masters happy, but they are allowed to have such pet projects as long as Magic does bring in the money.
While I would agree that Hasbro and WotC don't expect D&D to contribute much to the bottom line (although I suspect it does better than we might think), I imagine the current value in the property is the IP. The ability to have in your legal filing cabinet a bunch of prior art from the 70s goes a long way to keeping competitors out of your stuff.
Re:Where Was Leonard During All This? by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · 2016-01-22 08:59 · Score: 1

To modern youngsters, this thief class is what you would call a rouge (haha). Except it is vastly different.
He could pick locks and disable traps and so on, a highly useful skill, and was a mediocre help in fights. But fights were far from all adventurers did.
Nowadays they are seen as fighters with a magical superpower called backstab that doesn't even need the victim to be simultaneously unaware and motionless.
In Dragon Age 2, true warriors are useless, and logically one should construct armies of the thieves who can simply turn invisible after super-backstabs-frontally-stabbs.

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(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.

Fuck Gygax! by Rinikusu · 2016-01-21 08:03 · Score: 1

That's why I only play Pathfinder.

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If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai

Re:Fuck Gygax! by Sir_Eptishous · 2016-01-21 09:34 · Score: 5, Funny

That's why I only play Pathfinder.
So thats what happens when you fail a Wisdom check...

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We play the game with the bravery of being out of range

IIRC Gygax himself he admits this... by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 08:04 · Score: 0

Neat factoid but not really news. I'm at work so I can't verify, but I believe the forward in the original Advanced Dungeouns & Dragons Dungeon Master Guide even spells out how the game came to be.

Either that or I've read this elsewhere years ago and Slashdot is just duping articles again. :)

I thought we all knew this already? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 08:05 · Score: 0

I recall reading an Interview in the 1980s where Gygax freely admitted to being inspired by and borrowing from the rules and mechanics of NEWA. He also noted that NEWA borrowed from previous sources too.

Not everything is made in a vacuum.

Re:I thought we all knew this already? by MightyMartian · 2016-01-21 08:37 · Score: 3, Informative

Indeed. The history of roleplaying games is fairly well know, and everyone who knows the history of the genre knows that tabletop war games provided the initial inspiration, not to mention a number of mechanics used by Gygax and other early formulators of RPG rules. As I recall, the whole hex map scheme common to many roleplaying games, particularly from the 70s, was lifted entirely for war gaming. Indeed, I've often felt the original D&D was sort of the C of roleplaying games, something of a halfway point between the war games and the later more fully formed FRPGs like AD&D.
At any rate, game rules in all gaming genres freely steal off of each other, whether the rules are copyrighted or not. It's how all games evolve.

--
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Re:I thought we all knew this already? by NotDrWho · 2016-01-21 08:51 · Score: 1

WTF is NEWA? I googled it, look on the wiki of D&D influences, not a fucking clue.

--
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Re:I thought we all knew this already? by painandgreed · 2016-01-21 09:09 · Score: 1

WTF is NEWA? I googled it, look on the wiki of D&D influences, not a fucking clue.
If you look in the linked sections of TFS, you'll see one to the New England Wargamers Association.
Re:I thought we all knew this already? by desdinova+216 · 2016-01-21 10:01 · Score: 1

I know people don't read TFA but people don't even read the TFS before posting
Re:I thought we all knew this already? by HornWumpus · 2016-01-21 10:25 · Score: 1

Before editing...

--
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Re:I thought we all knew this already? by Megane · 2016-01-21 18:21 · Score: 1

I'm sort of more interested in where the idea of "hit points" came from. It's quite unrealistic to represent the health of a single person character by a single number, and for healing to simply bump the number back up. If you get injured to almost the point of death (1 hit point), you can still fight with full strength? And as you gain more hit points with experience, a hit that could once kill you would now be just a scratch. What?
On the other hand, by being so simplistic, it makes everything... simpler. Imagine if the first versions of D&D tried to have a comprehensive damage system, people would just give up because it would be too much work.
My guess is that it also came from war games, where a unit would be able to take so many points of damage, such as infantry taking losses. The strangeness comes from a number that represented the status of multiple people and equipment being used to represent a single person.

--
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }

Quite the pejorative by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 08:08 · Score: 0

"Swiped" sounds so much worse than "copied" or "used". You'd almost think the author of the post had an agenda against "stealing" information.

Doesn't matter anyway by Forgefather · 2016-01-21 08:12 · Score: 5, Insightful

This is ridiculous. You can't patent game mechanics and you can't get copyright on something as general as 'Fireball'. This is how the sharing of ideas was intended to work not some illicit theft of ideas.

--
"There are lies, there are damn lies, and there are statistics"

Re:Doesn't matter anyway by GrumpySteen · 2016-01-21 08:30 · Score: 0, Offtopic

This should be the highest moderated comment here. Sadly, I have no mod points to give today.
Re:Doesn't matter anyway by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 08:31 · Score: 0

This is ridiculous. You can't patent game mechanics and you can't get copyright on something as general as 'Fireball'. This is how the sharing of ideas was intended to work not some illicit theft of ideas.
Exactly.
Re:Doesn't matter anyway by Sowelu · 2016-01-21 08:39 · Score: 1

It doesn't sound like this was written with anything to do with copyright. It looks like it's just a matter of recognizing someone who was an early inspiration. What's wrong with studying the way that sharing of ideas happened?
Re:Doesn't matter anyway by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 09:19 · Score: 0

It is wrong when use the word exploited to imply people were victimized when someone uses a shared idea to make a product.
Re:Doesn't matter anyway by Forgefather · 2016-01-21 09:19 · Score: 1

It was the implication that something was wrong with what happened, that the concept of the 'Fireball' was somehow taken from another rather than having grown naturally out of the ideas of others and shared through the culture. On top of that nothing illegal or even immoral happened in the sharing of ideas that happened in exactly the way that it was supposed to.
The summary truly comes from the mistaken belief that everything everywhere is owned and created by one easily traceable person.

--
"There are lies, there are damn lies, and there are statistics"
Re:Doesn't matter anyway by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 09:26 · Score: 0

Besides, the military was playing war games long before 1970s. At least 50 years earlier, as I read about war games in the 1920s in the military, playing out different scenarios. And I would bet it's much earlier but I'm not gonna sleuth that history.
So someone combines war gaming with pre-existing fantasy elements and you got D&D? Should they get credit for all time for that? I don't know. Combinations happen all the time and often concurrently. It's not like we're talking about the invention of the vacuum tube or transister or relativity here.
Re:Doesn't matter anyway by Schnapple · 2016-01-21 09:39 · Score: 2

You can't patent game mechanics

Not exactly, no (i.e., you can't patent "guy with gun runs around and shoots things" for FPS games) but a board game itself, complete with its rules, can be patented. See the history of Monopoly and how several different board game patents were bought up by Parker Bros. back in the day to be able to release the game.

This, interestingly, actually works to the advantage of would-be game cloners because patents expire relatively quickly compared to copyrights. Consider Late for the Sky, a board game company whose output consists almost entirely of Monopoly clones, right down to the -opoly suffix (i.e., Aggieopoly, Miamiopoly, etc.) Rather than try and bat them down with some sort of bullshit reason, Parker Bros. instead just decided to get in on the game too, thus Star Wars Monopoly, Hello Kitty Monopoly, NASCAR Monopoly, etc.

Strictly speaking, though, none of this is really relevant because the article doesn't mention patents or copyright at all and really it's just the shit stirring summary that's trying to make Gygax into some thieving asshole after the fact.

--
Schnapple
Re:Doesn't matter anyway by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 09:50 · Score: 0

Pro tip, a discussion flows with or without mod points. If your discussion depends on pretending posts below a +1 or +2 don't exist, it's not a real discussion.
Re:Doesn't matter anyway by avandesande · 2016-01-21 09:52 · Score: 1

It's a game for goodness sake, not a scholarly article. Not to mention that attribution might embroil you in some sort of lawsuit.

--
love is just extroverted narcissism
Re:Doesn't matter anyway by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 09:54 · Score: 0

These "rules" seem akin to recipes, which can't be copyrighted (except as part of literary work). So any rule has various components (ingredients to continue the recipe metaphor) which can listed. The preparation steps to need only be altered slightly to get around copyright issues.
Re:Doesn't matter anyway by reanjr · 2016-01-21 10:33 · Score: 2

Actually, you can patent game mechanics (in the USA at least). What you can't do is use copyright to impose restrictions on someone duplicating your game's mechanics without duplicating the wording or presentation.
"Gloof and Ploff are Awesome" - intellectual property
"Ugg and Sug are Awesome" - gets around Trademark, but likely infringes copyright
"Ugg+Sug=Awesome" - free use unless the mechanics themselves are patented.
Re:Doesn't matter anyway by reanjr · 2016-01-21 10:35 · Score: 1

Of course, it has to be non-obvious that "Ugg+Sug=Awesome" for that idea to be patented.
Re:Doesn't matter anyway by dbIII · 2016-01-21 15:04 · Score: 1

This is ridiculous. You can't patent game mechanics and you can't get copyright on something as general as 'Fireball'. This is how the sharing of ideas was intended to work not some illicit theft of ideas.
True, it's based on the ancient invention of greek fire - or should that be geek fire?
Re:Doesn't matter anyway by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-22 03:22 · Score: 0

It's still very relevant, because the current owners of D&D are in the habit of flexing their legal muscle to take down D&D related tools (like character creation assistants for example) even though they only contain parts of the mechanics and none of the things which according to you should be copyrightable.

But the REAL question on all our minds is... by LaurenCates · 2016-01-21 08:12 · Score: 4, Funny

...how does one get to be a game historian and get paid for it?

--
Some people don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in The Patriarchy.

Re:But the REAL question on all our minds is... by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 08:17 · Score: 0

By publishing hyperbolic clickbait and hoping the ad revenue is enough so you can stock up on more instant noodles
Re:But the REAL question on all our minds is... by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 08:19 · Score: 0

Start a YouTube channel and make videos people enjoy watching.
Re:But the REAL question on all our minds is... by Gojira+Shipi-Taro · 2016-01-21 08:34 · Score: 4, Funny

I think you have to start as a Rules Lawyer and work your way up from there.

--
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
Re:But the REAL question on all our minds is... by The-Ixian · 2016-01-21 08:42 · Score: 1, Insightful

Step 1. Become disabled
Step 2. Collect economic assistance from the state
Step 3. Create business cards with "Game historian" printed on the front
Step 4. Profit

--
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
Re:But the REAL question on all our minds is... by increm · 2016-01-21 08:58 · Score: 1

You don't get paid for it.
Re:But the REAL question on all our minds is... by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 09:52 · Score: 0

I am not a rules lawyer, but I think the usual sentence in this case will result in the resurrected corpse of Gary Gygax to have to roll dice for six hours swinging and missing in stereotypical level 1 D&D combat.
Re:But the REAL question on all our minds is... by Ghostworks · 2016-01-21 10:54 · Score: 1

...how does one get to be a game historian and get paid for it?
You start with a childhood lover of D&D. You thenspend a few years trolling through library collection of old zines that were printed off of memograph machine in lots of ~100, looking for prototypical examples of rules that later crystalized in mass market products. You will need to supplement that with a working knowledge of the first 50 years of Weird fiction, when eventually split into Fantasy and golden-age science fiction. You then add that to a copious amount of personal reading on topics such as 17th century chess variants and Prussian kriegspiel. After you've done that unpaid for a few years, you can take some time off from your real job to write a 600 page treatise on wargaming. After that, all those sweet, sweet unpaid interviews with NPR start rolling in!
(I'm about 200 pages in on Playing at the World. It's massive and comprehensive. If you like early D&D history, you can also check out the blogs he follows, with Delta and Zenopus doing especially good detective work.)
Re:But the REAL question on all our minds is... by LaurenCates · 2016-01-22 01:36 · Score: 1

I am not all that interested in the history of D&D, but my husband is. I'll be sure to toss some of this information his way. Thanks!

--
Some people don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in The Patriarchy.

Idea owners unite? by s.petry · 2016-01-21 08:16 · Score: 4, Interesting

The summary pretty much says it all. The person want's to claim that the "Fireball" used in every game from 1970 to present including all of the big MMOs was from some guy who GG stole from. WTF? In reality, the Fireball goes back many many thousands of years. The "gods" threw fire and lightning. Shot was thrown as well as spears, so guess which one was the spear and which was the shot?

People want to push this idea that if you change a label you somehow "invented" something. Society must owe something to somebody at all times. "You didn't make that!" right? Sheesh. The cynic in me just ignores this concept after lashing out at the idiocy.

--

-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

Re:Idea owners unite? by cfalcon · 2016-01-21 10:35 · Score: 3, Insightful

Maybe read the article?
Fireball in Dungeons and Dragons is a particular spell with particular rules, and it has ABSOLUTELY BEEN COPIED STRAIGHT in many cases since then.
If you are disputing that Chainmail took "fire ball" from this guy, read the article- the rules specifics are way too much to be a coincidence (including the specifics of saving throws for heroes, and how they interact with Dragons).
If you are disputing that most of the modern gaming fireballs descend from Dungeons and Dragons / Chainmail / This guy, I don't know what to tell you, other than this is very unlikely. The idea of fire being used to attack is universal in human culture and mythology, but the specific visualization in question has some pretty clear pedigree. They aren't talking about the generic idea of an attack with fire, after all.
Re:Idea owners unite? by Ghostworks · 2016-01-21 10:36 · Score: 4, Interesting

The summary uses the most stilted possible working for the facts presented in the article. (In other words, the summary is accurate, it just has a much more accusatory tone. Also, the article is 2 pages printed: people can stop being lazy and just read it.)
But you, petry, are also putting on blinders. The D&D fireball is what WoW and Magic cribbed from, because it's the famous fireball. (And if by "the gods" you just mean Zeus, then yes, things were thrown: lightning, not fire.) D&D linked fireball and wizards in peoples' minds. Chainmail is the basis of D&D, and now we find Chainmail cribbed from another game, which is interesting. Nobody is trying to claim ownership or copyright or patent or whatever the people who only read the summary seem to believe. Certainly no one is looking for a settlement or royalty or free Arby's sandwich or whatever your feel angry about them "wanting".
Here are the facts:
* The mechanical roots of D&D are Chainmail. Chainmail's Fantasy appendix is more limited in scope to Tolkien than D&D would become. At one point Gygax called the Fantasy rules that became the most popular part of it, "an afterthought". Until now, the line of thought was that the wizard's fireball and lightning (the only spells they had in Chainmail) were respective fantasy versions of Medieval catapult and Napoleonic cannon rules. It is illuminating to find otherwise.
* The mechanics of the Fantasy appendix use similar terms, identical mechanics, and generally numbers within +/-1 of the rules of Patt. It's directly cribbed. The other author of Chainmail, Jeff Perren, is on the subscription list for the very issue where Patt's rules are printed. There's no real doubt.
* Gary Gygax did take from everything without attribution. In Dragon he presented aerial combat for D&D as "Battle in the Skies", never mentioning the rules are identical to those in Avalon Hill's "Fight in the Skies" board wargame. The thief class of later D&D was invented by Wagner of the Aero Hobbies crew and shared with Gygax by and Switzer of the same group: he later rolled his own version to market, but to many on the outside (and inside) it looked like he just stole it whole because there was no attribution. Pretty much the only time he did attribute is when he didn't want to type out the rules anew, such as when D&D refers the reader to Chainmail for combat rules and to the Outdoor Survival boardgame for overland journeys. This is how the hobby worked back then, and this friction is what happens when a friendly hobby becomes a real business.
Re:Idea owners unite? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 22:18 · Score: 0

"* Gary Gygax did take from everything without attribution."
Apart from, for example, in the foreward to the Blue Rulebook where he says that they both created it out of the rule idea of Chainmail, but with fantasy elements.
And Tolkien "took from everything without attribution".
Re:Idea owners unite? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-22 00:09 · Score: 0

Fireballs and wizards were associated long before role playing games. The wicked witch threw fireballs at the scarecrow.

GOOD by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 08:20 · Score: 0

Good for him. I for one no longer recognize copyrights, trademarks, or patents. There have been so much abuse of authority and claims over the years that I no longer recognize any of it.

Fireballs? ooh, original? really? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 08:20 · Score: 0

I mean, come on. Little kids who have never watched a movie, video game, TV or anything else probably imagined people shooting fireballs.

and? by Pumpkin+Tuna · 2016-01-21 08:21 · Score: 1

Since you can't copyright game mechanics, what's the significance of this. I made a board game for students to learn social studies and ripped off everything from Catan to Shogun to Diplomacy.

Re:and? by increm · 2016-01-21 09:03 · Score: 1

The significance is that some guy name Leonard Patt that no one has ever heard of before deserves some credit he never got. That's it.
Re:and? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 22:45 · Score: 0

The significance is that some guy name Leonard Patt that no one has ever heard of before deserves some credit he never got. That's it.
You don't actually "deserve" any credit just because you came up with the unoriginal concept of "fireball" and developed a set of tabletop rules that never went anywhere.
Re:and? by tepples · 2016-01-22 02:36 · Score: 1

Since you can't copyright game mechanics
A court found the opposite with respect to Tetris .

Open Source by onepagedungeon · 2016-01-21 08:24 · Score: 2

Something that TSR did not promote during the 80s and 90s was the hobbiest/sharing culture that got the whole ball rolling in the 70s. In many ways it paralled Bill Gates and the software industry. Playing the part of Stallman was Peter Adkinson, who started WotC. When WotC acquired TSR in the 00s, it was a boon to the RPG industry as the OGL was formed to foster the hobbiest community and other companies to share and collaborate, but Hasbro went back to the older ways with 4th edition and put it under a restrictive license. Looks like the OGL is back though as WotC has released an SRD for the 5th edition of Dungeons and Dragons. The hobbiest community is still strong. Some things are created under other open licenses. Every year since 2009, the One Page Dungeon Contest (https://onepagedungeon.info/) holds a competition with all of the dungeons put under the Creative Commons License for people to share, remix, and build off of.

Re:Open Source by DigMarx · 2016-01-21 08:31 · Score: 2

Speaking as a pen-and-paper RPGer, ours is by no means the hobbiest community. Miniatures wargamers and model railroaders are way hobbier than we are.
Re:Open Source by mujadaddy · 2016-01-21 09:03 · Score: 1

Hobbittier?

Hobbeardier?

--
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
Re:Open Source by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 09:33 · Score: 0

*whoosh*
The word the GP wanted was "hobbyist".

Good artists by 110010001000 · 2016-01-21 08:24 · Score: 3, Funny

Good artists copy. Great artists steal. And they get all the chicks, too.

Re:Good artists by The-Ixian · 2016-01-21 08:35 · Score: 1

Unless you steal from Steve Jobs...

--
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
Re:Good artists by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 08:58 · Score: 0

That's because stealing from Steve Jobs is redundant. Like stealing stolen property.
Re:Good artists by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 11:11 · Score: 0

. And they get all the chicks, too.
And then you get a little girl called Lisa who you disown for her entire childhood.

Giants by Mybrid · 2016-01-21 08:27 · Score: 2

If I have seen farther than others it is because I stood on the shoulders of Fire Giants.

Borrow from one it is plagiarism. Borrow from a bunch of gamers it is a lot of unattributed fun, because who cares!

Don't you mean "admitted"? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 09:00 · Score: 0

Gygax would need some help to admit something today...

Is *anyone* surprised by this? by tekrat · 2016-01-21 09:05 · Score: 3, Interesting

When you steal from a lot of sources that's labeled "creativity".

George Lucas couldn't get the rights to Flash Gordon, so he steals from Akira Kurosawa, some WWII movies, and a few few other bits and pieces and we get Star Wars.

Hanna Barbera wanted to do a "Jack Armstrong" series, but they couldn't get the rights. So, they fiddled with the formula a bit, changed a few names, and we got Jonny Quest, the killer animated series that influenced a generation and then some.

Frankly, if old Gary stole some ideas from here and there, that's very much BAU for how stuff goes from underground to commercial success.

--
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.

And in other news... by Sir_Eptishous · 2016-01-21 09:24 · Score: 1

Gygax, announcing from his DMs Throne Room on the plane of Discordant Opposition says "D&D 5th Edition is still my second favorite version".

--
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range

The Copyright Office says "who cares." by BarbaraHudson · 2016-01-21 10:07 · Score: 2

The Copyright Office> makes it clear that game has little protection.

Copyright does not protect the idea for a game, its name or title, or the method or methods for playing it. Nor does copyright protect any idea, system, method, device, or trademark material involved in developing, merchandising, or playing a game. Once a game has been made public, nothing in the copyright law prevents others from developing another game based on similar principles. Copyright protects only the particular manner of an author’s expression in literary, artistic, or musical form.

Material prepared in connection with a game may be subject to copyright if it contains a sufficient amount of literary or pictorial expression. For example, the text matter describing the rules of the game or the pictorial matter appearing on the gameboard or container may be registrable.

If your game includes any written element, such as instructions or directions, the Copyright Office recommends that you apply to register it as a literary work. Doing so will allow you to register all copyrightable parts of the game, including any pictorial elements. When the copyrightable elements of the game consist predominantly of pictorial matter, you should apply to register it as a work of the visual arts.

So, even using the exact same rules (described slightly differently but with the same result, same as there are plenty of different ways to describe, say, the game of chess), and the same system of play, and even the same NAME, are not protected. Make your own Risk clone with different artwork and you can tell Hasbro to stuff it.

--
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.

Re:The Copyright Office says "who cares." by increm · 2016-01-21 10:52 · Score: 1

Where do you see any mention of copyright or intellectual property in the linked article or the post? You're arguing against a claim nobody is making.
Re:The Copyright Office says "who cares." by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 13:15 · Score: 0

Except that the name "Risk" is likely trademarked by Hasbro, so you have to name your game "Hazard," or "Words with Friends."
Re:The Copyright Office says "who cares." by BarbaraHudson · 2016-01-21 14:28 · Score: 1

My point is clear - you can't "swipe" game rules. They're not protected.

--
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Re:The Copyright Office says "who cares." by BarbaraHudson · 2016-01-21 14:44 · Score: 1

Riskopoly FTW !!!

--
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.

Makerbot by AndyKron · 2016-01-21 10:23 · Score: 1

"this latest revelation shows how the open and collaborative environment of early gaming was quickly exploited for commercial purposes." Makerbot

What was it Obama said? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 13:23 · Score: 0

Hey Gary, you didn't build that.

WoTC had nothing to do with it either way by dbIII · 2016-01-21 14:58 · Score: 1

We don't need any. All this stuff happened long before WoTC came in and bought it out so the assertion that they are pretending that they invented it is nonsensical. Whatever they've done since, good or bad, is building on something that only people going by blind guesswork would assume did not come from somewhere else long before that company existed.

Artists Steal by johnwerneken · 2016-01-21 15:07 · Score: 0

And great artists steal shamelessly

So then by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 15:53 · Score: 0

Bigby's Thieving Hand is a real spell then.

News by easyTree · 2016-01-21 20:02 · Score: 1

A chimp in San Francisco Zoo was witnessed imitating another in its method of using a stick to extract ants from their nest prior to licking it.

The chimp had not first filed appropriate paperwork, making it liable for a claim for damages.

--
Requiem for the American Dream

What the hell, slashdot? by Anonymous Coward · 2016-01-21 22:12 · Score: 0

If there's ANYONE who would know this already, therefore NOT BE NEWS TO THEM, ***IT WOULD BE GEEKS***.

*ANYONE* who was a big DnD fan (as opposed to just an RPG fan) *knows* Gary took it from Chainmail. Fair enough, the new rulebooks don't say fuck all about the generation, but the blue book did, and I believe 2nd Edition did too. And any book on how to do DnD "properly" has it.

SO WHY THE FUCK IS IT HERE????

The one group this *isn't* news to is *nerds*. And to others, it's fucking worthless information.

Did anyone back then have original ideas? by Kaitiff · 2016-01-22 00:37 · Score: 1

I mean, now we know Gygax stole D&D, Jobs stole the mouse and the desktop OS from PARC, Gates stole (bought) DOS from another guy.. holy shit. Can you imagine if the actual creators of these things had managed to cash in on their ideas instead of the icons we now venerate?

--
If I sound stupid, it's not me talking....

Dr. Mario, Crazy Taxi, and DDR, all patented by tepples · 2016-01-22 02:20 · Score: 1

You can't patent game mechanics

Nintendo's patent on Dr. Mario (U.S. Patent 5,265,888, now expired), Sega's patent on Crazy Taxi (used to sue the developer of The Simpsons: Road Rage), and Konami's patent on Dance Dance Revolution (cf. Konami v. Roxor) would beg to differ.

Firstpost.com by tepples · 2016-01-22 02:39 · Score: 0

A news site in India already called "First!" on that idea.

Slashdot Mirror

Game Historian: Gygax Swiped Fantasy Rules From a Forgotten 1970 Wargame (blogspot.com)

139 comments