Ethics of scenario editing...continued from old forum

[Don Maddox]

Sheik Yerbouti -- Lets say you have found a very nice looking scenario from the archives, and after playing it you find out, that it needs some editing. You have plenty of ideas for it, and you try to give feedback to the scenario designer hoping he will produce an updated version. But the scenario designer in question has dropped from the face of the earth. Is it allright to make a modified version, and send it to a scenario archives without any permission (or denial) from the original designer?

[Don Maddox]

Sheik Yerbouti (06-15-2002 09:01 a.m.):
Lets say you have found a very nice looking scenario from the archives, and after playing it you find out, that it needs some editing. You have plenty of ideas for it, and you try to give feedback to the scenario designer hoping he will produce an updated version. But the scenario designer in question has dropped from the face of the earth. Is it allright to make a modified version, and send it to a scenario archives without any permission (or denial) from the original designer?


I think if you send him an email saying you are going to or would like to and he doesnt respond its all yours, but thats just my opinion.

Hades

[Don Maddox]

Stauffenberg -- I definitely disagree. :mad:

If you can't get hold of the designer then, fine, do what you want with it but it should be an in-house sort of thing, not posted on the net. The act of posting someone else's work, with your own changes, and without permission, I think is beyond the pale. Make your changes, put it in the notes that you were unable to get hold of the designer, and send it to whomever you want to play it out with. If you want to post a scenario--do your own.
Regards,

D.

[Don Maddox]

Sheik Yerbouti -- Yes, I have posted my own scenario to several archives, so do I qualify?

Seriously, I understand your point, but I think it would be the best for gaming community if a scenario with a lot of potential, but which needs fixing, is fixed and posted for others to use. It would be ridicilous to start the scenario and its design from the scratch, just to claim "this is my own". The modified version would still be `intellectual property´ of the original designer and marked so.

Added: This only applies if the original designer cannot be contacted.

[Don Maddox]

Stauffenberg -- If you have done your own scenario then you know the amount of work involved: there is no "just" about it. When you look at this new reworked scenario, unless there are exhaustive notes, who is to say who did what work? In any event, once you post it you really have no control over it and people can do what they like, including taking your work, redoing it, and posting it with no acknowledgements to the original author at all (seen it done). I would hope most people have a sense of ethics about it. I imagine some designers could care less. For myself, as soon as I see one of my own scenarios redone and reposted I'll cease posting them. BTW I didn't post my stuff for years over this issue of control. Another site I won't mention had a straight policy of owning whatever you posted there. You will note that is not the case at WarfareHQ if you read the small print.

Designers are doing alot for TOAW, and for nothing other than acknowledgement: take away that, or start eroding that in some way, and they really will be doing it for nothing. Redoing and reposting, when someone has "disappeared" for a month or two, is a gray area I wouldn't go into myself. If this designer has "disappeared" for a year or two perhaps that would be different. Perhaps.

D.

[Don Maddox]

Sheik Yerbouti -- I would have included exhaustive notes about what has been tweaked and what not. I thought this has been always the case, but from your experience I can see it has not. The system of WarfareHQ scenario archives is the best available, and I won´t upload any of my future scenarios to other archives (I have read `the small print´). I think after hearing your comments, I won´t post the `modificato´, although the designer in question has been unattainable for about a year.

I admit, if I saw my scenario edited without permission on some archive, I would be angry as hell.

Then again, I´m always attainable.

Stauffenberg -- The one time I did something like that was at a design forum I used to belong to. There was a very promising Spanish Civil War scenario and I was unable to contact the authors. The scenario had a fatal error for the program--they had two units with the same name in the same formation and it locked up. So I corrected it and posted it with a note.

Another example about being careful with acknowledgements can be found in my DNO project. Dave Ferguson gave me a superb projection for the map. It had major cities and raillines on it and that was about it. I spent ages upgrading it to the present form. Nonetheless, his contribution was huge and I put him as co-author of the map.

How much work have you put into this scenario if I can ask? If you have substantially redone the OB and TOE for example, you might consider copying it, doing your own map, and going on from there with a note explaining where you got the OB from, and while continuing to contact the designer.

[Don Maddox]

Bob Cross -- I'll just offer this true story from the early days of TOAW.

Someone (not me) had posted a monster scenario (that will remain nameless) that used daily turns, resulting in a very long scenario. One of its players thought that it would be nice to have a weekly-turn version. He even asked the designer and got permission to make the variant.

But what the designer apparently didn't know was that the player he granted the permission to was clueless about the editor (and possibly otherwise clueless as well). All he did was change the turn length and crop the number of turns by seven. He didn't go into the event editor and change turn-numbers for events or edit the arrival-turns of reinforcements. He didn't change the replacement numbers. He didn't understand the consequences to supply and mobility to making a radical change in the environment in TOAW. The result (of course) was crap.

But the scenarios both looked identical. So now the original designer's work's reputation was smeared by confusion with the newbie's crap version. This is what I would fear more than any loss of credit. It's very hard to totally understand all the components of someone else's design. Something that seems unimportant may have been critical.

I have granted others permission to use components from my scenarios. But only on condition that that use is for a scenario that is sufficiently different from mine that they cannot be confused.

Sheik Yerbouti -- But what the designer apparently didn't know was that the player he granted the permission to was clueless about the editor (and possibly otherwise clueless as well). All he did was change the turn length and crop the number of turns by seven. He didn't go into the event editor and change turn-numbers for events or edit the arrival-turns of reinforcements. He didn't change the replacement numbers. He didn't understand the consequences to supply and mobility to making a radical change in the environment in TOAW. The result (of course) was crap.

:confused: Can´t get worse than that!

[Don Maddox]

Tiemen -- I have no problem with someone using my scenarios. I like to create the maps and TO&E but not the gameplay. I would like it if someone did improve gameplay my scenarios.

Chuck -- Have you posted your maps some where so people can use them?