Alright, now to do something radical. Everyone, I can't afford to "buy" a business license from my local Municipalitical government, although circumstances has forced me to use something that is still revered by our Government in the Constitution to my advantage.
That's right, its copyright. However, in order to make it rather than play the game of Publisher's Roulette, I'm offering to play Public Roulette instead. Here's how it works:
The Internet is the most efficient copying machine that man has ever created in Modern History. It has the ability to copy Energy perfectly from one computer to another on an infinite scale in the form of words, pictures, sounds, and video arranged for the purpose of education, aesthetics, or entertainment. For almost twenty years, Media Corporations could have embraced the Internet in the role it was made to be. However, individuals are much more forward seeing.
Before the Internet, we had Publishers and Printers who had these expensive, gigantic printing presses that could put Energy to paper, vinyl, tape, or to cinematic film in rivalrous goods known as books, cassette tapes, records, and film. Writers almost had to universally play Publisher Roulette in order to get their work published. In this Roulette, they'd almost always lose and only 5% of writers become a famous, well known author who could live just off of their work.
Now thanks to the internet, you can buy from the Writer directly. And thanks to Ryan Dancey, you can buy products made for Pathfinder and the d20 system written by authors who work for themselves and not exclusively for Wizards of the Coast. The OGL is the underlying cause of Pathfinder's success.
Secrets of Magic: Firebolt is the first step for me in a radical change. It's a document that takes the spell firebolt and reveals it's secrets to you in a not so generic world setting that is as generic as you can get. It's part of a series called Secrets of Magic, which you, the public, have the full rights to distribute.
After all, in order for the work to be enjoyed, it lives inside your minds; and it can only live inside your minds if you can read it. Therefore, it is released with both the Open Game License and the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. You will find that you can build on the work, alter the work, create derivatives, and even sell a copy yourself. You can even put it up on the *cough* Pirate Bay. *cough!*
You just download it, and if you like it, you can send me a donation on what you think the work is worth to you. This is Nina Paley's experiment applied to a Pathfinder derivative document.
The work is available for Free Download from 4shared and Scribd.com, and can be purchased from Scribd.com. I will accept donations in the form of a USD check, money order, gold, silver, precious stones, crystals, and food (elections have consequences, people! Food will be the new currency, get used to it!) in that order. Once I have enough money to open a bank account, I can open a paypal account.
You can download Secrets of Magic: Firebolt from here:
Or from 4Shared for free!
HOW DO WE PAY YOU?
Through donations. I'll accept Checks and Money Orders in USD currency, gold and silver, precious stones, and crystals, and then food -- in that order. Donations can be made to my private address which I can share through private, secure email.
WE CAN DO ANYTHING WE WANT WITH THIS?
Yeah. You can. You can create Derivative Works, Alter the Work to your specifications, and even sell a copy of it for yourself. You are the distributor!
THIS IS A LOT LIKE WHAT NINA PALEY DID . . .
Exactly. This is following her cobbler model. You will able to take the work and distribute it as an audience to any outlet you please. :)
Congrats!
ReplyDeleteCan't grab it yet, 4Shared is blocked at work.
Did you consider DriveThruRPG?
Also you might want to check your licenses. Last legal guy I talked too said you can't mix the OGL or the Pathfinder Compatibility License with Creative Commons.
If that's true, then something's messed up.
ReplyDeleteI wanted to make it clear that people can distribute my work without permission, but if CC and OGL can't be used together, then someone's got to figure something out.
I don't want people to think I'm a monopolist.
You can release it free (or charge) and do it under the OGL and just say in the document "All content is Open". That will cover it.
ReplyDeleteThe issue comes from using the the Pathfinder compatibility license without the OGL.
That should be fine.
Before I go changing the licensing, I sent a question to Clark Peterson. He's pretty much a user friendly lawyer when it comes to people using the OGL.
ReplyDelete