A quick roundup of what the usual malefactors are up to.
First as usual is Wizards of the Coast. They’ve sent a cease and desist letter to Masterplan, a tool being developed for D&D 4e adventure/campaign planning. They had coded a hook to connect, using your own D&D Insider subscription, to pull in monsters and whatnot. Naturally WotC’s reaction is “Shut down or we’ll sue you!”
This one is even sketchier than usual though, legally. It is pulling information using YOUR Insider account via their publicly available interface. That’s a lot more like the RIAA saying you can’t burn an mp3 you bought to a CD so you can listen to it in your car.
Why anyone would even try to do anything for 4e, I don’t know. It’s obvious that Wizards of the Coast will just come shit on you, sooner or later. Forget them, they’ve killed official D&D, move on.
Second is Catalyst Games. They’ve defeated an immediate ruling on the Chapter 7 request to declare them insolvent and take their stuff to pay all the peple they’re stiffing, but it goes to court on June 18. Looks like they’re just happily moving forward with their six-figure thief as CEO and conducting business as usual, yay. Time will tell if Topps will pull the license, or if subcontracting to a criminal enterprise is OK with them.
Jim Shipman of Outlaw Press surfaces every once in a while to re-open a Lulu or EBay or similar storefront to hawk his illegal Tunnels & Trolls wares before people report him to the provider and have him shut down. He is apparently still able to find suckers, though!
Things have been ongoing but with no new specific major incidents; I declare the RPG Sector Terror Alert to be at Yellow.
EDIT: I forgot one – Palladium Games is suing a computer game outfit called Trion for daring to make a computer game called “Rift: Planes of Telara.” Their request for a restraining order to stop them from showing their game at E3 failed but of course there’s more to come. Story courtesy Living Dice.
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