This is a problem, but there were multiple worked-on documents that had nothing to do with the unpublished 2e material that should be releasable.
The bigger issue is, by my understanding of the license agreement, WOTC technically co-owns everything published on the site, and the agreement is worded in away where it’s not clear to me if the site could publish anything, official or otherwise, without the agreement in place. So if they decide to pull the license, what happens to the material being worked on but not yet released? This is, I suspect, one of the reasons that the templarate is so skittish. But it is not an excuse. They need to work on figuring out the legal side so that material can get to the the fans, WOTC’s approval or no, and except in the case of the 2e material, which is supposedly explicitly forbidden from being public, there should be a way to do it, even if not on athas.org itself.
That said, I would also be willing to sign an agreement if necessary.
Edited to add: Furthermore, I truly, truly doubt WOTC would sue this site, rather than, say, sending a cease and desist order. I posted Secrets of the Deadlands and the world didn’t end. Furthermore, even if they did sue, all that likely means is the end of this site’s ability to publish material, which isn’t exactly a loss considering how nothing has been published in 12 years.
A question for the templars and overcouncilors: Have any of you actually discussed the license with WOTC at any point within the last decade? Have you asked them to approve material? Has there been any meaningful communication whatsoever?
Let us return this thread to the topic of preservation of documents, and focus our rallying efforts, which I also appreciate, on the “new blood” thread. I suggest that we post or link writing samples over there so everyone can get a feel for our various abilities.
I am very grateful for templar @Pennarin for issuing a rallying call of preservation of the source documents. It has been an effort worthy of a bard’s tale to preserve things and keep Athas alive through all these long years.
Is there some way that people who are not current members of the templarate can get some kind of update on the extant projects and their states? Are we talking 20% complete, 50% complete, or 80% complete for these various works? (Even just a listing of what these works all are would be nice)
So, have you considered bringing in new blood to help? Because there are lots of people who would be interested in joining the templarate.
Having, in recent months, seen more and more unreleased material by both TSR and athas.org, I have mixed feelings on this statement. With respect, several of these “sweeping” bits of lore that I have seen feel a bit too little like respectful inclusions from caretakers of the setting, and a bit too much like individuals were allowed to run wild with no oversight and no editor. The Preserver Jihad and Tectuctitlay’s Stairway are one thing. Ni-angh’akh the Hermit Majesty, the pointless ecosystem of Zhen prehistoric fish in the deadlands lake, and Daskinor’s insanely complicated backstory involving him actually being older than Rajaat, are all another thing entirely.
Edit: I actually like a lot of the stuff I’ve read, but I feel it would be improved just by letting in new people to look, review, and work on it with fresh eyes.
I have a cerebral aneurysm and there is a high possibility that I’ll be dead in as little as 5 years. I’d like to get this done before I die. Thanks, templars.
Seconding Grummore. Can we get some answers to these requests, some explanation as to why there has been no communication, and some new people brought into the fold, not necessarily in that order?
athas.org accounts, yes, are for Templars and above. It does give you access to things that cannot be released publicly, as well as an actual login on the site, with edit access to some areas. We can unlock part of the google drive for more open sharing, but it’s only partially structured.
@raddu and I have been discussing criteria for bringing more people onboard. It’s not an ask and receive basis.
As for WoTC: Yes, I’m skittish as hell. I have reason to be. The folks involved in being our contacts, in setting up the original dead-world site agreements are long gone. Their successors are gone. When WotC decided to stop hosting the DSML archives, we asked for permission to re-host them. We were refused in no uncertain terms.
DS3 is not, in fact, OGL. It’s not open content, and it does exist more or less entirely at the forbearance of WoTC. We’re free to use WoTC owned setting IP only under specific circumstances, and those don’t include blasting around unfinished copies of things that we were instructed not to share.
I need to feel out where the boundries are these days, but it’s worth keeping in mind that WotC has happily destroyed archives of community content before. The arena exists because they blew up their own forums back in 4e days. I want to be very careful with this hornets nest.
One question though: There are drafts of certain unreleased athas.org material (Parts of Celik and Kurn, almost all of Lost Cities and Prison State of Eldaarich) posted by their authors over at the Dark Sun facebook group over the years. Nothing I’ve seen in the agreement prevents athas.org from beta or publicly releasing non final versions of products that were not based on either DA2e or Deadlands2e. Am I wrong, or could we have a more open google drive for at least some of these works?
Edit: never mind, figured it out, It’s the mailing list. Why in the world did they refuse?
Yeah. For philisophical reasons, I basically refuse to engage with the blue site, but I know @Brax has been active on facebook over the years.
One of the reasons I havn’t quite prepped a “public” gdrive yet is that in part, the docs that we’ve got there are in pretty rough shape. Lost Cities has always been Peter’s baby, and if we’re going to host that, I’d prefer to get the most recent version from him. same follows for a few of the other products.
For some of them, I feel like I have to actually strip out a bunch of the layout, because 1) it doesn’t present well and 2) it gets in the way when you’re still doing heavy content editing.
This was going to be a holiday project, to get that set up, but … events have kinda hijacked my brain. (for those who don’t know, I live outside Washington DC, and things have been a bit “real” lately …)
Uhh. well, had to scroll pretty far for that one. Looks like I have a copy, thought I don’t know that it’s the newest. It also … takes a very long time to load. Again, this was a Brax project, so he might have a more recent thing.
I have very different throughts on “collections” , where it’s something like a huge list of powers, or spells or feats, or whatever. One of the things I’m looking to get done with the site, is just get all of these things into a database ; searchable and browsable.
I have a couple of housekeeping things that I’ve been working on though – there are several false starts and old technical decisions that I have to hammer back into shape first.