Will the creators of projects that are run under LARPS retain the intellectual property rights to them?
If I write an original game and run it as a LARPS project, do I retain the copyright and can I then sell the game (not run it, sell it as a publication) and keep the profit?
I’d like to think that this can be handled case by case, but obviously that would not be any good in a disagreement.
A tricky one. As the poster, what do you think should be the case? I’m going to moot that intellectual property belongs to the member, but there is an agreement to generally share information freely.
I’d like to say that if you started to sell an idea, the society should get a 10% royalty on all sales. But that’s not the business that we’re in.
As the poster, my opinion is that it’s something LARPS needs a clear policy on.
I don’t have an opinion on what that policy should be. But if I write a game that I think has resale value, I’ll want to retain full IP rights. If that means running it as an associate rather than a project, then I’d run it as an associate (and possibly forego any funding by doing so).
Yeah, that sounds like a pretty good distinction - projects no, affiliates yes.
Certainly something to be addressed in the GMs documents.
Probably needs to be at a higher level than project documents. I think there will need to be a general LARPS policy.
For my part, if I was running a game in an existing fictional setting (e.g. a LotR game) then copyright obviously wouldn’t be an issue. Also, if I was running a game in some original fantasy setting, I wouldn’t be worried because they have no resale value.
But if I wrote a game with a completely original setting (say the Tryst game discussed in the Game Ideas forum), I’d want to retain full rights. If I could do that and get funding at the same time, I would.
I think this is a separate issue to running games for profit. That’s clearly something you’d have to do outside of LARPS, as an associate at most.
Ok, here’s an interesting idea.
Let’s say you wanted to run a published LARP as a LARPS project. Like a WOD game or something. Someone would have to buy the books. Possibly LARPS funding (or player fees) would cover it, and the books would be LARPS property. Or possibly the organiser would have to shoulder that cost.
Now, here’s the interesting bit. Let’s say I published Tryst as a game, independantly of LARPs, and made it available for purchase (as a web PDF or whatever). Then, any member of LARPS (including myself) might be able to run it as a project, and get funding to run it and pass the profit and equipment back to LARPS. The cost of purchasing the game might be covered by a slight increase in player fees for the game. LARPS would own the copy of the rules and other people in the region could use it.
Thoughts? Am I working the system in this instance? Personally I don’t think so, it seems to me that there should be no difference between a game published by some far-away game designer and one published right here by someone who happens to be a member of LARPS.
I have no problems with the creator retaining copyright - after all, thats the case if you run an AD&D game, for example.
How about this: when making the project definition document, you can optionally state that the game copyright rests with the creator (and give a name). In the absense of this, copyright for anything original reverts to LARPS. For affilliates, of course, they retain everything unless specifically stated otherwise.
This would give a default of IP reverting to LARPS, but still allow us to say something like ‘The copyright for the game design remains the sole property of Ryan Paddy’ in the definition.
As far as actually paying LARPS money to a project leader for the rules used in that project, thats a tricky one as its a possible conflict of interest. I would say that, in the project defintion document, you can specify that you want to be paid $X for granting LARPS a license to the ruleset although you retain copyright. It’s the same as saying that you want $Y to buy a copy of the AD&D Rulebook for use running the game. The committee can then vote on whether or not they think $X is justified.
Note that the draft constitution prevents any committee member from voting on anything that can result in personal gain - eg, if a project proposal involved paying me $5 for rights to ‘Fluffy Bunnies the LARPG’ then I could not vote on the project proposal. For obvious reasons.
If someone purchases a commercial LARP rulebook/game (and runs a game inside LARPS) LARPS does not suddenly own the IP. It should be no different for games created and then run under the LARPS umbrella.
Authors should retain copyright to any works they create, regardless of LARPS funding. However, if you’re taking LARPS funding, then any profits from running that instance of the game should go back to LARPS.
I’ve made up my mind on this, and I agree with Derek.
A non-profit society like LARPS should have no interest in acquiring IP rights for games written by its members. Acquiring IP is not part of the mandate, only promoting LARP and helping people run LARPs are. In fact, acquiring IP is detrimental to the mandate of promoting LARP as it’ll discourage game writers who’ll feel that their great ideas are being sucked into some sort of collective and their ownership of the ideas taken away. People need to be able to say “this is mine” about their creations and be proud of them, even if they don’t intend to sell them.
There should be a clear policy that all IP rights reside with the game writers, even for projects run within LARPS.
If that’s not made clear and transparent, many game writers won’t want to run their games under LARPS.
On a different note, I wonder if LARPS might want to gradually build up a library of LARP-related books for lending, including game books.
I’m glad we are having this discussion now, early in the days of NZLARPS.
I believe that the society is here to not only promoute etc as mentioned by Ryan but also to help create some order / strcuture and assign responsibily so things happen, spread the work load out and to help the creatative ones like Ryan, not to take over and have control.
I know control and order are similar, but I see a difference.
Therefore I feel that the IP of the game should stay in the hands of the creator whoever they are and not NZLARPS.
At the next committee meeting I think we need to have a discussion on how a project can leave the society, not something I want to happen but we should have processes in place now, and not created in the future if someone wants to pull their game out and emotions are running high.
My interpretation of the NZLARPS mandate is one of advocacy of the NZ LARP community. This means that development of larp oriented resources, particularly physical resources, is a key aspect of our endeavours.
I agree with Derek and Ryan that intellectual property should remain with the developer.
That being said, we need to be cognisant of the possibility of the NZ LARPS community being used as a free incubation mechanism for commerically minded larp developers.
For example, it could be possible for a larp developer to fully utilise the NZ LARP resources to develop a game, and once it has reach commerical maturity, revoke any playing rights and then take the game offshore to more lucrative markets.
Perhaps we should consider any instance of a game played as a NZ LARPS project to belong to NZ LARPS ? i.e. NZ LARPS could repeat the game if there was interest. Since no one can profit from running an instance of the game (except NZ LARPS), then I suspect the intellectual property of the game would be respected.
[quote=“Mike Curtis”]That being said, we need to be cognisant of the possibility of the NZ LARPS community being used as a free incubation mechanism for commerically minded larp developers.
For example, it could be possible for a larp developer to fully utilise the NZ LARP resources to develop a game, and once it has reach commerical maturity, revoke any playing rights and then take the game offshore to more lucrative markets.[/quote]To be honest, I don’t especially see that as an extremely negative consequence. To start with, as Derek said, profits from a particular instance of a game would go back to LARPS so it wouldn’t be out of pocket, for secondly, having ambitions to make a commercial product would encourage high standards from the developers, for thirdly, taking a game to offshore markets? That would happen naturally if the organiser moved countries whether their game was commercial or not and any text resources are just as available here as overseas.
As an example of a community developing a game, Maelstrom in the UK got a huge amount of input from prospective players and interested bystanders on the Pagga discussion board before the first game ran. The organiser Matt Pennington lives off the profits of the game. I don’t think that anybody involved is particularly upset about transference of IP or commercial rights or the fact that Pennington makes money out of his hobby.
Stephanie
How about saying that, by default, (for projects) the game developers will retain IP rights to any original material; however NZLAPRS is granted a license to use them. (this is different from my previous thought which was to default to giving the IP to the society)
Of course, these defaults can be overridden in the project definition, if required.
If a project wants to leave LARPS and become affilliated or independent, then provided they leave behind any assets which are the property of NZLARPS there should be no issue.
I have no real axe to grind over this, so I’m happy to go with the thoughts of the majority.
Let’s take a couple of concrete examples on this “LARPS retains the right to run the game” thing.
Mordavia. The campaign ends, I move onto something else. Then some bright spark says “hey, I want to run another Mordavia campaign, I miss it.” However, one of the basic premises of Mordavia is that it’s a one-off campaign with a descending ceiling. Running “another Mordavia” is likely to violate the concept. Moreover, if you do a piss-poor job of running it you’ll devalue the brand and the memories that people have of it. I’d be opposed, in other words, unless someone could really sell it to me.
Derek’s epic Greek game. He runs it under LARPS, then later someone else in LARPS wants to run it again or something based off it. Should he have any say in whether they can? Who gets the final say, him or LARPS?
A Vampire chronicle. Someone starts running it, then leaves the club. Here is where I can see the “we’ll continue running it” idea working the best, because it allows players to continue play in an ongoing much-loved setting. It’s independant IP, there are standards about how to run such a thing. But again, what if the person wants to take the game out of LARPS? Or doesn’t want anyone to continue running their chronicle because they don’t think anyone else can do it justice?
There’s always this tricky stuff with creative ownership, and with individual vs. communal ownership in general.
I would say in all the examples above the Project Owner gets the final say.
Mordavia; as the project owner Ryan has final say even if the game has been over for several years.
If someone moves on then they can decieded to pass their vampire game onto a new project owner or shut the game down.
I think it would be a risky to allow a Project Owner to essentially have ownership rights to a project/game. What if they decided, in a pique, to leave NZ LARPS ? Would this mean that the project had to stop, even if it was midstream ?
While I agree with Ryan about the concept of Mordavia having a descending ceiling and concerns about standards etc (and I would hold similar concerns for someone trying to run a Skirmish game), I do believe there is a balance to be found here.
If our goal is to develop the NZ larping community, then I fail to see the advantage of projects that can be discontinued at the whim of the Project Owner. The natural consequence of this would be to provide an interruption to the development of NZ LARPS capability.
Perhaps we need to introduce a Life Cycle dimension to projects. I really want to avoid the concept of a Project Owner being able to use NZ LARPS as a development community (which is totally OK IMHO), followed by a revocation of NZ LARPS ability to run the larp. I can’t see how this is good for NZ LARPS.
Of course, if the Project Owner was upfront about it prior to the project being accepted by the NZ LARPS committee, then that would be a different story. Which is the reason to include a Life Cycle dimension to any project. That way, NZ LARPS would have a clear understanding (and potential an agreement or contract) that would enable the committee to have better understanding of the likely consequences of a particular project.
How about if someone wanted to run a new game using the Mordavia rules system, but not call it ‘Mordavia’?
I would say that LARPS could retain license to use the system, but the ‘Mordavia’ brand and game concept - and ruleset - belong to Ryan and the rest of the original Mordavia creators.
I’m not so worried about a project owner taking the game away - after all, we can be a breeding ground for new larps which go off and become independent (but hopefully affilliated) since its in line with our goals. I wouldn’t want this hypothetical project owner to take any LARPS assets, though, and I’d like LARPS to retain license to the game system (although not necessarily the scenario in which those rules were being used, or the project name).
Going back to Mordavia, I can understand Ryan wanting editorian control of anything run in Mordavia, and I’d be happy for this to be the case. How about a future project, though, which is entirely separate from Mordavia and has a different name, but uses the same rules system (under a permanent license granted to LARPS)? Would this be a problem?
It’s practically impossible to protect the IP of game rules (they can be patented, but it’s a bastard to enforce), and in the case of Mordavia I’d have no desire to. For one thing they’re stock-standard live combat LARP rules (with the possible exception of the guild contracts and the income system). For another, I’d be very happy for other people to use the rules as inspiration when writing rules for other games, even borrowing from them verbatim. I’d recommend against borrowing them wholesale though - they’re designed for the Mordavia setting, and adaptation would be required for other settings.
For that matter, the Mordavia setting is inspired by an old computer game and as such the organisers have no claim to original IP. Anyone anywhere is just as entitled to run a similar game.
My point was that given that Mordavia will now run under LARPS, some members might feel that when the campaign ends another one could be started, to “fill the gap”. I think this would be misguided, and I’d advise against it. But I don’t know about actually enforcement of it, which is why I was raising it as a question.
In terms of other games… perhaps Steve is right that each project put before LARPS should state whether the owner is happy for others to continue the project or start spin-offs if the original owner stops running it. Then LARPS knows everything up front and can weigh up whether they want to have it as a project or not. But regardless, the copyright for any written material and art should stay with the creators in my opinion.