Tuesday, December 25, 2018

Chaosium AFRAID of our Cthulhu Mythos RPG


Chaosium is AFRAID of our Cthulhu Mythos RPG -- Don't Let Them Take You Alive.  They had it kicked off of DriveThruRPG.com!  They must be intimidated by the competition of our little, FREE game.  But that is probably a bigger indicator that their own sales are lagging.

You can download the full color FREE PDF here

Or if you'd like a physical copy, you can get one here

Here's the details of this silly situation.  I am an author who works in the horror and Cthulhu Mythos genres.  I have 22 titles to my name as of this writing.  Characters are the most important aspect of any story, and I tend to overwrite everything.  So after writing all those books, I found myself with a ton of leftover characters, cults, evil corporations, alien gods and mysterious monsters.  So I slapped some stats and dice rolls onto them and put them in their own game book, as a source for other roleplayers to use in their own modern horror or Cthulhu Mythos based games.  

I have always given it away for free.  DriveThruRPG has a "Pay What You Want" option and I always promoted it by telling people to just enter zero dollars and get the free pdf.  Their site was just an easier way for random gamers to stumble upon it.

Then I got a notice from DriveThruRPG that they had pulled it for violating Chaosium's copyright, claiming, "it uses the Call of Cthulhu rules and stats without permission."

I cited United States Federal Government Copyright Law FL-108, "Copyright does not protect the idea of a game, its name or title, or the method or methods for playing it.  Nor does copyright protect any idea, system, method, device, or trademark material involved in developing, merchandising, or playing the game.  Once a game has been made public, nothing in copyright law prevents others from developing another game based on similar principles."

Basically, you can't copyright game rules, stats, attributes, etc.  DriveThruRPG didn't care.  They said they are aware of the law and that there are court cases pending on this issue.  Sure, right, what bullshit.  

They said I would have to change the game.  I asked how can I change something if you won't tell me what the violation claim is specifically for?  "Strength attributes, detective skills, hit points, etc, these are still game mechanics.  Mechanics that are used in thousands of games, both tabletop and computer-based."  Again, they didn't care.

So I'm just making it available and will keep making it available, still FREE, through an online storage site.  Download it now in case they try to have it removed again!  Cthulhu fhtagn!










3 comments:

  1. The download process was taking me through a lot of shady looking links that demanded access. Is there another way to get it?

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  2. Whom at Chaosium did you talk to about this?

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  3. Took me to the Dropbox site. Was super easy. Might want to check your settings for a redirect

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