Stars Without Numbers is a B/X derived OSR ruleset with a lot of tables for making your own setting as granularly or macro as possible. From Tech levels, individual towns, planets, sectors and so on. A lot like Traveller but with less baked in assumptions about Tech Level. You want crazy anime mechs? Go ahead. Feuding clans? Yes. Jedi and magic? All right. What ever you want really.
Why? What am I going to do with low quality pirated pdfs? Read them again for a nostalgia hit? Play the game? With who? Random guys who lurk on the perpetually declining and eye-searing fansite forum?
If Nu TSR were actual racists that would at least be better than being bland and coasting off of nostalga like they are now.
Yeah. Aside from the racism, they're engaging in exactly the bad behavior that trademark law was intended to prevent: pretending to own someone else's IP in order to trick consumers. At least FrontierSpace doesn't pretend to do that (altho in my opinion I think FS plays it too safe when they could easily implement expies of the various TSR races by changing the details since they all run on scifi tropes anyhow). Sasquatch ran afoul of this when they used the Alternity trademark to market their modified retroclone, which pissed off a lot of Alternity fans who thought the original settings were coming back but were pissed when Sasquatch obeyed copyright law (not that it matters now since the line was apparently cancelled and Sasquatch is MIA).
True, but nuTSR is specifically trying to trick fans of the original Star Frontiers into thinking it's a continuation with the same IP. Trademark law doesn't take into account that things like this could happen, because it was originally created back when copyright terms were around 14 years. Now we live in the era of abandonware, orphaned works, etc and fandoms for that. It's created the opportunity for essentially mockbusters, but with trademarks.
People weren't pissed that the authors retrocloned their own game. They were pissed because they thought the settings for it, Star*Drive and Dark•Matter, were coming back. Unfortunately, the authors didn't have the rights to those settings. Not only that, but they cancelled the game before they produced any original settings for it and went MIA. Alternity fans have multiple reasons to be pissed off at them, even if they were working in good faith within their legal limitations.
WotC refuses to preserve their own IPs and will sue anyone else trying to preserve those IPs. Telling me to "sail the high seas" is a bullshit kneejerk response that doesn't address any of the underlying problems. My PDFs are stored somewhere on old backup hardrives that I don't have the time or inclination to search through unless it's really important. The Trove and the Internet Archive have gotten DMCA'd many times and torrents are highly unreliable. Some products are just not pirated because they're so obscure and would have to be scanned manually from physical copies, producing a result inferior to the OEF PDFs previously sold on Drivethrurpg unless you go to even more exhausting effort of remastering the PDFs yourself like the Star Frontiers fansite did before WotC told them to take it down.
this is why IP laws are a complete joke
I see nothing in the posts or the advertising of the new Star Frontiers that this is a continuation of the old setting. This is a customer problem not the author problem.
That's a customer problem. They should have read the materials and saw that there was no promise made for the settings. All it promised was the rules.
It's their right. Just like it's your right to have four houses and only live in one. You could let the other three sit empty and not a thing can be done to force you to sell it.
Yet, the high seas has the pdfs and I managed to get them quite easily. The thing about piracy is that you can't stop it.
Again, the quality of the scans today are really good since the tech advanced far beyond what they were 20 years ago.
I agree. We need to get it back to the old 20 years only then it goes into public domain.
Yes, you are. You can write up your own version of Star Frontiers using the exact rules in the old while calling it something different. Copyright only protects that unique expression of the rules. It does not protect the rules themselves.
Word Mark | STAR FRONTIERS |
Goods and Services | (CANCELLED) IC 028. US 022. G & S: Equipment Sold as a Unit and Including a Rule Book, Printed Playing Aids, Counters and Dice for Playing Parlor Type Game. FIRST USE: 19820628. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 19820628 |
Mark Drawing Code | (1) TYPED DRAWING |
Serial Number | 73385411 |
Filing Date | September 14, 1982 |
Current Basis | 1A |
Original Filing Basis | 1A |
Published for Opposition | April 19, 1983 |
Registration Number | 1245487 |
Registration Date | July 12, 1983 |
Owner | (REGISTRANT) TSR Hobbies, Inc. CORPORATION WISCONSIN 281 Sheridan Springs Rd. Lake Geneva WISCONSIN 53147 (LAST LISTED OWNER) TRS, INC. CORPORATION BY CHANGE OF NAME FROM WISCONSIN 201 SHERIDAN SPRING ROAD LAKE GENEVA WISCONSIN 53147 |
Assignment Recorded | ASSIGNMENT RECORDED |
Attorney of Record | MARY L. WINBURN |
Type of Mark | TRADEMARK |
Register | PRINCIPAL |
Affidavit Text | SECT 15. SECT 8 (6-YR). |
Live/Dead Indicator | DEAD |
Cancellation Date | April 17, 2004 |
WotC bought TSR in 1997, not 2004. WotC freely admits they let the trademarks lapse and claim they retained/reclaimed it through common law.
Yup. This premise was more or less recycled for Star*Drive’s own frontier setting, which featured the klicks and other creatures instead of Sathar. The Federation was replaced by Concord, which was more like space NATO with a standing army. TSR had a habit of recycling ideas that way.
Yup, it’s basically a greatest hits of almost all TSR’s old scifi IPs. It’s a pity WotC never did anything further with it. If they put the IPs on the GM’s Guild fan license then fans could make their own new editions without WotC lifting a finger.
