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The Impossible Dream
Boldly Using Ideas More Sensible People Have Rejected
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woodelf
Balboasaur
Joined: 30 Jun 2004
Posts: 120
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 Posted: Wed Oct 05, 2005 3:00 pm Post subject: Dread and Dread: the First Book of Pandemonium |
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This came up, again, on RPGNet, so i figure just stickying my explanation here on our forums is in order. Every now and then, someone confuses our game with Malignant Games' Dread: the First Book of Pandemonium. Other than part of the title, there's really nothing in common about them. Malignant's game is diced and in a fairly-traditional gamist/simulationist style, as i understand it, and is about modern fantasy/horror, much in the vein of most current horror movies. There are clearly-supernatural elements, and the players' characters are, essentially, monster hunters.
OK, on to the explanation:
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| Quote: | | Okay...so what Dread is this ?? |
The original. :D
First, to the obvious question: there can be no legal issues. The text, as a whole, of a book is copyrighted, not the individual words--and that includes the title. As for trademark, as a general rule you cannot trademark the title of an individual book, only of a series or line of books. So, claims not withstanding, most RPG titles are not trademarkable. While we can prove first use, it doesn't matter--we couldn't do anything about it legally if we wanted to. Which we never did.
Now, the quick background:
- 1) The Impossible Dream develops the game that would become Dread
- 2) The Impossible Dream starts talking about "Dread" in public fora and starts running the game at conventions (starting with GenCon)
- 3) Malignant Games develops the game that would become Dread: the First Book of Pandemonium
- 4) Malignant Games names their game and publishes it without first checking for prior/current use of the name in the RPG world
- 5) The Impossible Dream becomes aware of the name duplication and contacts Malignant Games. Both sides agree that it's no big deal, Malignant agrees to be careful to use their game's proper title ("Dread: the First Book of Pandemonium"), and tID agrees not to make a fuss.
- 6) Dread: the First Book of Pandemonium sells out, and Malignant Games decides not to do a reprint
- 7) Dread finally sees print, at least 2 years behind schedule. To be clear, this is the same game as point (2), above--it was the writing, not the development, that ended up taking so long.
The only detail of the above i can't confirm for certain is that (1) & (2) occurred before (3)--i know for certain that (2) occurred before (4)--that is, that we were publicizing the name before Malignant's game had a public name. I'm pretty certain about the respective development times due to knowledge of our own game and some discussion from the author of Malignant's game, but can't be positive.
Anyway, when Dread: the First Book of Pandemonium hit shelves, we contemplated changing the name of our not-yet-published game. But we already had 2+ yrs of name recognition and fan interest, built up through online discussions and, more importantly, convention games, and didn't want to lose all of that. Coupled with the fact that we just couldn't come up with what we felt was a better title for our game (we'd spent quite a bit of brainstorming to get to "Dread" in the first place). Plus, the authors of the two Armaggedon RPGs that were actually both in print at the same time claimed that they didn't see any problems with the name "conflict". So, since our titles weren't the same, just very similar, and we had a fair bit of name recognition already, and we were there first, we decided to stick with it. And then, due to our delays, Malignant's game sold out and mostly disappeared from the gamers' radar before ours even got out there, so we figured it was a mostly-non-issue. Apparently we underestimated the market penetration of Dread: the First Book of Pandemonium. ;)
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edit: and, as an addendum, i'm still personally looking to acquire a copy of Dread: the First Book of Pandemonium, so if anyone has one they'd part with for a reasonable price...
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woodelf
The Impossible Dream
Last edited by woodelf on Wed Feb 01, 2006 7:52 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Eppy
Deicidal Robot
Joined: 09 Nov 2004
Posts: 80
Location: Brooklyn, New York
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| Posted: Thu Oct 06, 2005 9:06 am Post subject: |
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| We had a very limited print version out shortly after step 2 and most likely before step 3--a little eight-page job, with several pages dedicated to sample questions. We gave it away for free at GenCon (the Millwaukee Years). The fact that it existed is probably what ultimately made me comfortable with keeping the name Dread. |
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woodelf
Balboasaur
Joined: 30 Jun 2004
Posts: 120
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| Posted: Wed Feb 01, 2006 7:33 am Post subject: Dread and The Forge |
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And, while we're disambiguating:
Apparently, at some point early in The Forge's history, Eppy made some comment about Jenga task resolution, only to be greeted with "already thought of that" [to paraphrase]. After some digging, I was able to figure out that the person who had brought up the topic on The Forge (and thus "already thought of that") was someone who had played a game with us, and was talking about our game, though he hadn't remembered the title. So, no, we didn't "steal" the idea from someone else's posting on The Forge--not that anyone ever explicitly made such an accusation. But, just in case, i figured i'd throw that out here. In fact, Dread thoroughly predates The Forge--all development work on it was completed a year or two before The Forge went online. It's only the actual writing-and-getting-it-printed part that took so long.
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woodelf
The Impossible Dream |
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