It isn't often that I pass along actual press releases, but I do know a significant number of "old school gamers" that have a special place in their gaming hear for the "Old" World of Darkness.
White Wolf Entertainment and DriveThruRPG Launch “Storytellers Vault”, a Creators Content Program for Vampire: The Masquerade
Stockholm, Sweden – August 11, 2017 White Wolf Entertainment, creator of the World of Darkness and Vampire: The Masquerade are partnering with DriveThruRPG to allow independent content creators to publish material set in the World of Darkness using the Storytellers Vault.
For over a quarter century, fans of the World of Darkness have aspired to bring their own unique World of Darkness creations to the masses, and now they can as part of the Storytellers Vault, White Wolf’s new creator content program. Beginning with Vampire: The Masquerade, aspiring writers, artists, and game designers can publish their non-canonical table top RPG supplements and fiction stories worldwide in the language of their choosing, and making half of the revenue as their royalty. To assist content creators making the best possible products, Storytellers Vault offers a considerable variety of graphical layout tools including pre-made design templates, and art-packs to choose from.
“World of Darkness fans have always shared their stories with the world, and now is the time we help them to do that in an even greater scale” says CEO Tobias Sjögren. “The magic of the Storytellers Vault is supporting fans that love and want to create content from all eras of our games, we can’t wait to see what they produce and how everyone enjoys it!”
The Storytellers Vault features:
- Self-publish service for table top RPG material set using any of the four previously published editions of Vampire: The Masquerade
- Content creators themselves set the price for the material they publish and receive 50% of the revenue
- Access to over 15 templates and art packs produced helps content creators make their work look as professional as the official products from any set era
- Publishing in any language supporting the vast global World of Darkness community
- Additional content supporting other game lines and historical settings in the White Wolf catalogue will be progressively unlocked beginning in October 2017
The Storytellers Vault is now available at www.storytellersvault.com.
About White Wolf
White Wolf is a licensing company focused on creating the best participatory brands in the world. Since its original entry into the roleplaying game market in 1991, White Wolf’s World of Darkness has grown to be one of the most recognized and successful brands in the hobby game space with collective book sales in excess of 10 million copies during this time. White Wolf's World of Darkness brands, which include Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Wraith: The Oblivion, and Orpheus, has been licensed for television series, console and computer video games, interactive media events, and a myriad of merchandise and other entertainment products.
www.white-wolf.com
Contact: press@white-wolf.com
About DriveThruRPG
DriveThruRPG.com is part of a family of premiere online marketplaces including RPGNow, DriveThruRPG, DriveThruCards, DMsGuild, DriveThruComics, DriveThruFiction, and Wargame Vault. Together, we have been selling digital and print-on-demand comic books, roleplaying games, and fiction since 2001. As of 2016, we have launched multiple community content programs as well as our Community Card Creator for fans to create content for some of their favorite roleplaying and card games.
www.onebookshelf.com
Contact: matt@onebookshelf.com
Just be aware that the license for anything you publish for this requires that you give up all right to publish it anywhere else including DERIVATIVE works. So if you have a cool vampire adventure and redress it to work with WoD and publish it, you can't publish it using D&D 5th edition without any WoD.
ReplyDeleteNow to be fair WoD is as much setting as system. This is a bigger issue with Traveller, Cortex, and Cypher where publishing original settings for those systems is part of the marketing for those 3PP programs.
The Relevant sections of the license
ReplyDelete---------------------------------
5. Rights You Grant to OBS and White Wolf
(a) No Reversion. Due to our licensing arrangement with the White Wolf and the collaborative nature of the Program, you are granting us broad licenses in your Work and your User Generated Content included in your Work, and the rights to your Work will not be reverted once it is published in the Program. You will have the ability through online tools at OBS websites to stop further public sale of your Work on OBS marketplaces (though customers who already purchased digital download copies will continue to have access to the purchased Work), but not to stop the sale of works of other authors in the Program even when such works use your User Generated Content that you originally created in your Work and thereby became part of the Program IP for other authors to use.
(b) License to your Work. Effective as of the date you setup your Work through the Program on OBS’s website, you grant OBS and White Wolf the irrevocable license for the full term of copyright protection available (including renewals), to develop, license, reproduce, print, publish, distribute, translate, display, publicly perform and transmit your Work, in whole and in part, in each country in the world, in all languages and formats, and by all means now known or later developed, and the right to prepare derivative works of your Work.
(c) License to all User Generated Content in your Work. Effective as of the date we first make your Work available through the Program, you grant us the irrevocable license for the full term of copyright protection available (including renewals), to all User Generated Content included in your Work. You agree that the User Generated Content is available for unrestricted use by us without any additional compensation, notification or attribution, including that we may allow other Program authors, White Wolf and other third parties to use the User Generated Content.
6. Waiver of Claims; Waiver of Moral Rights.
In order to prevent legal claims that could be disruptive to the Program participants or impede the ability of you and other Program authors to participate in the Program, you irrevocably waive any legal claim you may have under any theory of law in any territory that your rights were infringed due to any use of your User Generated Content by OBS, White Wolf or its affiliates, licensees and sublicensees, and/or any other Program authors, including copyright infringement. This waiver does not apply to royalty payments we may owe you under Section 7. You also irrevocably waive any moral rights in your Work and agree not to assert any moral rights in your Work against OBS, White Wolf, and/or other Program authors. If, under any applicable law, this waiver of moral rights is not effective, you acknowledge that your Work is subject to the licenses you grant in Section 4 without any credit obligation, that you intend for your Work to be used in this way, and that this form of use will not be contrary to your moral rights.
---------------------------------
And to be clear I consider this to be fair when it is comes the World of Darkness setting. Their playground their rules and all that. The rule I would use is that if the material only work or make sense with the World of Darkness then go ahead and published. Otherwise don't.
ReplyDeleteI am already working on some VtM stock art...
ReplyDeleteThanks Rob for the key quotes on the license.
ReplyDeleteThis the DMSGuld, but for Vampire/WOD, so same license etc.
ReplyDeletePretty cool news though...