Flav wrote on Jun 29
th, 2021 at 5:01am:
Ok, just for the sake of clarity, in the specific cases of Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Mystara ( Known World/Hollow World ), and Dragonlance, the IP is so muddled that the original authors cannot do anything without WOTC agreement and WOTC cannot do anything without the original author consent.
For Forgotten Realms they reached agreements with Salvatore that keeps getting renewed because it's utterly profitable for both side.
For Dragonlance it's more hit and miss with Weiss and Hickman, which is why we had several instances of Krynn set in times different than the Dragonlance time. ( WOTC not wanting to allow W&H to reuse the DL campaign timeline and D&D system while allowing them to edit PnP books.)
Greyhawk is so muddy that it will really never resurface beyond a few Gygax/WOTC things.
Mystara is even worse as lots of people were involved in it.
Why do you think they made a challenge to come up with a new setting for 3rd when they had so many settings at hand ?
It's because they wanted one with a clean IP where they owned everything outright, that's What Eberron is. It's a WOTC fully owned setting, it was part of the contract that the original author was selling ALL the rights over the setting if the setting got edited.
Side note : It was common practice at that time to have muddy IPs ( no lawyers around to dot the I and set things in stone ), it's not just TSR/WoTC, Chaosium has the problem, SJG has the problem, ICE has the problem, it's the whole industry that has the problem.
In the US, at least, if you are paid as an employee or contractor to create content for an Intellectual Property you have no rights to any thing you have personally created for that IP.
To quote Margaret Weis "People ask me all the time if I will give them permission to use Dragonlance characters or logos for various projects. I remind everyone that WoTC owns the rights to all things Dragonlance. Tracy and I wrote the books while we were employees of TSR. DL was considered "Work for Hire". We were well aware of this when we signed the contract. We just wanted to tell our story!"
TSR purchased the entirety of the Forgotten Realms IP from Ed Greenwood in the mid 1980s. TSR at the time was actively searching for a large IP, in parlance called a Wide and Deep setting. TSR purchased dozens, maybe even hundreds of potential settings from would-be DMs on the cheap dangling the carrot in front of them with both immortality and royalty checks. It was Ed Greenwood at the time who in all purposes won.
When RA Salatore, Ed Greenwood, Tracy Hickman or Margaret Weis any other writer currently writes a novel, story, involving an IP owned by WotC, WotC is the publisher and Random House does the printing. There was a short period of time where some of these novels were published by outside publishers, not the case anymore.
A few years ago Tracy Hickman made some comments, specifically about Lord Soth, that sowed confusion in the rights of the IP. Tracy, as the creator was very disappointed that Lord Soth was being used in Ravenloft and rumored to heading to the Forgotten Realms IP. He made it clear it was against his wishes. The part missed by many fans is it was all well within the rights of WotC as the owners of the IP.
In talking with Jeff Grubb, Douglas Niles, Richard Knaak, Margaret Wies, and others over the years it seems that WotC is a pretty easy company to work with for former employees. They pay their royalties, allow people to work with the IP they worked with internally and so forth. You hear horror stories from authors working with other companies, like Disney, Warner Brothers, and small publishing houses.
Gary sold the rights to Greyhawk to TSR, excluding his characters like Gord and he retained the right to write novels in the setting. Those that knew Gary can understand WotC problem now-a-days.
Mystara was created in house at TSR. Unfortunately the initial designers borrowed heavily from another IP that TSR didn't own. Hasbro wrote a large royalty check to the owner of the other IP after they discovered what WotC/TSR had done.
Jeff Grubb is incredibly interesting individual to listen to (or read his blog) when it comes to IPs and TSR. He is well spoken and his experience with all sides of the process make it illuminating to listen to. He also explains why the number of settings (IPs) killed TSR as well as why WotC looked for a new setting. Check out his stuff.
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