On Thu, 10 Sep 2020 12:17:54 +0100, "Timothy Collinson - timothy.collinson
at port.ac.uk (via tml list)" <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote to Freelance
Traveller:

>>
>> (Note: _anyone_ can write and publish material that can be used with Your
>> Favorite Version of Traveller - that is, after all, _exactly_ what
>> Freelance Traveller is all about. An Author, with a capital A in The Rant,
>> is someone who is doing so _for money from an official licensee_. Even
>>
>
>
>I have, occasionally, wondered about the boundaries of this vis a vis
>publishing with TAS.  I would do (I do do) my utmost to keep in line with
>what's gone before.  Not to be honest, that I really push the boundaries.

My interpretation of the TAS/DM's Guild/etc., on DTRPG is that it's a
mechanism to allow you to _use_ (i.e., make explicit reference to) Canon
and other TAS/DMG/etc. material in your work (in exchange for giving a
hefty chunk of the price tag to the Canon-owner), but that your work does
not _become_ Canon thereby.

>But no one appears to police anything I publish as a "TAS" thing and I'm
>not sure they would as I don't imagine anything I write - let's say the
>details for the planet Spume in Ashfall - becomes any form of canon.
>Although as I understand the licencing, anyone can take what I've done and
>use it in their own Traveller publications under the TAS licence.

Yes, that's a (major) part of the terms, as I understand them.

>I would be chuffed if they did.  (Whether a March Harrier thing or a
>Freelance Traveller thing).  I'm not aware of anything that has so far done
>this but nor would I be surprised or put out if someone wrote, for example,
>their own entirely different version of, for example, Spume.

>So perhaps there's something between an author and an Author.  We need a
>third case!

Nope. "Author", with the explicit capital, is a yes/no sort of thing; if
you're not an Author, you're a Player. _All_ Players are, in one way or
another, contributors to Our Game; it is merely that some Players are more
prolific in their contributions than others.

>I've definitely used FT things (like your Rikarunasha's Peers [1] and the
>Dhe game [2] most recently) at TravCon but now I think about it, I'm
>struggling to recall something that I've included in a March Harrier
>Publication that originated with someone else (outside of the standard
>Mongoose publications).  I'[m not quite sure whether that's a good thing or
>a bad thing.  It's probably just a thing and given how much I think I'd
>like my work to get reused, perhaps I should consider it more.

While I certainly approve of using material that others have chosen to
share with the community, it shouldn't be looked at as an _exchange_;
community content is for sharing and using as needed/wanted, not a 'barter'
situation, any more than publication in a magazine, whether FT or JTAS, is.

>[1] https://www.freelancetraveller.com/features/consgoods/rikarunasha.html
>
>[2] https://www.freelancetraveller.com/features/culture/games/dhe.html

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