The SmiteWorks family is growing

[ddavison]

I am happy to announce that John Gregory, aka Moon Wizard, is a new member of SmiteWorks USA, LLC. He and I are now the primary members, with a third and smaller investor who provides some background services. John is well known around these parts and the community will recognize him as the author of the very popular 4E_JPG ruleset as well as the D20_JPG ruleset. These are now under the SmiteWorks name, but more importantly, we now have a 2nd developer to help grow the product and lead the company for the benefit of the community.

We have lots of exciting news we hope to share over the next several weeks. Stay tuned for more.

[Darkfaith]

Great to hear! I love the 4E_JPG set!

[unerwünscht]

That is awesome news. John is one of the best ruleset coders around. I expect to see some great work from him.

[mr_h]

sweeeeeet :)

[Oberoten]

You keep impressing with good decisions like this and we'll have to push for getting to buy stock in the company.

- Obe

[tenkar]

VTT world keeps looking brighter. Very nice.

[Brenn]

Great addition!

[Griogre]

Sounds like a good match for John, Doug and Smiteworks.

[Hye Jedi]

Great to hear... seems I made the right investment over the holiday! I'm already VERY pleased with the products capabilities and what seems to be a steadily growing community of players. :D I'm looking forward to more good news!

[tdewitt274]

Good to hear! Now if we could get Xorn on to be official tutorial maker ;)

[drahkar]

Wonderful. Congratulations to Both SmiteWorks and John!

[Fot5]

Good to hear.

[Andugus]

As a member of White Haired Man I am extremely pleased at this excellent move. Congratulations to all of us.

[devinnight]

Congrats John, looking forward to new FG developments.

[Leonal]

Congrats!

Hoping for many good things to come from this. :)

[Foen]

Congratulations John, and Doug, bringing some great talent together.

[madman]

WOW

Chris

[Porpoise]

Wow, that's way cool. I'm brand new here, but even I can tell that this is an awesome step!

[Moon Wizard]

Thanks for all the encouragement. I'm very excited to join the SmiteWorks team, and see how we can grow Fantasy Grounds.

JPG

[Porpoise]

Now that the 4e ruleset is under the SmiteWorks banner, will it continue to be available for free? Sorry if this is a silly question, but as I said, I'm new. :)

[Valarian]

Excellent news.

[CampbellR66]

Good news for the future of the product ... congrats

[drahkar]

I was wondering, with the 4E_JPG ruleset as well as the D20_JPG joining Smiteworks fully, will they be used to replace the ones that currently distribute with the software and is downloaded in the download section of the website?

The reason I ask this is that I've found out of the box issues with both of the default ones that come with the software and it would be nice to just grab the *_JPG from the SmiteWorks links and have them be the ones supported by the patching system.

[joshuha]

Congrats on the acquisition of some premium coding talent. If John doesn't mind sharing I would be interested to know his background as far as how he found FG, his coding experience (obviously good with LUA and XML), etc.

As to the acquisition of the 4E_JPG ruleset I wonder if this makes Smiteworks more of a target for WOTC or is Smiteworks confident due to the nature of not providing any actual content that they would be safe from any kind of litigation?

[VenomousFiligree]

Good to hear :)

[Phystus]

Congratulations and good luck to both of you! I look forward to great things.

~P

[osarusan]

Great news!!

[Moon Wizard]

To answer Joshuha's query, let me share some quick tidbits about my background:

Gaming Background

I have been playing RPGs since I was a teenager, and have managed to keep a gaming group going for over 15 years. When I moved out of state, I became very interested in online options. Five years ago when I first looked, I chose a smaller competitive product over FG; because FG looked great, but lacked the features I wanted to see. Even then, I was an active ruleset developer in that product's community. When FG2 was released, I became a convert. All the new flexibility to build interesting rulesets sucked me in. Thus, the d20_JPG ruleset was born, followed shortly by the 4E_JPG ruleset.

Professional Background

My experience is varied ranging from development to product to sales to real estate, but my education is in computer science. At this time, I run a property management business in the Seattle area. However, I never could stop tinkering on various computing projects, and FG captured my attention long ago. With regards to coding experience, I had never touched LUA before working on FG, but I had worked with several scripting and programming languages previously.

Cheers,
JPG

[ddavison]

Now that the 4e ruleset is under the SmiteWorks banner, will it continue to be available for free? Sorry if this is a silly question, but as I said, I'm new. :)

That is not a silly question at all and one that we discussed for some time. We believe it is important that the community doesn't "lose" anything by the addition of John and we have decided that it will be included for free as a built-in ruleset.

You can read more here:
Future of 4E_JPG and D20_JPG rulesets (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11515)


As to the acquisition of the 4E_JPG ruleset I wonder if this makes Smiteworks more of a target for WOTC or is Smiteworks confident due to the nature of not providing any actual content that they would be safe from any kind of litigation?

We respect the rights of all publishers and would never intentionally do anything to infringe upon those rights. Doing so would shoot ourselves in the foot when we try to acquire licenses for the distribution of those products later. I have also been a long time student of Intellectual Property Rights since the topic has come up frequently in my other line of business. From my understanding, there is no copyright infringement with our ruleset.

I can not comment in great detail about the stance of Wizards of the Coast, but they have been made aware of the release and they were already aware of the ruleset prior to bringing John on board.

[unerwünscht]

That is not a silly question at all and one that we discussed for some time. We believe it is important that the community doesn't "lose" anything by the addition of John and we have decided that it will be included for free as a built-in ruleset.

You can read more here:
Future of 4E_JPG and D20_JPG rulesets (https://www.fantasygrounds.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11515)



We respect the rights of all publishers and would never intentionally do anything to infringe upon those rights. Doing so would shoot ourselves in the foot when we try to acquire licenses for the distribution of those products later. I have also been a long time student of Intellectual Property Rights since the topic has come up frequently in my other line of business. From my understanding, there is no copyright infringement with our ruleset.

I can not comment in great detail about the stance of Wizards of the Coast, but they have been made aware of the release and they were already aware of the ruleset prior to bringing John on board.


You are 99% correct. Without the text of the rules there is no copyright infringement as the mechanics of a game can not be covered under copyright, just the text that describes said mechanics. However, WoTC has somehow managed to obtain Patents on some of their mechanics, you might want t check with the patent office. I am not sure if any of them relate to D&D at all.

Funny enough I am waiting to here back from one of our lawyers on the exact same topic.