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Originally Posted by deer_buster

... It doesn't violate any copyrights anymore than a GM sharing with players does now. ...

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In the case of FG, copyright is irrelevant. SmiteWorks has a contract with Wizards. The details of that contract are private and we (the community) have no idea what it does and does not allow. SmiteWorks must abide by the terms of that contract or risk losing their license to convert and distribute D&D specific content.

About all we (the community) can do is let SmiteWorks know what we would like and to support them. The way SW has asked us to let them know what is important to us is to use and vote on the FG Wishlist. The two ideas pertaining to this you might wish to review and vote on are;
- https://fg2app.idea.informer.com/proj/?ia=40882
- https://fg2app.idea.informer.com/proj/?ia=40890

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Originally Posted by deer_buster

Hopefully that is something that will be added after launch. It doesn't violate any copyrights anymore than a GM sharing with players does now. Being able to Co-GM or host for a GM would be a significant feature improvement, as right now, FG penalizes people for not having the money for the multitude of materials from being able to effectively GM...whereas in an in-person group doesn't have that same restriction....I buy the materials and they use them when they are playing with me...

In this case, I buy the materials, but I want to play instead of GM:

• I host the game, but transfer GM rights to FG Licensee XYZ who has connected to my campaign, my materials are shared with the GM and the players as if the GM was on my account. GM and Player view rights end when they disconnect. Or,
• FG Licensee XYZ hosts the game as GM, and prompts my client to provide access to materials related to the ruleset. GM obtains access as if he was on my account and it acts the same way. GM and Player view rights end when they disconnect.

Note, that neither of these options provide access to the materials that they could not gain by my sharing options as GM, so there shouldn't be any licensing issues.

I would say that the GM would have to have at least a standard license (since if they can afford Ultimate, it would seem that they should be able to afford materials too).

Anyhow, just my 2 cents...feel free to agree or disagree

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The issue with this is How easily it will allow for piracy or piracy like account sharing options, where you could just log into a game, share all your stuff to that GM/group and not be a part of that group.

Could even automate the process.

An option might be one where you could "loan" your account capabilities to another FG user via the main website which would be usable for one game before having to be "loaned" again and would revert your own account to demo status during that period.

That would guarantee that only one person was ever taking advantage of your account capabilities at any one time and make it fiddly enough that people wouldn't be able to transfer capabilities to many others without it being obvious that something was up.

Although, as said before it all comes down to licensing rights and whether smiteworks wants to chew into their sales potential. Tabletop RPGs aren't that profitable a market in the grand scale of things and the whole "only one person per table buys anything" mentality certainly stifles a lot of growth in the industry.

Deer_buster, you have been around long enough to know this is never going to make the priority list anytime soon. It is not like in-person gaming. In-person, no one is going to take the trouble to photocopy the books you are sharing. The opportunities to steal digitally are magnified enormously, and although I am sure you wouldn't do it, others would. The licensing scheme to make this work is horrendous. As it is, it is much easier - only the DM can share materials, and it is clear he owns the license. This transfer you are talking about is simple in concept but a mother to actually implement.

Surely you can see that there will be a site spring up where people can go find volunteers to share their owned materials with others who want to GM, and there is no way to enforce it. So these folks who would share their materials log in to the game and never even play. In fact, you could easily envision a site that would even charge you a $1 or 2 to borrow their legally-owned materials, and it would be an enforcement nightmare to find these sites and shut them down.

No one expects Microsoft to allow someone to share their Word license with someone else (after all, if it was a typewriter, they could lend it to them and that would arguably be perfectly legal).

There is just no enforceable mechanism to do what you want, and I know Roll20 does this, but they charge rent for the advanced licenses that most people find necessary just to run their games with anything but the most primitive support (or so I have heard - never used it myself).

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Originally Posted by Bidmaron

There is just no enforceable mechanism to do what you want, and I know Roll20 does this, but they charge rent for the advanced licenses that most people find necessary just to run their games with anything but the most primitive support (or so I have heard - never used it myself).

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The other thing Roll20 does that no one talks about is they restrict the number of games (campaigns) you can open/use a module in. For instance, if you have the PHB and free license, you can only open that in 1 game, 3 if you have the first paid license and 5 if you have the pro license. This works to limit the transferability of content. Even though they let you share GM duties, you can only share your content 1, 3 or 5 times. And, since they are SaaS architecture, it's something they can enforce. (Note, they also have other restrictions on content as well, such as not being able to add new content purchase to an existing game etc).

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Originally Posted by Bidmaron

Deer_buster, you have been around long enough to know this is never going to make the priority list anytime soon. It is not like in-person gaming. In-person, no one is going to take the trouble to photocopy the books you are sharing. The opportunities to steal digitally are magnified enormously, and although I am sure you wouldn't do it, others would. The licensing scheme to make this work is horrendous. As it is, it is much easier - only the DM can share materials, and it is clear he owns the license. This transfer you are talking about is simple in concept but a mother to actually implement.

Surely you can see that there will be a site spring up where people can go find volunteers to share their owned materials with others who want to GM, and there is no way to enforce it. So these folks who would share their materials log in to the game and never even play. In fact, you could easily envision a site that would even charge you a $1 or 2 to borrow their legally-owned materials, and it would be an enforcement nightmare to find these sites and shut them down.

No one expects Microsoft to allow someone to share their Word license with someone else (after all, if it was a typewriter, they could lend it to them and that would arguably be perfectly legal).

There is just no enforceable mechanism to do what you want, and I know Roll20 does this, but they charge rent for the advanced licenses that most people find necessary just to run their games with anything but the most primitive support (or so I have heard - never used it myself).

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Hmm.

The thing is, it is already not only possible, but downright easy to share assets and campaigns if you are pirating. I think it would be a good idea for the official tools and content licenses to make it possible to purchase the ability to do legally what is already possible illegally. I doubt we'll see WotC budge until it feels like the bottom line is being affected, but maybe Paizo would be open to a multi-GM license situation.

In the meantime, alternating DM campaigns are certainly possible within the law and licenses. You want each DM to have at least a standard license, as well as any resource modules the campaign uses (monsters, rulebooks, etc.) After each session, you can pretty easily make an archive of your campaign module(s) and send those to the other DM. He can then load them into his own campaigns folder and pick up where you left off. Like any shared project, you'll want to be careful regarding versions, and avoid overwriting the newer campaign with an older version. Good habits and archive names that include a date stamp... the usual precautions.

If you're just running a campaign where the characters remain the same across adventures run by different DMs, then at the end of each adventure you can download your character and upload it at the start of each new adventure. I assume this is how things are done for the Adventurer's League events on FG, though I don't actually know.

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Originally Posted by Bidmaron

No one expects Microsoft to allow someone to share their Word license with someone else (after all, if it was a typewriter, they could lend it to them and that would arguably be perfectly legal).

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When in fact you can actually legally do this now via shared Skype sessions (a Microsoft product by the way), or Remote Desktop, et.al. In fact, Microsoft touts the ability to share your desktop as a feature for collaboration.

It is really quite amusing how the internet just loves to try to shoot down every possible angle that someone else offers an opinion on and some even try to denigrate the poster. Honestly I don't care what people say about my ideas. You envisage scenarios to make out a trumped up worst case scenario, when the actual worst case scenario that already happens is that people pirate the actual materials. (or people could setup a virtual machine and give remote access to a GM now)

I would much rather there be ways for legal temporary sharing of content so that those with the means to obtain the content could let others who would otherwise like to GM use those materials to GM. I would love for my Ultimate License to be actually more of an "Ultimate" license that I can actually not have to be the GM to enjoy the full features of the license.

Just my 2 cents (again). YMMV

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Originally Posted by epithet

In the meantime, alternating DM campaigns are certainly possible within the law and licenses. You want each DM to have at least a standard license, as well as any resource modules the campaign uses (monsters, rulebooks, etc.) After each session, you can pretty easily make an archive of your campaign module(s) and send those to the other DM. He can then load them into his own campaigns folder and pick up where you left off. Like any shared project, you'll want to be careful regarding versions, and avoid overwriting the newer campaign with an older version. Good habits and archive names that include a date stamp... the usual precautions.

If you're just running a campaign where the characters remain the same across adventures run by different DMs, then at the end of each adventure you can download your character and upload it at the start of each new adventure. I assume this is how things are done for the Adventurer's League events on FG, though I don't actually know.

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That doesn't work if you're using maps from within published modules. The module is more than likely encrypted and you can't copy images. If you want to do this, then both GMs need to have purchased a copy of the published module.

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Originally Posted by LordEntrails

In the case of FG, copyright is irrelevant. SmiteWorks has a contract with Wizards. The details of that contract are private and we (the community) have no idea what it does and does not allow. SmiteWorks must abide by the terms of that contract or risk losing their license to convert and distribute D&D specific content.

About all we (the community) can do is let SmiteWorks know what we would like and to support them. The way SW has asked us to let them know what is important to us is to use and vote on the FG Wishlist. The two ideas pertaining to this you might wish to review and vote on are;
- https://fg2app.idea.informer.com/proj/?ia=40882
- https://fg2app.idea.informer.com/proj/?ia=40890

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I believe I have already voted for those..
;)

We're not gonna go through this whole "I could pirate it if I wanted to ..." business again are we?

Sounds so shady, reminiscent of shakedown scams by the mob. "That's a nice store ya got there. It'd be a shame if it were to burn down ..."

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Originally Posted by seycyrus

We're not gonna go through this whole "I could pirate it if I wanted to ..." business again are we?

Sounds so shady, reminiscent of shakedown scams by the mob. "That's a nice store ya got there. It'd be a shame if it were to burn down ..."

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So, way to prove his point?

I mean, we're all free to disagree on so many levels (from the degree of the potential harm to the proposed solutions) that there is really no need for false equivalencies such as this one. A cautionary tale (such as "if you go in the woods, a wolf will eat you") isn't necessarily a threat. Even though I don't agree with his take, I don't need to misrepresent it so blatantly.