RANT! Legally I’ve got no reason to bitch, but I want ot anyway.
I’ve been running a Drasgonlance game for some time, and i’ve got a PC who’s of the Mariner class. I have a book with that class but I’m aware a newer version is out. So I go on the DL message bourd and ask if somebody can tell me the difference - my not having money to buy more books just for some extraeous data on one page.
What do I get back? “Make something up or buy the book. Giving you the material wuold be a copyright violation.”
Holy fuck. The books in question aren’t even the newest edition! I’ve spent many, many hundereds of dollars over the past two decades on DL material and now nobody wants to share a couple numbers with me?
If somebody wants to sue me over this shit I’ll glady take my entire bookcase and shove it up their ass!
Hell, I had to come here to vent because there’s no goddam pit or anything like it on their boards. Fuckwits.
[steams and stomps off over stupid geeky gaming crap and legal nonsense]
On the one hand, the response to you there was probably annoying.
On the other hand, if the data were extraneous, you wouldn’t be asking for it. You’re asking for it because it’s of value to you. And that value was created by the authors, and the authors earn their bread by creating that value.
Sure, that portion of the book is probably less than a percent: mail a nickel to the gaming company and call it even, or just don’t use one percent of the next book you buy. But gamers, especially gamer/authors, often get their hackles raised because of larger versions of your request: it’s pretty common to see folks post on D&D message boards something like, “Can someone post the text of the Mauve Dragonette Prestige Class?” or whatever, and I imagine that’s really annoying for authors to see.