Non-Disclosure Agreements Have No Saving Throw
Last Friday, Wizards of the Coast published the fourth edition of Dungeons & Dragons, the first major release of the game in eight years. During the development of the game, the company has been so generous with confidential information that it got almost 1,000 people locked under non-disclosure agreements. The company has followed this up with a friendly warning that in spite of the game's release, these people are bound until the end of time by the agreement: Q: Can I talk about my playtest experiences, or ... read more
LiveJournal May Be Unsuitable for Minors
While reading roleplaying game designer Chris Pramas' blog this morning, I discovered that LiveJournal can display an "adult content notice" when one of its bloggers is talkin' dirty: In this case, Pramas was discussing a fight that took place at his bus stop between a drunk and a middle-aged Native American with a walker. This paragraph contains a gerund that could potentially be unsuitable to minors: As we were finding seats, somehow the tide turned. Walker guy had gotten his arms around the drunk and body ... read more
Adam Rogers Failed His Wisdom Check
I've read a lot of tributes to Gary Gygax, the late Dungeons & Dragons cocreator who inspired me to spend my teen years with 20-sided dice, graph paper and painted metal half-orc prestidigitators. Although I mock myself as a former dungeon master -- and not the cool kind -- I disliked Wired editor Adam Rogers' tribute to Gygax in today's New York Times. Decades after his own adolescence, Rogers still feels defensive about playing D&D: Even in the heyday of Dungeons & Dragons, when his company was selling ... read more
FBI File: Giuseppe Zangara's Attempt to Kill FDR
While doing some fact-checking for Pulp Guns, a set of pulp-novel sourcebooks for the GURPS roleplaying game, I found the FBI file on Giuseppe Zangara's failed attempt to assassinate Franklin Delano Roosevelt. After Roosevelt spoke at a Miami park on Feb. 15, 1933, Zangara fired several shots with a cheap .32-caliber pistol as he was perched on a wobbly bench. He missed the president-elect but hit others, including Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak, who died from his wounds 19 days later. Zangara, a 32-year-old Italian ... read more
Game Over for Checkers Hall of Fame
Roadside America, a site devoted to the cheesiest tourist attractions in the country, reports the sad news that the International Checker Hall of Fame in Petal, Miss., was destroyed by fire 10 days ago: On September 29, 2007, a still-unexplained fire started in the tower and quickly engulfed the rest of the Hall. Everything: the giant checkerboards, the library, the statue, was destroyed. "What has been lost is one of the finest checkers collections the world has ever known," said Don Deweber, director of the ... read more
Victory Declared in the Battle for Wargames.Com
The National Arbitration Forum just released its decision in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. v. World Readable c/o R.L. Cadenhead, the domain-name dispute in which the film studio tried to take Wargames.Com away from me because it owns a trademark related to the 1983 film WarGames and the upcoming sequel WarGames 2: The Dead Code. A three-member panel of arbitrators denied MGM's claim on the grounds that I established my legitimate interest in selling wargames at the domain: The picture that emerges from this ... read more
Dell: Master of 4,264 Domain Names
Nathan J. Hole, the Loeb & Loeb attorney representing MGM in the effort to grab Wargames.Com, has won four more UDRP arbitrations the past eight weeks: Dell Inc. v. Gail Wright for the domains dellcart.com and dellpccart.com The National Collegiate Athletic Association v. Namia Limited for the domain frozenfour.com Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. v. fslc wf-b for the domain thepinkpanther.com Dell Inc. v. Oguz Ozdemir for the domain dellpc.net In all four cases, domain owners didn't file a response, giving ... read more
