Dueling Pans

Before J.M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan, died, he assigned the rights to his most famous creation to the Great Ormond Street Hospital. As a children’s hospital in London, the place happily accepted the gift, and the British government made a special exception to the copyright term for the book, extending it forever. How other countries and publishers choose to respect this exception gets a bit strange. The book fell out of copyright in the US for a few years and now is supposedly back in, but it’s hard to tell who to believe without an army of intellectual property lawyers at your side.

In 2004, Hyperion Books, a division of Disney, published Peter and the Starcatchers, a prequel to Peter Pan, by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson. As a longtime Pan fan (see my free Neverland game for proof), I couldn’t resist picking it up. It’s great fun so far, although I’m not quite finished with it yet.

When the hospital learned of the book–for which it would see no royalties for sale in the US–the officials there weren’t too happy. They started a search for an author to write an officially sanctioned sequel to Peter Pan, and they chose Geraldine McCaughrean. They’re going to announce the title tomorrow.

While Disney and the hospital may be at odds here, it’s a great time to be a fan of Pan.

Battle Dice Reports?

The next time you’re in a mass-market store (Wal-Mart, Target, Toys-R-Us, Etc.), I’d appreciate it if you could look to see if they have copies of Marvel Heroes Battle Dice in stock. You won’t find it stocked with the other games though. Look in the Boys’ Action aisle instead, right next to the action figures.

If you manage a sighting, please report in here (or by e-mail) and let me know. Thanks!

I’m told that the Marvel Heroes Battle Dice TV commercials will air from January 30 through February 13. The last version I saw looked great. From the early storyboards Playmates showed me, I feared the worst, but the ad team really came through with a cool, fun piece.

Battle Dice Review

Over on his Captain Toy website, Michael Crawford reviews Marvel Heroes Battle Dice. While it’s not a glowing review, Michael does a good job of stating his biases about the game right up front, and he admits to not having played much more than the basic game yet, so I can’t complain. It’s worth checking out, even if just for the wonderful photos of the game.

Who Owns these Guys?

On the forum at the new Essential-Eberron.com, where we’re now discussing The Road to Death, a reader with the handle Effect asks:

The characters in the Lost Mark trilogy, do you have any control over them being used by other authors or do they simply belong to WoTC now?

Not one bit. My novels for Wizards are work-for-hire. That means they own every word of them.

On a similar note, would you be against other authors using the characters either as apart of their stories or basiclly continuing their adventures (those that live at the end of the trilogy)?

Reason I’m asking is that I’m not sure if authors have a special pull toward characters they create and would rather they not be changed from how they visioned them or if they’d honestly be happy to see others use them. Cause if you move on to other things I’d love to see these characters again in either a story by you or someone else.

I’d prefer to be the only writer who tackles these characters, but I have no power over that. As Paul Crilley says, it can be bad form to propose something that uses someone else’s characters, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. Wizards could also ask another author to write a story using these characters, and they’d be well within their rights to do so.

In my other series for Wizards, The Knights of the Silver Dragon, I created the characters and the setting, but I only wrote the first novel. Other authors took up the exact same characters and ran with them from there. I’m coming back to write books #13 and #14 (and a couple more after that), but in the meantime other writers play in the sandbox I built.

I built that sandbox for Wizards, though, and they own it. They can do whatever they like with it. I knew that going into the deal, and I’m comfortable with it.

It can be strange to read someone else’s take on characters I created. Sometimes I’ll think, “I wouldn’t have done it that way.” But that doesn’t detract from their work. It’s just different. It can even illuminate aspects of the characters that I might not have considered, making for a richer experience.

The Knights line has an excellent editor (Nina Hess) who keeps all us authors on the same path too. That helps ensure the characters and stories run true throughout the series.

Mark Sehestedt is a fantastic editor too, and I don’t think he’d steer people toward using characters from The Lost Mark trilogy without good reason. In any case, most writers would rather take the opportunity to create their own characters and stories and chart their own courses, rather than skipping along in my wake.

Prey for Us

My former compatriots at Human Head are getting closer to the release of Prey, their kicking first-person shooter for the Xbox 360. To highlight this, there’s now an official website for Prey. Also, 3DRealms, the company that originated the game and provided much of its funding, is hosting a weekly development update on its own site. The first update, from my friend Chris Rhinehart, the game’s project lead, is up now.

Games Gazette Hits 25

I just got my copy of the latest Games Gazette in the mail. it’s a great, little print zine about games of all kinds. In this issue, publisher Chris Baylis trumpets the fact that the Games Gazette is 25 years old.

Congratulations, Chris! You’re a gentleman and a scholar and a connoisseur of fine games. Here’s to another 25 great years.

AAGAD Needs a Secretary for the Origins Awards

Pete Panzeri, the chairman of the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design, is looking for an administrative secretary to help with the daily tasks of the Academy, the organization that handle the Origins Awards for GAMA. He’d prefer to have an Academy member fill the position, but if you work in the adventure gaming industry or have even a small number of published credits, you qualify for free membership.

See Pete’s notice after the break.
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