Please Say this is a Joke

[Rorrik]

DM is an easy change to GM, Player's Handbook can be changed to Player's Guide. It'll be a ton of work, but won't change the way the comic reads much. Mags and Yuan-ti will be harder to replace, but those ones are more likely be assailed. He probably needs to replace Drider and maybe Owlbear as well. Those ones are the real pain in the butt. How universal is the term "Dungeon Crawl"?

[Changes_everything]

If I were Thunt I'd change all the questionable terms, then approach the rights holders and ask for their permission or license to change it back. Safe way, and you can argue that it would serve as some promotional purpose for their own products.

[mortissimus]

I thought Dungeon Master was a computer game by FTL Games.

The D&D-associated clone was named Eye of the Beholder.

Dungeon crawl is used a lot in relation to computer games, so I'd be surprised if the Wizards can claim that one.

I general I find modern copyright silly. I think 19th century copyright was right when selling fresh copies of others books was banned, but writing new books with established characters was accepted.

[Liesmith]

I actually got into D&D because of Goblins; after reading for a few years, I got a D&D Insider subscription and joined a group. That group is a few thousand miles away now, but I've been holding onto the subscription with plans to join another group here on the west coast.

Now, I've got a bad taste in my mouth about it...so I cancelled my D&D Insider subscription, and I no longer feel any particular desire to join another group. I know that they haven't done anything to Goblins *yet*, but this whole situation feels like a sword of Damocles hanging over the comic's head. I might change my mind in the future, but for now I'm taking my ball and going home.

As for the changes Tarol and Danielle are making to the dialogue, I'm not worried. I've noticed that almost every time Tarol goes back and changes dialogue, the extra editing pass makes the final product just a little better. They'll have a rough time of it, but the final product will still be great.

I'm still hoping that this is just an extravagant April Fool's prank, though.

[RedwoodElf]

Funny as it may be, Goblins has too much tragedy too be a parody. They really do need to do this.

Parody and Tragedy are not mutually exclusive you know.

[WearsHats]

No, I'm pretty sure it's not a joke. Thunt likes to joke around and all, but this does not seem at all like a joking matter.

OTOH, don't blame Wizards for this. Thunt is doing it as a precautionary measure.

What happened is that Rusty & Company, as part of a Kickstarter campaign, wanted to sell a Rusty plush toy. Wizards decided that rust monsters are their intellectual property and sued Rusty & Co. Ultimately, the suit was settled and the Kickstarter went on and the strip got back to business. But part of the settlement was an agreement that the comic would no longer use words like Yuan-Ti. They could still have a Yuan-Ti character, but they couldn't use that word. (The same way any superhero comic can have a character who flies, has super strength, etc... but they can't name him Superman.)

So, even though Wizards hasn't complained to Thunt, he's scrubbing those words off his own comic, just to be on the safe side.

[Wild Thyme]

Or how Marvel and DC trademarked the word 'superhero' for marketing purposes. Other heroic genre games and such have had to get creative in how they have powered heroes and call them something different like metas, superhumans, gastalts, champions, or just plain heroes sans the super.

[Neoriceisgood]

Just read the C&D stuff regarding Rusty and how he wasn't allowed to tell any followers. That must really smart as a webcomic author.

[Talos]

It's petty of them, but technically, they have the right to do this. Still, would "snake-woman" or something like "serpentine" to describe Kin really be all that bad?

[ForgetsOldName]

Kin's a naga. They've been nagas for thousands of years.

Whoever invented yuan-ti was just coming up with a name for a naga that they could copyright.

The thing is that this is a comic set in a DnD game. It's not a generic tabletop RPG. It's specifically about a bunch of people playing DnD. They make reference to dumb things like the price of a sewing needle in the player's handbook. They have all sorts of ludicrous house rules.

Take the Hulk FMK. There are RPGs out there that are designed to help you implement bizarre scenarios like a pseudo-medieval world full of Hulk people, or nuns on motorcycles, or to play in a Warner Brothers cartoon. DnD is not one of these games. The idea of a DnD Hulk is fundamentally different than Hulk in one of the many games that were actually designed to accommodate the Hulk.

That's why she's a yuan-ti, and not a naga. Calling her a naga defeats the whole point, which is that this character is a yuan-ti who was specifically created to comment on the use of the yuan-ti in the Monster Manual. Saying "All that Naga is good for is a source of XP" is a non-sequitor. The naga of the Mahabharata is not a source of XP. The Naga that terrorized Collinsport in Dark Shadows was not a source of XP.

[BuildsLegos]

Funny as it may be, Goblins has too much tragedy too be a parody. They really do need to do this.

Parody and Tragedy are not mutually exclusive you know.

I suspect the law would disagree, Wizards' lawyers would for sure.

[Zeus]

I dont think this is a joke. If not some of the things needing changing will be real easy: Dungeon crawl can probably just be put as Dungeon without too much hastle

If thunt would like we could go back and read the whole comic and post up things which maybe problematic and even post suggestions on easy fix's - but i know Danielle is helping out so you may not want to.

[WearsHats]

Kin's a naga. They've been nagas for thousands of years.

Aha, so you do remember the old name!

(Sorry, just had to get that out of my system. Y'all can get back to on-topic discussion now.)

[Alarikun]

Huh... Thunt has been quiet on twitter all day, not streaming... after the mention of the possible issues with WoTC, do you think he's taking after "Rusty and Co," and not speaking of the incident until it is over? Has he been contacted by WoTC now? >.<

>.> I am probably overreacting... but this is one of my favorite (if not MY favorite) webcomics. I don't want to lose it...

[Strawberrycocoa]

Copyright law is a bitch. I know Thunt and Danielle are trying to protect themselves, but I just hope they aren't stressing out too much. This does explain the belated pages lately though. Having to scrub over a comic archive as large as Goblin's to tweak and edit dialogue would be a monstrous task.

[Liesmith]

We have a fully armed and operational militia of forumgoers who regularly obsess over every line of dialogue from old comic pages...I wonder if Tarol would want any assistance from the community (just to highlight potentially copyrighted references, not necessarily suggest changes). This is a Herculean task if taken alone (or in a pair). Crowdsourced, it may only take a day or two.

I have an idea of how to organize it, but it's predicated on Tarol asking the forums to chip in, so I'll just spoiler it here:

► Show Spoiler

Folks could start from the beginning of the book of their choice within the archives, and submit their pages with highlights into a separate forum (each book or chapter could get its own thread). From there, a person chosen to coordinate each book could go through the posted pages, and consolidate duplicates (individuals may miss things, so the coordinator would ensure that every reference winds up highlighted on a single page, using a uniform style, instead of scattered among 10 duplicates). Once a page has gotten what appears to be a thorough review, it will be displayed in a separate thread for "completed" updates for that particular book.

After the first day, participants should check the "completed" thread first. People who are very experienced with D&D could help by paying special attention to artwork (instead of text), since it is non-Googleable by those of us who wouldn't recognize something from the cover of the Fiend Folio. As each book is finished, the pages could be organized in-order in a single, tidy, locked thread, so Tarol and the community can review them. A separate thread will be available for people to post any last-minute issues they find which were missed in the "final" versions. For actually hosting the images, I recommend Pictat, because it's quick and simple and offers some nice options for resizing. I've used it for every image I've ever needed to host and link here, so I know it agrees with the forums.

It's just an idea, since Tarol and Danielle have enough on their plate as it is. I don't know if he'd actually want our help, since having a bunch of amateurs tromping around, stirring up a mess may be a bit of a double-edged sword.

[Gimp]

I suppose Thunt could always resort to dropping the old Ôäó after any WotC owned terminology, and adding an acknowledgement at the bottom of relevant pages.
Or even write it into the dialog as part of the characters being aware of the way their world works.

Kin: I'm a naga.
Minmax: Don't you mean a yuan-tiÔäó?
Forgath: Wait, that sounded weird. Where the hells did that 'tm' come from?
Kin: That's part of a spell some seaside wizards use to track anyone that talks about their 'creations'. Years ago they captured some naga, and using something called an 'Trademark spell' turned them into property and started calling them yuan-tiÔäó. If you keep saying it they'll track you down and unleash a pair of devils named Cease and Desist on you.

Neither option really sounds appealing to me, but if WotC start flexing their big corporate-money-fed lawyers at Thunt there's not really going to be any way out that sits well with everyone.

[GriffinDWolf]

I can see why Hasbro went after C&D since toys really are their main thing, but since they are, very slowly, getting smarter on their product lines I could see them expanding the protection of their intellectual property. And especially with the card game coming up it is a smart move to work on this issue now then later.

The bigger problem then Yuan-ti, I see, would be Maglubiyet. There are fairly easy if painful alternative for many other terms, but how do you truly replace a god with a reader known back-story with something else, especially since it was one of the first gods made for D&D which I saw as a somewhat significant bit of knowledge to Goblins. I guess you can make up a history page of your own god, or find some random alternative that is more open for use like Jareth. But it's still not the same.

[pirksaddict]

Alternatively, Thunt could feasibly switch to Pathfinder. It's effectively D&D 3.75 and, to my knowledge, it's open licence.

[Alvarin]

Well, he could rename Maglubiyet slightly, so that whomever knows what it's about will still know, but for people like myself it will be just a deity name. Mygoblinvet.

[Kalontas]

I say let them take "Dungeon Master". Even though anyone can just take a dungeon and become its master (meaning the phrase should be far too generic for any sane office to allow trademarking/copyrighting it), using the phrase in a tabletop game implies a stereotypical, outdated, railroaded, plot-less game of early '80s. Seriously, does anyone do their whole game in a dungeon? If not, why even call the Game Master a "dungeon" master?

[Daughter Of Yahweh]

DUDE, I thought for sure Thunt had to be trolling us about this.

Copyright/Trademark should just die and come back to life a new and actually workable thing that doesn't mutilate a creator's life work.

[DrinksTooMuchCoffee]

Copyright/Trademark should just die and come back to life a new and actually workable thing that doesn't mutilate a creator's life work.

As was mentioned elsewhere, so if Hasbro starting publishing something with THunt's Goblins in it without his permission or compensation, that's fine because THunt shouldn't have any ownership over his creation?

[Kalontas]

Copyright/Trademark should just die and come back to life a new and actually workable thing that doesn't mutilate a creator's life work.

As was mentioned elsewhere, so if Hasbro starting publishing something with THunt's Goblins in it without his permission or compensation, that's fine because THunt shouldn't have any ownership over his creation?

Thunt isn't claiming copyright over generic creatures and names, such as "goblins" or "minmax", or "goblin adventuring party".

[CelineSSauve]

Now, I've got a bad taste in my mouth about it...so I cancelled my D&D Insider subscription, and I no longer feel any particular desire to join another group. I know that they haven't done anything to Goblins *yet*, but this whole situation feels like a sword of Damocles hanging over the comic's head. I might change my mind in the future, but for now I'm taking my ball and going home.

That's how I feel about the complete set of 4e books on me shelf currently. I don't want to go near them...

Kin's a naga. They've been nagas for thousands of years.

Whoever invented yuan-ti was just coming up with a name for a naga that they could copyright.

I would totally support Kin being a Naga. I'm just concerned with the whole "Maglubiyet will be changed to Katy Perry." type of situation, where the replacements don't fit the serious tone of the comic.

I dont think this is a joke. If not some of the things needing changing will be real easy: Dungeon crawl can probably just be put as Dungeon without too much hastle

Or even dungeon exploration. Or dungeon quest. Or dungeon challenge.

As I've pointed out in the Twitter thread, Thunt and I are both Canadians. WOTC and Thunt's publisher (I suspect) are both in the US.

I think that may be the main issue: Thunt has to ensure his books and card game don't possibly get those in the US in trouble for his creations.