Old Spice

[Phoebe]

http://comicbook.com/gaming/2018/02/08/ ... ld-spice-/

[Mike]

I love it. Someone put real thought into that. With just a little tweaking, it could be a (silly but) very playable character.

[Walrus]

I am so glad I am not starting a new game now - I KNOW I have players who would pester incessantly for a class like this.

[bralbovsky]

A player in a game I saw begin asked about rolling the dos Equis guy. overruled.

[Bonefish]

Soooo much win

[Walrus]

[El Jefe]

It's super-cool for something that both steals another company's IP, uses another company's trade dress without permission, and ignores the existence and requirements of an OGL. You know, the thing that would have let them use this legally?

Yeah, the hetero-normative stuff isn't creepy at all, either, and something that the community definitely needs more of. It's sadly lacking in that area, already.

Edit: More than a few graphic designers have noted that it looks like Old Spice didn't just steal Paizo's trade dress, they literally ripped apart one of their PDFs to use. Oh, laughs and chuckles all around!

[mimekiller]

[Bonefish]

Jeezus.

[Mike]

[El Jefe]

Parody laws would be a tough sell in court, as it likely comes under the use of satire. That's not going to cover fair use. At best, the creator outright copied Paizo's trade-dress. More than a few folks who know the design side have already mentioned that it looks much more like a Paizo PDF was ripped apart and used without permission. And that's incredibly shitty, made even more shitty by the existence of a legal path to do this, through the OGL (whether it have been Pathfinder or current D&D). It's even shittier when you toss "that game we can't mention for legal reasons" in as a joke, in an attempt to troll the very creators you just stole material from. Particularly when you're dealing with an entity that provides extensive fair use to fans already, as well as offering legal paths to re-use of material. Good acting, in terms of the existence of things like the OGL or Creative Commons licenses, aren't the norm in the industry yet. Seeing a much larger entity take advantage of that serves only to give more encouragement to NOT continuing allowing such practices. My issues lie more on the IP discussion.

Thankfully, it seems that potential C&Ds (or at least legal contact) has occurred between Paizo and Old Spice's legal reps. Paizo staff have already posted about discussion and potential resolution in Paizo's favor looking good.

My "outrage" really isn't. Poorly stated snark...yeah, you're right to call that one out. The hetero-normative shit isn't new, and still relatively common inside the industry and hobby. You pointed out that pretty well already.

[Phoebe]

But that's because Mike is a basically kind person becoming nicer as he ages, but others of us are misanthropes losing patience with the species, for legit reasons.

[Mike]

I'm better on paper than I am in practice.

[Bonefish]

I think you did fine, Mike.

[Phoebe]

I don't know if I'm following the part about using the intellectual property of another company, but it really sucks if a big company that can afford to do otherwise is stealing intellectual property from a smaller company that does a lot of wonderful sharing so that many people can access their products even when they can't afford to pay.

[El Jefe]

.

Weird, how easy that was. It's almost like Paizo would have been exceptionally easy to reach out to and work with from the beginning. Odd, that.

[Phoebe]

Indeed!!

[Bonefish]

This was all a ploy by the geeks who work for old spice. They purposefully did this to give piazo the ability to extory money out of old spice, in order to bring awareness and finances to them. Bam.

Conspiracy theory.

[Phoebe]

I need to know the credentials of these people. Secret nerds, extorting... This is good stuff.