[SCOTT KELLOGG]
<Watercraft design> Oh, I forgot to mention that it wasn't seen till
after Terry's write-up was done and not by GDW, just other player's. In this
case, it was apparent that at least three people had been thinking along
the same lines at roughly the same time (I guess, I'm not to sure who
pre-dated who at this point, I saw Terry's last year, Herbert's this year
and never saw the other person's).
Item 8231778 92/09/11 01:41
From: GDW.SUPPORT Loren K. Wiseman
To: B.BORICH Bryan J. Borich
Sub: TML
Bryan:
Pleasepost the following items to the TML:
Bruce (pihlab @ hhcs.gov.au):
> I've just seen a copy of GDW's MYTHUS by Gary Gygax and was
> wondering if "the New Era" was going to come out under this
> new system (I hope not)?
No. _Traveller: The New Era_ will use a variant of GDW's "house
Role-Playing System," currently driving _Twilight: 2000_,
_Dark Conspiracy_, and _Cadillacs and Dinosaurs_, although with some
modifications to adapt it to SF adventure. At the Gen-Con Traveller
seminars, one person walked out when hearing this news, but the rest
of the group stayed and seemed pleased (many were overtly enthusiastic)
with our plans).
PAVEWAY [email removed]:
> Are there any biologists out there?
I was a Biology minor back in the stone age (when God was a teenager,
and I was an undergrad), and I am part of the three-man design team
that came up with the K'kree and the Hivers (their original incarnations,
not what DGP wrote about them later). One of the team is now taking a
PhD in Paleontology at Uni Chi (he is also responsible for the various
animal classifications in the original Traveller...Grazer, etc.). The
other writes novels for a living. I also did a lot of the early Bestiaries
in JTAS, and biology (primarily comparative zoology) is still a minor
interest of mine. Count mine as another vote for more discussion of
alien life forms...
( The above are from Loren Wiseman)
To: Scott Kellogg
From: Frank Chadwick
Sub: Plagiarism Accusation
I read your recent post on this network. Since it was a public posting,
I am responding as an open letter. Everything you say about GDW is
wrong, and if you ever again say that you, or anyone else, was "screwed
by GDW," you better be ready to prove it in court, Mister. I am through
tolerating this sort of irresponsible, dishonest bashing of our
company's reputation in public.
The original work on the virus was begun by me well over two years
ago, was discussed in its early stages with the people from Digest
Group, and was announced publicly in a seminar at GenCon '91.
These things are matters of public record.
The people at GDW who are responsible for all of the on-going creative
work on Traveller The New Era are myself, Dave Nilsen, Loren Wiseman, and
Lester Smith. None of us have ever read your story, seen your ship design,
or know much of anything about you. Loren Wiseman was the only one of us
who had even heard of you, and that was only because Loren's job includes
reading the TML conversations, in which I am told you participate quite
often.
Chuck Gannon is not a member of the GDW staff. Showing something to
him does not constitute showing it to GDW. Chuck's position vis-a-vis GDW
has been that of an outside artist. There was a recent problem with
Rob Dean not being properly credited in a product submitted by Chuck
Gannon, but this was the result of some confused communications, not an
attempt to steal Rob's work. I don't believe that Rob feels "screwed" by
GDW, but you should ask him yourself. And before you simply switch
your attack and claim that he was deliberately "screwed" by Chuck, I
would think twice. I have decided not to take action this time on what
clearly constitutes a libel. Chuck may not be inclined to be so generous.
Finally, Traveller, the Imperium, and its history, are the creation of
GDW, and are our intellectual property. Do you really think that you
can unilaterally take over part of this intellectual creation by
writing an unsolicited story, sending it to someone, even one of us at
GDW, and then cry THIEF! if anything remotely similar appear in the
future? You cannot, and the attempt to do so makes YOU the attempted thief.
Traveller, and its future history, are ours. Stop trying to steal them.
Frank Chadwick
President, GDW, Inc.
=END=