I was browsing Twitter the other day and came across this tweet from Josh McCroo, from Rise Up Comus. He's recently relased his new RPG called His Majesty the Worm, and now he's going to host a Game Jam for people to create third party content with his game. To make the barrier of entry as low as possible, he's also released a Creator's Kit- a set of tools so writers only have to worry about writing and the artwork of their submissions is consistent with that of the game.
I wanted to ask if a Creator's Kit for Ars Magica would be possible given the upcoming open license, and to request it to the Atlas Games team, either after the crowdfunding or even as a possible stretch goal.
I copied from the post above what I think that theoretical Creator's Kit could include:
Designing emplates (for inDesign, Affinity, Illustrator or whatever software is used) with pre-set master pages and styles to create content that looks like the main game.
A PDF that describes the graphic design elements for prose layouts
Fonts used in the original game
"Forged in Mythic Europe" images to use to declare compatibility with Ars Magica: DE
I feel like a Game Jam could kick off a bunch of new, third-party content, either content that's already brewing (lots of folks are writing adventures, sagas, grogs...) or to incentivize people to do stuff, as small as it may be. It can also serve as a sort of official community event where all of us get together to welcome new people with content. And even after the Jam is done, the community will always be able to use the Creator's Kit to write new stuff, or even their own books or to host their own Jams!
I have asked John Nephew about it, in private, and he said they're looking into having some graphic assets to be made available. with the open license.
This would be super useful! Mage: The Ascension has a lot of great fan-made supplements using official templates too - it might be superficial, but I think a common look helps to form a visible community of content creators.
While I do like the idea of using the same fonts as the official book, I find, for myself, that if I do make content, that it will have it's own unique signature look, so that anyone looking at it will be able to tell "Yeah, this guy made both of these, and I liked his previous product, so I wanna get this one as well, cause I like his work!"
You wouldn't be banned from doing so. would you? It would be just that people who don't know anything about graphic design can have a homogenous look to their content. A sort of 'official' appearance for third-party content.
I think it would be great to have some art assets and templates available. Fonts would also be great. There is a lot that goes into producing content for a game and most people aren't good at all of them. Having access to a good baseline would reduce the barrier to entry a lot, I think. That wouldn't stop anyone from customising, augmenting, or completely ignoring the available assets.
We don't have the bandwidth to do all of this right now, I'm afraid. I can confirm that at least some graphic assets are planned to be licensed.
I can make a couple of observations.
We intend to license the text of the game, but not the entire trade dress, graphic design, illustrations. This means, for example, someone who printed and bound PDFs of our books for sale (or produced a translation that copied our entire layout and artwork) would be infringing our copyright. Someone who laid out the text, or a translation of the text into another language, in a brand new format with new illustrations and graphic design could comply with the CC-BY-SA license and sell that new version.
We can't sublicense fonts; if someone wants to use the same ones, they'll need to obtain their own licenses from the foundries for any fonts they want to use, if necessary.
We have made this logo as an identifier for people to use:
You may apply the Ars Magica Open License Logo to, and use the trademarks "Ars Magica" and "Mythic Europe" within, any Adapted Material that you produce from the Ars Magica text under the Creative Commons license. If you do so, you must add this statement in your legalese:
I also want to add, a big purpose of doing the Ars Magica Open License is to stop Atlas Games from being the obstacle to making things happen for the game. Whatever we could or want to do, the question is always when will we have time to do it and what else will we not be doing as a consequence.
With that in mind, I am wholeheartedly enthusiastic about seeing anyone come up with a Creator Kit that they are willing to share and release as CC-BY-SA specifically for use with Ars Magica. It could include similar but not identical layout templates, open source/free fonts, clip art, whatever.
I got to say, John, even if I'm overly excited about the DE and the open license, this was a bit disheartening to read. Hosting a game jam on Itch is one of the easiest things Atlas can do, and while I understand that it's not possible right now, the kind of reach that a guy like me could have with an announcement on a forum is not the same as Atlas officially sanctioning an event and giving it some love on social media and whatever platform is necessary. Would such a thing also be impossible?
Also, I wanted to ask another question:
(emphasis mine)
Does this mean that there could be no translation (even if it's non-commercial) of the Definitive Edition unless the whole layout and graphic design is also changed? I ask this because we have very low chances of having ArMDE in spanish, and fan translations are one of the reasons we are able to enjoy the game in our language. I ask specifically for the spanish community, but likewise the french/italian/portuguese/brazilian communities might be interested in your answer.
I expect we will be extremely liberal in sharing love for events, third-party creations, etc. But it's really important to me that things can and do happen with literally zero involvement from Atlas. The more of my time is required for something, the less chance it will ever actually happen. Words like "sanction" and "official" implies that we are actively involved and are providing some measure of review, oversight, and explicit approval.
We are NOT placing the artwork and graphic design under the CC-BY-SA license. As the copyright owner, Atlas can still license everything (including the text) under other licenses as well -- so a foreign publisher could license the exclusive rights to use the layout and artwork in a commercial translation of Definitive. This probably increases the chances of their being such translations, because the translator will be able to make something (the whole DE package) not available from third parties, and not something that people would be allowed to simply scan and share or duplication. Meanwhile, the CC license would mean that third parties could write or translate support products under its terms, even if a publisher never did anything beyond a DE translation.
Fan translations of the text, whether or not sold, will be fine. Except for any graphic elements we explicitly license as CC-BY-SA or other terms (such as the Ars Magica Open LIcense logo), they would need to design and illustrate the books themselves. Of course, they could also be provided in the form of plain text, HTML, Google doc, etc.
