Dark Crystal world FanFic in an RPG?

[MGCJerry]

I was curious if anyone would be interested in reading some stories that are the result of a running RPG?

Being that I run a Sci-Fi/Fantasy based homebrewed RPG and after some discussions with a few people, I've decided I'd like to add the world of Thra and its systems into my RPG. However, being the kind of person I am I don't like problems with perusing stories. As far as anyone knows and from what I've gathered it seems that Henson still owns the Dark Crystal setting but does anyone know their stances on using the Dark Crystal stuff in a RPG. Of course the RPG is not published or anything. I think this actually falls under the "fan fiction" but personally I've never really written about a setting that is not of my own so this is all alien territory to me.

Or should I just dispatch an email to legal@henson and check with them before perusing this? I'm asking here in case if anyone has actually had contact with the Henson Co about stuff like this and could get an answer faster than a legal department.

Thanks for any help or info.

 

[Redsonga]

Boy, you really are new . No one asks to do fanfic... We just slap a disclaimer on things and start. I think asking would almost be a bad thing, I would hate for FF.net to put another 'the owner of this is mad at you and won't let you write this' label up under Henson works over an RPG . Just put up a disclaimer. I'm pretty sure with as much fandom as the muppets have someone asked a million years ago anyway....

The best rule of thumb is to keep the world true to its canon and not make it anything that the copyright holders would gasp in horror about IMHO ^.~

RPGs are a little hard to post as a story within themselves because every player may have their own way of writing (the fact that I can never find a RPG that stays with one running POV tone and level of writing is the main reason why I don't role play. I've seen too many good ideas wasted .) and it makes for choppy writing that is hard to keep a reader interested in if they are not playing...

 

[frogboy4]

I doubt anyone at Henson would mind your Fan Fic or RPG in fact they could probably use their fan-base now more than ever. Also, Henson is a very small company so I'm not sure how easy it will to contact them outside of their periodic podcasts. I would go with Redsonga's suggestions on this.

Welcome to the forum!
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[MGCJerry]

That was a quick reply. Yes, I'm really new... As I posted, I've never written off of someone elses materials.

I'm asking because I had a friend who received an angry letter for using a particular likeness from a particular company. That killed that game in its tracks. Also for the fact that during the discussions we've had, that Disney owns Henson and I've heard a number of stories about Disney as well as some people I'm associated with who've worked for Disney and in those circles Disney has a very firm grip. Most of these associates are 3D artists and developers.

Since playing with graphics and such, I've learned early on to ask before doing something one may regret. Heck, we've been discussing the star wars addition for years even with Lucas' relatively loose stance of fanfic especially with the Expanded Universe.

Anyway, the story that takes place in my game has a eerie similarity to that of Thra. The system in which the core story takes place has suffered a similar fate to those of the Gelflings in which a key race was almost wiped out which much of the procedure and details are online and are quite disturbing and frankly- gross. My concern is that despite the world of the dark crystal is in fact dark, mine isn't that much more pleasant anyway. How far would one have to go before it makes the copyright holders shudder and cry in horror at their creations doing something rash? Not that the Gelflings are space faring anyway-but they could be. Don't think anybody would mind if a Gelfling decides to see "what’s out there".

I try keeping strictly to general behaviors of the characters and races present throughout my game and being that the resulting stories from the game itself would be rewritten by me for consistency and a stable POV and not be a mishmash of information and POVs. Matter of fact, some previous game sessions that have occurred in the past have been integrated into newer sessions into one large coherent story.

Anyway, I do have the system placed on my new super cluster info page but I still lack necessary info for adding their world into mine. It has still taken me a number of years to get much of what I do have online since I have a very large number of materials for the game and most of it isnt retyped onto computer until we start to encounter it.

Also the question is whether or not if there would be any issues with setting up a 3d character that looks like a Gelfling. After all, I have 3d renderings of some locations, races and characters already present in the game and if this continues I'm sure one of the players will make the VERY energy consuming loooooooooong trip across super clusters to get to where they are located in which case I'd need a picture and since I do 3d I'm sure that would end up in a gray area... I didnt create these models but used existing models and morphed and added to them. But still...

A few characters for the curious, so the resulting 3d characters would be of similar look:
http://mgcjerry.net/Isicander_Project/cooldc.jpg <-- My character

Finally, I've looked at the Henson site and it states that they cannot reply to non business inquiries, which is understandable.

So how far did I place Thra from our approximate area? 404,000,000 light years (ly) or 125,538,843 parsecs (pc).

My WIP info page of the superstrings which references Thra & Gelflings:
http://mgcjerry.net/Isicander_Project/superstrings.html

I guess well see what happens when the game continues... If the players decide to persue this, but I'll still need to prepare general material which I will share here in the MC forums.

 

[RedPiggy]

Your character pic was very beautiful, btw. It's not like "elves" or whatever can be tied to any one property ... the whole fantasy thing only has a set number of races, from what I've seen. As long as its more of an homage than blatantly ripping off characters, I don't see what the problem is. Heck, have some of the characters mention the movie as the source of the inspiration. At least then they can't claim you stole from. Borrowed a lot, maybe

 

[MGCJerry]

Glad you liked the pic... Here is a quick early attempt at Kira...

Still a number of things to find... I gotta pull the cheeks and mouth out further, possibly with an ape morph... and find a texture that suits her better instead of using a normal diffuse color... Oh, and make her only but 4 feet or so tall... Unlike my blue character who is 7' 8" tall.

http://mgcjerry.net/Isicander_Project/dckira.jpg

Of course the issue is where am I going to pick up the story on Thra... Because if I do it during the Dark Millennium, and if a player lands on Thra and happens to get jumped by the Garthim, it will prove to be the skeksis will fall by the hands of an alien race and not by a Gelfling. Would make an interesting "what if" though...

 

[frogboy4]

Great work. I would add one of the central gelfling features that even licensed artists get wrong is the noses. They don't have people noses, they have subtle gelfling noses.

 

[dwmckim]

Loathsome and fearful as they may be (i hear they hired some of the Muppet Monsters to join their department), you don't have to worry about Disney lawyers in anything regarding Dark Crystal.

Henson is still an independant company. Disney only bought The Classic Muppets (ie the Muppet Show cast of characters) and Bear in the Big Blue House from Henson; they didn't but Henson itself. Henson still owns all the remaining properties that Disney didn't buy (including Dark Crystal, Farscape, Labyrinth, Fraggle Rock, and much more including new stuff recently created like Puppet Up and Sid the Science Kid) The Sesame Street Muppets were sold (via another sale) to Sesame Workshop (who you may remember as Childrens' Television Workshop)

So no Disney nightmares here. Though i still would carefully start saundering the other direction if i came across Luncheon Counter Monster somewhere carrying a briefcase and wearing a suit.

 

[MGCJerry]

Thanks again for the replies..

frogboy... The nose is proving to be very difficult to work with. It seems I just may have to jump in, and re-morph the nose entirely by hand by vertex pulling some 2000 or so points. I do have modeling experience but when something reaches a certain polycount I just don't like bothering with it and with the time it takes to modify a mesh I feel my time is best spent elsewhere but I'm afraid if I want to keep the race authentic, I may have to do it anyway. I'd like to get more reference material to use since I'm mostly looking at stills of the movie while I'm playing it. I'm looking at getting the World of the Dark Crystal book, but that is going to have to wait as cash is tight right now. If you know of some other books that would be good I'd like to hear about them. However, do you know of a book or something that directly references the overall world like the astrology of the system Thra is in as well as the geography and such of the world? I kinda studied the movie a bit, and there are some things I think I can reproduce but I'd like to see if there is any actual data of it before I just "wing it".

Edited:
Heres where I'm at now for the Kira character. The nose is still pain, but I need another set of eyes to see it besides my own...
http://mgcjerry.net/Isicander_Project/dckira1.jpg

Dwmckim
Yes, I found that out while on the Henson site and breathed a sigh of relief. Had Disney have had rights I would've walked from the project without a thought.

But if I seen half of the muppet monsters heading my way I'd end up pulling a copperfield and getting the heck out of there.

 

[MGCJerry]

Sorry for the double post, but I've started compiling a some overall plot outlines and started typing them up on a simple who, what, when, where, why, & how page. The information shown is just the rough outline of whats going on, and at this stage already has a bit of a story written behind it.

Remember though, this is for an RPG so the detailed stories wont be made publicly viewable. However, I may just have another Gelfling character run along with the current session and write some stories from her point of view, but there will be VERY little DC content related with such an exercise...

Here's the plot outlines for my RPG to get them tied into the game world a little.
http://mgcjerry.net/Isicander_Project/dc/outline.html

More will be added as time progresses.

Thoughts, criticisms, comments, etc is very much welcome.