"How Original is Warhammer FB/40k Game Engine?" Topic

GW games have a typical game design style that they have reused again and again. That is to say roll to hit, roll to wound, and roll to save.

This has been copied a few times (Flames of War springs to mind), but how original is it with GW? Were they the first to think of it?

Try Donald Featherstone back in the 60s…

I have a number of wargame books from the 60s and 70s with similar mechanics. Obviously they don't include specifics such as the "Strength vs Toughness Chart" but the hit-wound-save concept is present. For example, one little book I have on Medieval gaming includes hit + armor save.

I know others aren't fans of this approach but I like it. Sometimes single-die systems feel like a coin toss to me and one player just sits there while the other rolls dice.

Three rolls might be excessive but two rolls split between the two players increases interaction and with multiple dice feels less extreme in result. YMMV!!! :-)

MB

The original Rogue Trader is a slightly more refined version of TTG's Laserburn. Same authors.

They are very unoriginal. I concur with Connard that its inspiration can be seen in old Featherstone rules. Still, they get the job done, and are easy to learn and understand. Originality isn't everything. I greatly prefer other sets of rules, but to each his own.

Well, my curiosity is really about how much of a claim they have to the concept for Intellectual Property. If someone were to use the same idea in their own game, would they be in trouble with GW?

Can't copyright a rule mechanic. Just put it in your own words. IP would cover the fluff and images only.

Another good example of game mechanics "sharing/evolution" is Fire & Fury. It's mechanics seem derived from a tiny rule booklet entitled "On to Richmond" which pre-dated F&F. I enjoyed both sets of rules but preferred OTR for its simplicity.

We still play a lot of OTR here. One of our favourites.

Don't they also descend from Laserburn and Reaper from Tabletop Games

The roll to hit then roll to kill (or save if the other person makes the roll) is a very common mechanic. Maybe GW could take the credit for introducing the pointless extra roll into the mechanic.

The original Rogue Trader is a slightly more refined version of TTG's Laserburn. Same authors.

While the setting and the weapons/armour share a lot of common stuff, I would personally consider the two games to have rather different mechanisms.

If you want to see a game that is more of a descendant of Laserburn, then look forthe Confrontation rules in WD issues 137-138.

Griefbringer

Risk.
-Kle.

I always thought Inquisitor played like Laserburn.

Actually, you can patent game systems. You just can't patent a game system if there exists prior art.

For fun, try looking up MTG on google's PTO site. Search for MTG game mechanics in the most generic and technical terms you can think of and you'll find their patent.

US Pat. 5662332 – Filed Oct 17, 1995

Some silly should have patented the ol d6 hit/wound/save mechanic decades ago…

The US patent system seems to be quite loose in what you can get patent for.

European patent convention explicitely states that game mechanisms cannot be patented.

Griefbringer

The US patent system seems to be quite loose in what you can get patent for.

OT but: Many genes in your body have even been patented! Note: not just the process to discover the genes but the actual genes themselves!

Since I owned my genes before they were patented I wonder if I can charge a license fee to the patent holders?
:-D

The issue is before the supreme court again. Hopefully they'll return sanity to the situation.

Sorry, game systems are not mechanics. In the USA you CANNOT copywrite a mechanic.

Thanks,

John

You can copyright the specific text of your rules, and (maybe) patent a specific method. Patents expire, copyrights effectively do not, at least in a useful period of time for this hobby of ours.

Can you use a rules structure in your game that has been used by others, up to and including GW? Sure.

Can you copy their rules text verbatim for that purpose? No.

"Sorry, game systems are not mechanics. "

How and why do you make that distinction?
I would suggest that a game system is a set of mechanics. (Mechanic in this case, meaning the way(s) in which something works or is applied)

Much of the talk about patent or copyrighting game systems which are composed of any number of game mechanics seems to be a lot of BS.

The idea of successfully defending such a patent or copyright against someone who has published a specific game system PRIOR to the patent being granted is almost impossible. The violator can prove that not only was his system in use before the patent/copyright was issued but can show examples of other rules using the same mechanics and system prior to the issue of the patent/copyright.

Of course with any judge or jury, nothing is absolute.

I believe that it was Amazon.com who patented one-click ordering and now other sites can't do that.

If a game mechanic is similarly defined as a process could that be patented?

To Farstar's point about copyright vs patent even if one didn't violate GW's copyright on their text could they duplicate their combat tables? That would seem to be a copyright violation.

I regard a game mechanic as a concpet which can be modified for use in another gnere.

Plagerism of the charts or other text is just that plagerism and reflects the inability of the designer in question being able to have an original thought.

…even if one didn't violate GW's copyright on their text could they duplicate their combat tables? That would seem to be a copyright violation.

Which is likely one reason why Void did the same tables for the d10 instead. Same mechanism, though.

You cannot copyright game mechanics, only your text and pertinent terminology.
Which flies in the face of the fact that Magic The Gathering's mechanic on tapping a card and turning it sideways was copyrighted….

Magic The Gathering's mechanic on tapping a card and turning it sideways

You wouldn't actually be thinking of the US patent number 5662332 – mentioned earlier on this thread?

Patent, schmatent- It all comes down to money.

Anyone can sue anyone for anything and frivolous or not a lawsuit is expensive for both sides. Depends on who has the deeper pockets and who is making how much out of it. Most people couldn't even afford to respond to a lawsuit and the mere threat is enough to silence them. If you want to clobber the other guy you can do so by simply burying him in legal fees to respond to lawsuits, injunctions, etc. It all depends on how much you have to pay the lawyers. Even the generally affluent among us would be bankrupted by a lawsuit.

Whether it is enacted or not depends on how much is to be gained or lost. A good example from REAL LIFE is in order.

I used to work for a company called MEM. The word comes from the initials of the Founder Martin E. Mayer. It was founded as a soap company in the 19th century. You don't recognize it, but you WILL recognize the products- English Leather and British Sterling Cologne, Heaven Scent Perfume, Loves Baby Soft, and other cosmetics. Went out of business about 15 or 20 years ago.

They had a line of kiddie cosmetics called "Tinkerbelle."

THEY, MEM, owned the rights to the name in cosmetics, and had owned it since BEFORE WALT DISNEY came up with the whole thing. Walt's "Tinkerbelle" and MEM's "Tinkerbelle" were completely different art, images, designs, and so forth and most importantly Walt wasn't in cosmetics, nor were we into movies or theme parks. Finally the eight or nine million a year that "Tinkerbelle Cosmetics" took in was chump change to Walt and not worth the candle to prosecute, which of course he had no right to (in cosmetics) and we gad lawyers of our own to outlast a challenge.

As I said names and trademarks, copyrights, and even patents are slippery things. In the end it's how much are you going to lose in a lawsuit and how much do you stand to gain. The THREAT is often all that it takes.

Further, you can copyright anything you want (or try to) but enforcement is up to you. Jim Dunnigan once tried to copyright the world "Nazi." Magic the gathering's tapping a card and turning it sideways may be copyrighted but simply making a game where you put a card in your shirt pocket will get around it.

It is also important to remember that copyright AND patent are not to protect the IDEA of the copyright or patent, but the financial reward deriving from it. That is that your use of the idea that has been patented by someone is depriving that someone of the just fiscal profits from the idea. Thus is our games we can do anything we want in our own home and private arrangement so long as we don't sell it. Same at conventions where you put on games, it's a private rendering with no monetary value accruing to the person who puts on their own home-brew version. Once again, unless you are charging for persons to play the game there's really no grounds for a suit. This is the reasons FOW and Games Workshop get into "sanctioned" and "official" everything with competition games where players get ratings or status governed by them. This they can do, that is confer whatever bits of sad and tawdry glory is to be had on persons who want it, but it means nothing, though if they put on a tournament or a game at a con it's up to them.

Again, it all comes down to money. It would be possible that FOW or Games Workshop or any such marketing agency to prosecute Joe Yabatz for putting on a WWII battle at a con or even in his home using their rules he has modified, but the first thing they would have to prove would be to a judge they have standing in the case, which in this sort of suit would be- losing money. That would be hard to do. It would be like a company having a patent on a specific type of cinder block or decorative stone, which I use instead of its nominal use, as a support for bookshelves. If however I took one of them and reproduced it and began selling their design of cinder block or decorate bracket…

IIRC the MTG 'card tapping' patent has expired by now…

As for "originality" nothing after H.G. Wells is original.

Jim Dunnigan once tried to copyright the world "Nazi."

Are you sure that he did not rather try to trademark it?

Rogue Trader doesn't really draw that heavily from Laserburn mechanically, but the idea of "roll to hit, roll for damage" isn't a terribly original one and Laserburn itself isn't terribly far from what many RPG's were doing at the time (incidentally, it was marketed as an RPG on the cover)

In the RPG field, quite a few games have been resurrected by rewriting them, avoiding the use of any specific tables (or recreating them based on a new formula or whatever).

Did anyone else notice the dates on this thread? Talk about thread necromancy :)