OFFICIAL NOTICE

Extended discussions have taken place between Hogshead Publishing and Nightfall Games regarding unofficial publication of SLA Industries material, and guidelines have been drawn up. Note that under the terms of the agreement between Hogsead and Nightfall, Hogshead have the sole and exclusve right to publish SLA Industries role-playing material in all forms. The following guidelines are effective immediately:

  1. No material disclosing, drawing on or alluding to the SLA Industries back story or any other privileged, confidential or sensitive game information ("The Truth") may be distributed or published in any form, including -- but not limited to -- unofficial publications, fanzines, web sites or anything else.
  2. Copyrighted Nightfall Games material may not be reproduced, distributed or published in any form.
  3. Unofficially produced material for SLA Industries may be freely distributed on the Internet via Websites, FTP and other means providing
    1. that items (1) and (2) above are not contravened,
    2. no charge is made for access to the material,
    3. a standard disclaimer and copyright notice is included with the material, and
    4. the material is clearly labelled as unofficial.
  4. Unofficially produced fanzines -- specifically, magazine-style publications of varied content -- may be produced and sold providing
    1. that items (1) and (2) above are not contravened,
    2. the fanzine is not professionally distributed to the roleplaying industry without a license from Hogshead Publishing Ltd,
    3. a standard disclaimer and copyright notice is included with the material,
    4. no more than 1,000 copies of any one issue of the fanzine may be produced for sale without a license from Hogshead Publishing Ltd, and
    5. the cover of the fanzine clearly states that it is an unofficial publication.
  5. All other unofficial game supplements, scenarios and other role-playing items referring to or making use of the SLA Industries rules, setting, characters or IP that are not covered specifically in items (3) and (4) above are strictly forbidden, and may not be produced, distributed or commercially exploited in any way without a license from Hogshead Publishing Limited.
  6. Non-RPG uses of the SLA Industries setting, rules, characters and IP are strictly forbidden, and may not be undertaken, produced, distributed or commercially exploited in any way without a license from Nightfall Games Limited.
  7. Any persons or firms seeking to purchase a license to produce official SLA Industries game material should in the first instance contact Nightfall Games to obtain a release form. All license applications should be made to Hogshead Publishing Limited, and must be accompanied by a signed release form and a full synopsis and three sample finished spreads for the proposed project.

Tim Dedopulos, Director, Nightfall Games Limited

Notes -- the unofficial bit:

* Don't touch the truth, thanks.
* Don't OCR/scan/type up bits from the books for the web (or anything else).
* Writing or drawing stuff to put up on the web is fine -- as long as it's clearly not official, doesn't give away our secrets, and you're not charging for it. Chatting on mailing lists/chatrooms/whatever is fine too, obviously.
* Fanzines are OK. Fanzine supplements, like standard supplements (and including scenarios) are not.
* 'Fanzine' means a standard issue of a regular fan-produced magazine with miscellaneous, varied content. Hint: if all the content is on just one or two topics it's probably a supplement, and that's not OK.
* Non-RPG stuff -- fiction, comics, computer games, etc -- for anything other than putting up free on the web is not OK. Computer games are out full stop, even freeware ones, but MUDs and MUSHes are OK as long as you clear them with Nightfall first.
* Anything printed, sold or both, other than a fanzine, needs a license from Hogshead. Hogshead will require a license fee (of three to five digits depending on the project), and a royalty will be payable too. Serious enquiries are always welcome.
* The standard disclaimer for all websites, fanzines and other material is: "SLA Industries and all characters, settings, images and other intellectual properties pertaining thereto are (c) 1993-2000 Nightfall Games Limited, and are used without permission. No challenge to those copyrights is intended or implied." In addition, all fanzines should clearly and legibly bear on the cover the line "This is an unofficial SLA Industries fanzine". No unofficial material may claim to be official or to be produced by Nightfall or Hogshead, 'natch.
* If you have any questions about the application of this notice, get in touch with Nightfall by emailing me on tim@midnight.demon.co.uk

Additional: posted to station-Analysis 19 March 01

**note: the following advisory may be reproduced, especially in the Station-Analysis FAQ *hint* **

Q: Can I put XXXXX (forms, pictures, the Ebb lists, the scaned Key of Delhyread, The Writer's Bible, &c) from the SLA books up on my website?

A: Some material is OK for free distribution, and some is not.

You may scan (or recreate) and redistribute any form from the published SLA material that is marked as 'permission granted to photocopy', so long as you do not charge users to see/download the material, and it is not held inside a members-only area. Please also include "(c) 2000 Nightfall Games Limited" with the material, and link that copyright notice to http://www.nightfall.co.uk.

I'm afraid that we cannot give permission for the reproduction of any other pictures and/or text from published SLA books. Hogshead Publishing have licensed exclusive rights to all published SLA RPG material, and if it starts cropping up on websites, it threatens our agreement with them. If we lose our agreement with them, the game will probably go out of print and stay there. That includes, I'm afraid, summaries, abridgements or detailed descriptions of the combat system, Ebb system, character system, and so on.

Finally, privileged information (the material contained in the Writer's Guide, pre-release source information, sample pieces, concept artworks and playtest documents) cannot be released in any way, even if you obtained it direct from a Nightfaller. That includes any material based on privileged information, too -- such as stories based on the information in the Bible, for example. The release of privileged information could substantially damage the game, and would certainly damage our agreement with Hogshead Publishing. Please stay away from the Bible completely.

If you have any queries regarding the suitability of any website contents, please feel free to email tim@midnight.demon.co.uk for a swift clarification. We promise not to bite!