Urbis - A World of Cities

[Ishmayl-Retired]

Welcome back!  How's about you post some of that info on the site here so we can discuss?

[Jürgen Hubert]

I'll think about it. Unfortunately, I'll be extremely busy in the next few days - but maybe I'll get back to it on Tuesday.

[Jürgen Hubert]

And another update to the manuscript here. This one has actually a lower page count than the old one, but the word count is higher - I changed the format to make it more page-filling and readable.

And the PDF now has bookmarks and internal hyperlinks, too!

[Jharviss]

I've been spending some time reading Urbis and I want to say that I am quite impressed.  Some of your thoughts here are quite exciting.  Now, I read the pdf, so anything that's different on your website I'm oblivious too.  That said, I love your thought boxes next to certain sections, explaining things as a sidenote.  It works perfectly.

The only comment I have right now is that on page 22, the spell Mass Conflagration is miss-formatted.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Urbis is now also available at Eruvian.Com.

And I expect you all know what this means...   ;)

[Ishmayl-Retired]

Jurgen, how up to date is your actual website (juergen.the-huberts.net/dnd/urbis) ?  

[Jürgen Hubert]

Not terribly so - after I created the latest PDF (the one with the fancy formatting and index), I decided that maintaining both a website and a PDF was too much of a hassle. The latest changed in the website itself date back to mid-March. The PDF, on the other hand, is more recent and has more material.

Of course, now I'll add any new material to Eruvian as well. But adding the new material to both Eruvian and my website (as opposed to the PDF, which will be updated irregularly) would be redundant in my opinion.

[Jürgen Hubert]

I've posted an poll over at ENWorld which will hopefully help me decide in which direction to take the Urbis Wiki - into a presentation fully tied to D&D 4E, or to a more system neutral presentation.

[LordVreeg]

nock me as a system neutral vote, my friend.

[Jürgen Hubert]

nock me as a system neutral vote, my friend.

Well, I've started to make some changes to the names.

Dragonborn became Dragonkin
Eladrin became Eldar
Tieflings became Cambion


Oh, and Eruvian.Com unfortunately didn't work out - too little traffic. So now all the setting material is on the Urbis Wiki. If you want to write new material for Urbis, you can join the wiki here (although you need to sign off on an unfortunate legal disclaimer - which is unavoidable, since I want to publish the setting professionally one day...).

[sparkletwist]

Eldar[/url]

although you need to sign off on an unfortunate legal disclaimer[/quote]
It is rather unfortunate. In its current state it probably ensures almost nothing of substance will be contributed by anyone.

[Steerpike]

[blockquote=sparkletwist]It is rather unfortunate. In its current state it probably ensures almost nothing of substance will be contributed by anyone.[/blockquote]Agreed, I'm afraid.  While I understand your (good) intentions to create a collaborative, rich world, the knowledge that you plan to publish the setting using the potentially uncredited contributions of others would really discourage me from spending much time on a contribution - why not spend time on my own setting, which I will be credited for?

I don't mean to bash in the slightest, and I really like some aspects of your setting, being a big fan of urban fantasy (as The Cadaverous Earth should demonstrate), but I have to agree with sparkletwist on this one.

[Jharviss]

That's a pretty simple and straight-forward waiver and I appreciate it. Most companies looking to publish go through a lot more to get people on board - a whole lot more.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Eldar[/url]

although you need to sign off on an unfortunate legal disclaimer

Actually, someone already did contribute quite a few things of substance - almost all of the material on the city of Praxus was written by another contributor.

[blockquote=sparkletwist]It is rather unfortunate. In its current state it probably ensures almost nothing of substance will be contributed by anyone.[/blockquote]Agreed, I'm afraid.  While I understand your (good) intentions to create a collaborative, rich world, the knowledge that you plan to publish the setting using the potentially uncredited contributions of others would really discourage me from spending much time on a contribution - why not spend time on my own setting, which I will be credited for?

I perfectly understand why most people wouldn't want to get involved with this. But really, that's pretty much the only way I can allow others to make direct, written contributions without hiring a lawyer to sort out the details - something that would bust my (practically non-existent) budget. After all, if I do make money from this project, I need to retain the right to publish the material on the wiki - and sorting out who contributed what on the wiki and in what those contributions should be reimbursed would be a legal nightmare on a wiki system. I mean, someone is currently proofreading some entries and correcting spelling mistakes - something which I do appreciate a lot (since I can't afford a professional editor at the moment). If I hadn't clearly state my rights to everything published on the wiki, then what claims does he have to the profits from any published works derived from the material? How should I know?

The only alternative would be to work out contracts with all people who want to contribute to the wiki before they start editing or adding any material. And this approach has some rather obvious problems as well. For one thing, I would have to figure out how exactly their contributions should be reimbursed before they actually write anything - and how do I know their contributions will be qualitatively high enough, or even that they will produce anything of substance at all? For another, such a contract will raise expectations that I will publish something from their work that will be paid for eventually - and I do not feel able to make such guarantees. Sure, I want to publish Urbis in professional form, but will I truly find the time to do it properly - and will I able to generate profit from it, and be able to stay in contact with all the contributors so that I can pay them (after all, people on the Internet do vanish from forums they frequent from time to time)?

So yes, I admit that the current disclaimer is harsh on other contributors to the Urbis Wiki. But it's also the only honest offer I feel I can make.

Now, I do plan to give name credit to all contributors once I publish the setting in a different form. And if someone publishes enough high-quality material for the setting, I certainly won't rule out publishing a jointly written supplement with co-authorship credit and some kind of profit-sharing scheme. But right now, I don't feel able to enter into any legally binding agreements with other contributors, and I need all contributors to understand that.

[Steerpike]

Fair enough; I completely understand the financial and legal requirements bhind the disclaimer.  Good luck with your project - you've clearly put a great deal of work into it already!