NDFs

[Trevor Curtis]

Hey, its me again, crazy Trevor. SO, now I've finisehd my rpg, and want to get it playtested, and eventually published. At what point do I need NDFs?(non-disclosure forms) can you have them w/o having an actual company?

Trevor, nursing a repetetive stress injury from too much typing

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Trevor,

I'll probably get firebombed for saying this, but I have a filthy secret to disclose to you. I don't use the things. I just play the game with people during development, then after a certain point, I start selling it. No non-disclosure ever seems to get involved. On the face of it, it seems like choking off one of the most powerful means of pre-release promotion.

But this is one publisher's point of view, not a recommendation. Some older threads to check out include:
A cautionary tale for the whole family
Group playtest agreements and usage agreements

I am interested, however, in knowing whether anyone has concrete evidence of people losing money because their system stuff was scooped by someone else.

I've heard grievous complaining about this from tons of people, all of which are extremely dubious. My favorite was a long diatribe about how WotC "must" have snuck looks at the notes of a game in development at GenCon 1999, because the rules of D&D3E were "obviously" cribbed from them. But it's been going on for a while; one merely has to mention the word "copyright" in presence of an old-school wargamer store owner, and you'll hear a similar tale of woe about their Perfect Game which was Stolen and whose parts are now embedded in [insert popular wargame here].

Therefore I'd be interested in documented evidence of any such event. I'd especially be interested in similarly documented evidence that someone was able to use an NDA to the company's benefit, when someone else violated it.

Best,
Ron

[Mike Holmes]

What Ron said.

Yeah, I used to be paranoid, and assumed that people would steal my ideas. Now that I know what an RPG idea is worth, I'm not at all worried anymore. :-)

If you think that your RPG is the one that's going to make millions, well, I may not be able to convince you, but no RPG has ever made millions. Not in the long run. Further, this assumes that people are bad, and will take your ideas. Which they won't. The bad ones are too lazy to do so. Further, after the game is released, one can "steal" your ideas all they like. Sure, you have copywrite protection, but your pre-release edition can have that, too. Mechanics cannot be protected, and people can and will take them at their lesiure.

And this all assumes that what you have is the greatest RPG ever. Be realistic, however. Isn't such an assumption more a matter of pride than anything else? (I realize this now, in my case).

The point is that whole games go through playtesting here in the open. And then get made into a published format, and make money. See Donjon for an example.

What you should focus on instead, is making the game good, so that it will sell. So that the knock offs that might come up aren't as good. Consider this, a knock-off of your game may actually increase your sales. RPGs don't compete.

That all said, this is not legal advice. :-) If you want to protect yourself (I did the first time through), go ahead. You don't need a company to set up a contract between you and some other entity about non-disclosure. I just stole some boilerplate form, and modified it to fit (I think I actually improved it some). See a lawyer if you're really concerned, however.

But I'd say the odds on needing such a thing are slim and none.

Mike