Bharring wrote: a crowd funded direction is probably not the best option. Not only is that risking going commercial (which would be very bad),
I actually think that, based on things that
GW has said publically, another company could produce and sell rulebooks for a game that was created with the intent of using
GW models. Since
GW has publically made the claim several times that they're a modelling company, not a game company, then they shouldn't have any objection to another company creating and profiting off of a rules set based around using their models, right? If they're a modelling company, another company pushing sales of their models can only improve their sales, right? And since they're not attempting to claim them for themselves, said company could even use the proper names for the models, like "Space Marines" and "Dark Eldar Archon" in their books because it'd be referencing a real-life product that they're encouraging you to buy from another company in order to play using their set of rules. This would all fall under the "Fair Use" exception to copyright law, so long as you consider the miniatures essentially a seperate entity from the "game" that is Warhammer
40k.
The most legally defensible way to set it up would be to create an entirely new game system, with new fluff and everything, but just make it compatible with
GW models. You could even still produce your own range of models, so long as they're "different enough" to not look exactly like
GW stuff, while keeping the scale the same so that people who spent a lot of time and money on
40k could transition over to your game system without a huge investment by using their existing models. This is about the only way another company could get the "critical mass" of players that was mentioned earlier to switch to their system.
Of course, if and when a company did this, they'd need to be prepared to fight in court, because
GW would definitely sue. Unfortunately for
GW, if you handle things properly, they can't win a lawsuit in which all you did was encourage
your customers to buy
their models. Mentioning the name of someone else's models in your book isn't a violation of copyright or trademark law if you're making reference to a product that they actually sell.
That said,
GW is the evil empire, and as soon as they realize that they won't win the lawsuit against you, they will adopt a completely different approach. They'll suddenly be a gaming company again. They will transform their website to have forums, and interact with their customers, and do all of those wonderful things we think a gaming company -should- do. And it will work. They'll get all their customers back, and maybe even some more. It might even turn
GW into the company we all want it to be, once they realise they can get more customers that way.
And all it will require is the death of 1 company that actually tried to do something good for the consumers/gamers who will, inevitably, not show enough gratitude to keep them around. Then begins the cycle anew.
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