Our acceptable use policy is designed to allow players of SLA Industries to share their scenarios, art and stories as freely as possible without diminishing the rights of Nightfall Games Ltd or the writers and artists that wish to share their work.
- 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.
- Copyrighted Nightfall Games Ltd material may not be reproduced, distributed or published in any form.
- Unofficially produced material for SLA Industries may be freely distributed on the Internet via Websites, FTP and other means providing:
(a) that items (1) and (2) above are not contravened,
(b) no charge is made for access to the material,
(c) a standard disclaimer and copyright notice is included with the material, and
(d) the material is clearly labelled as unofficial. - Unofficially produced fanzines — specifically, magazine-style publications of varied content — may be produced and sold providing:
(a) that items (1) and (2) above are not contravened,
(b) the fanzine is not professionally distributed to the roleplaying industry without a license from Nightfall Games Ltd,
(c) a standard disclaimer and copyright notice is included with the material,
(d) no more than 1,000 copies of any one issue of the fanzine may be produced for sale without a license from Nightfall Games Ltd, and
(e) the cover of the fanzine clearly states that it is an unofficial publication. - 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 Nightfall Games Ltd.
- 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 Ltd.
- Any persons or firms seeking to purchase a license to produce official SLA Industries game material should be made to Nightfall Games Ltd, and must be accompanied by a signed release form and a full synopsis and three sample finished spreads for the proposed project.
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.
- Pages of tables, game aids or anything else that allows you to play the game without the books is acceptable for personal use, but not distribution. We’ll take care of that.
- Conversions of SLA Industries to other games systems should be bare bones, not complete books. If you’ve got FEN 603 stats, for instance, you’ve gone too far.
- Non-RPG stuff — fiction, comics, computer games, &c — for anything other than putting up free on the web is not OK. Computer games are out full stop, even freeware ones, as are web comics.
- Anything printed, sold or both, other than a fanzine, needs a license from Nightfall and Romark and 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 © 1993-2012 Nightfall Games, 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.
If you need to discuss this or get clarification, please head over to the forum where we will be happy to explain anything that’s not clear.