Thanks Ema’s Charsheets for Years of Great Game Support!
February 7, 2009 by shent_lodge
Filed under 4e, rpg
How rude, WoTC went after Emma’s Charsheets. Man, I had been using that site for years under 3e. The site was a great place to get character sheets, and spell lists to help gameplay go smoother. After talking with another gamer about 4e resources, I added a link to Ema’s website, and was planning to write a review about it, and now he is gone… Just this note on his index page remains:
I’m sorry to inform you that this site is no more.
Wizards of the Coast asked me to take it down, and I complied.I’m sorry for all the fans who will miss it – I will miss it, too – but it was the right thing to do.
Time to move on…
Ema.
I was at Winter War 36 today, preparing to play 3.5 game with some other gamers, when one person mentioned that Ema’s was no more; silence spread throughout the hall of gamers, then comments of disbelief welled up from the gamers present. Then someone said, oh well guess we’ll have to go back to BitTorrent to fill the void. Emas was so much better than any other fan site out there at making the game easier to play.
WoTC must have been threatened by one guy who was able to provide better support to the game than their army of corporate pukes could. I apologize for grumbling so loud at you, WoTC, but I am so frustrated, because Ema had a good deal for the people who actually work hard at their hobby, to create their own game content, and who also, by the way, promote the D&D game to others in their community. All the people I know had all the books required to play the games that his website supported. I had 38 books for 3e alone, and all my friends had all those books too; we used ema’s to help with character organization especially for spell casters. The people using it for 4e had all the books too, and we are all collecting all the recent stuff as WoTC published it. In fact One guy I know had spent money on D&D Insider and on ema’s website he was keeping both subscriptions and I bet he is real upset now. Anyway, I was so upset with the news, that I left the con to go write this.
Thank you Ema for all the years a of great game support, and shame on you WoTC, Ema was one of the good guys out there in the world, who was actually making your game even more fun to play.
Possibly Related Posts:
- King humor
- Fun stuff in the new PF Advanced Player’s Guide
- Fun Quick Convention Down Time Game
- Two Great game stores in central FL
- 2010 ENnie and my iPad
Personally, I have no idea how to respond to WotC anymore. I understand your frustrations. Of course this just another reason for me to not support WotC with my money. It’s just sad but I think WotC is starting to take plays from TSR’s old playbook.
Yeah, according to Alexa.com ema was getting less than 0.00002 percent of the worlds internet traffic. Wizards gets about 0.02 percent. Way to flog the fans. Though Wizards page views have been tanking lately so maybe they felt a need to lash out…
I’m not familiar with Ema’s site, honestly, so my comments have to be somewhat generic here but here goes.
While I understand the frustration of having your favorite (or at least one of) resource sites closed down take a step back and look at this. From what you say this isn’t just a site that provided character sheets, but provided reprints of information from the books. And it had a subscription fee? At that point someone else is making money off of your work and you have to defend against that or you run the risk of loosing the right to do so at all.
Now, like I said I am largely going on the scan details in your post here. If it was a free service, and they were not reprinting game mechanic details from the books then, eh, I agree shutting it down is heavy handed.
Also. You have to be /really/ careful attempting to justify anything with “Every gamer I know”. While you and your group of gamers may well have purchased every book or only used the rules from books they had paid for… there are going to be others that aren’t so scrupulous. And I have no idea which is the larger population.
Ema started charging money. That takes something from a fan site to a business built off someone else’s intellectual property. That said business also violated the terms of both the OGL and the 4e GSL, its hardly a surprise. Whining about the injustice of it all is misplaced. Wizards isn’t shutting down fan sites, they sent a cease and desist to a business stealing their intellectual property. That’s a big difference.
If you want to run a fan site, do so, and don’t charge for it and you won’t have any problems. Wizards didn’t go after Asmor, and his 4e utilities have been linked by practically every game blog and 4e player online.
I used Ema’s sheets for years through 3e. I donated a couple times, but I would not pay for character sheet services from anyone. Too many free resources out there.
Thanks Guys. I am calmer now. Just relied on Ema for about 6-years and to see him gone got me a bit grumpy. Being an idealist, I would have worked something out with him instead of the default cease and desist, I think he really did have a great product.
@Thasmodious: It’s not actually possible to violate the GSL right now. WotC retracted the first version of the GSL and they haven’t replaced it. Nobody can be bound by or violate a license that doesn’t exist.
Even if there was a GSL, you have to actually agree to a license in order to be bound by it and to gain the privileges it offers. So, it doesn’t have any bearing on the 4e material that Ema hosted. Now, copyright and trademark law, that’s a different kettle of fish…
If anyone has any sort of back-up of his sheets for 3.5 could you please mail them to mrtargetpractice@gmail.com
I’m hoping someone has all the spells etc somewhere.
I know I have his cleric list/all for 3.5. I have to dig around but I can send those. The past couple years I was playing fighter types and my lists are not up to date because of that. I do have his character sheet from 2005 I’ll send it to you; it is version 2.7.