D&D Next - 5e Discussion

I'm not gonna lie this looks like a phishing email. I almost didn't read it but curiosity got the better of me.

Running a contest on its own is fine IMHO (given appropriate mod approval when needed, and I am not a mod here), but what makes this feel weird is the conflicts of interest (regardless of your intent).

Even if you don't plan to use the other works that didn't win, you stand to financially gain by retaining the unused works. At minimum you'd remember the other works, potentially weaving into your own inspiration (assuming you are in fact not a robot that can forget on command).

You also stand to financially gain by not selecting a winner and instead generating a random username and saying they won while showing off something you already wrote. Heck, you could have an alt account that just posts stuff to look real until they suddenly win this contest.

Let's also assume that any content, music, and art provided as part of your final submission package is all original or appropriately licensed content - be it OGL, CC, actual paid licence, whatever. Because once you are making money off something, royalties are probably going to kick in. Especially if you're using commercially available music. I'm not a lawyer, but even if you aren't including audio files and pictures and just link to/list them in your final "package", you're probably going to need an intellectual property lawyer to make sure your verbiage is rock solid. If I were an artist, even if I wasn't working with an organization who could enforce on my behalf, I'd still want proper usage agreements anywhere my content was used, especially if the other party stands to financially gain from the art. Depending on the artist preference, it may be as simple as a written "hey it's ok to use my work for this".

Is there a differential between an employee/contractor who can create the story notes/art/music themselves and someone who is hunting down art and music off the internet and reaching out to the artists for their permission? The outputs of each will produce very different works. Do the contestants perhaps care that those two pools are merged? Might be worth asking them. Maybe it's a non issue.

From a job perspective, you've mentioned what work is required for the final product, but a very critical detail is missing - how much work is required? One a week? One a month? One a year? Different people may not have time for all workloads. How would you handle a negative client interaction between your new employee and your customer? You mention high quality on your contest is contingent on the job offer - which does give you a nice way out to just say you don't want any contestant's work. I'm not saying that all entries would be good enough for a job, all I'm saying is that's an opportunity for a landmine in your face if not handled gracefully.

ill give you the benefit of the doubt that you are well known somewhere even if I myself do not recognize you. But right out of the gate this ad is my first exposure to your work, so I (as a random person on the internet) have no yet established basis of trust of you (another random person on the internet). Similarly, do you trust a random person on the internet to complete all of the above, with (un-forged) usage agreements where applicable?

Now I'm not an artist, I'm just a programmer/IT. I fix computers when I get a ticket that something's broken. I may be off my rocker with some of this. But if I were evaluating your company as a vendor, you would have failed several tests.