Planes and the GSL

Reading through Worlds and Monsters, I'm liking what I see for the D&D default setting - nothing too specific with room enough for everyone to add their own elements and locations without figuring out where the hell to put it on the map. Particularly for 3rd-party boys and girls.

However, it does seem likely that the proper names of their planes (the Feywild, Shadowfell, and all that) will not be open content in the new GSL. But will it be possible to have an open-content alternate naming system for the planes?

By possible, I mean two things:

1. Will WotC make a fuss about using an alternate name for a plane such as the Feywild (AKA Feyrealm) since it's considered closed content?
2. Will 3rd-party publishers be able to agree on anything and use it as a common naming source for planar locations?

This is purely for the sake of those publishers looking to create some truly D&D-compatible adventures and not their own settings. This is something I feel we all missed out on during 3E and could easily try to take advantage of now - create out own links to the D&D world without infringing on any copyrights. I'm sure there are legal mumbo-jumbo words to throw around here, my main curiosity right now is whether or not something like this is even feasible from a participation point of view. Why not have DMs be able to run an WotC adventure, then a Green Ronin adventure, then someone else's and all still linked into the same world without the DM having to make any adjustments?

In posting this, I'm also expecting a complete shut down on this idea. And by shut down, I mean three bullets to the chest, one in the back of the head, and its body buried in the middle of Wrigley Field. However, hope is the fruit of the inspired, so let's see what happens.

As far as I recall, there were one or two "documents" released by third-party publishers to "restore" (as in create similar names) the actual spell names in the PHB. One was the Original Spell Name Compendium by Necromancer Games, used mostly by the Sword & Sorcery imprint of White Wolf. I don't think it was used very consistently, though.

That said, I suspect that the general planar layout - Astral Sea with the Nine Hells, Elemental Chaos with the Abyss, the Feywild, the Shadowfell, and the Far Realms - will be Open Content, to coincide with the origin system of creature types, while several specific domains on those planes will be closed content, similar to how the general rules for planes were OGC in 3.5 (from the DMG, not the Manual of Planes), while the specific Outer Planes were closed.

Short of using copyrighted proper nouns, there is nothing WotC can do about it. Enjoy this link that someone else on this very board has been nice enough to share, so that all could bask in its (common sense) glory.

http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.html

There is nothing WotC could do about a book dealing with different planes... so long as none of the proper nouns were the same.

I wasn't worried about the copyright aspect of it so much as whether or not WotC will actually include their revised planes in the GSL. It seems that they have a more concrete world they may wish to protect and reserve for themselves for the same reason that nothing Forgotten Realms was OGL. While there's legally nothing to make similar comparisons, there's not much point in doing so because the public is aware enough of what is open content to know when you're just offering a cheap knock-off. If the planes are open content and we can all just make up our own names for them, then there's no issue other than devising an alternate naming convention for the planes... if everyone else would be willing to play by the same names.

I think my main question was to gauge interest in a standard third party naming convention for the planes and the lack of response pretty much gives me my answer. Thanks for the link though.