D&D 4E 4e and Product Identity

[DJCupboard]

Even more court case material would be if 4e tiefling mechanics were declared OGC, but the name of the race was declared Product Identity.
Now you'll have a name which is both OGC and Product Identity.

My court math is quite weak, but couldn't you get passed this by referring to the teifling in name only (and then referencing the 3e ogl in your legal mumbo jumbo) without referencing mechanics, and then reference the mechanics, later on and clearly separately (siting the 4e ogl) without calling out it's name? As long as you don't put the two next to each other, would it be ok? Would the hoops jumped through to clearly keep them separate while the game implications are that they belong to each other make for some really ugly text, bogging down the product?

I get the feeling from the guys in charge (at the WotC level at least) that they would not force such hoolinannery on the 3rd party publishers - they would at least come up with place holder names for the PI races that the 4e mechanics are released for (like they did with the Mord's suite of spells in 3e). It would then be up to the other publishers to not try and weadle the PI names into their books under the justification that the 3e names are still open.

 

[Nikosandros]

Actually, from what I remember, the OGL comes from Wizards and as long as the source is from Wizard's itself and not a third party they are not obligated to make any of their content "Open Content", because its all their property that they are licensing. They don't need permission to use their own stuff!

Yes. The only open content form WotC is what was released in the SRD and what was explicitly marked as such... UA and some monsters in one of the MM IIRC.

I do think Wizards will leave things fairly open, but considering (a) the fact that Wizards declared certain monsters to be their own, and (b) a lot of the "new" D&D is trying to be more specific (and also trademarkable, copyrightable, etc), how much will they give and how much will be "kept to themselves".

Maybe one of the reasons for the delay in getting the rules to third party companies is caused by the fact that they haven't yet decided what to keep open.

 

[Oldtimer]

Which documents are you referring to?

The majority of material released for 3rd edition by WotC isn't OGC at all.

I would think that he refers to the minority of materials released for 3rd edition that's called the SRD. The name "Tiefling" is in there.

 

[Obrysii]

Yes. The only open content form WotC is what was released in the SRD and what was explicitly marked as such... UA and some monsters in one of the MM IIRC.

And the Epic Level Handbook, and the Expanded Psionics Handbook, and Deities and Demigods.

 

[Nikosandros]

And the Epic Level Handbook, and the Expanded Psionics Handbook, and Deities and Demigods.

Those books are not OGC. Rather part of their content was added to the SRD.

 

[Nikosandros]

I would think that he refers to the minority of materials released for 3rd edition that's called the SRD. The name "Tiefling" is in there.

I didn't know that the tiefling is in the SRD. In which part are they listed?

 

[JohnRTroy]

It's under Planetouched.

BTW--I didn't mean to target that specifically, but I have a feeling Wizards might want to keep some of their extra-special stuff private. What constitutes "extra-special" is hard to say.

 

[Nikosandros]

It's under Planetouched.

Indeed. I stand corrected.

BTW--I didn't mean to target that specifically, but I have a feeling Wizards might want to keep some of their extra-special stuff private. What constitutes "extra-special" is hard to say.

Yes and maybe they haven't completely figured it out themselves yet.

 

[SteveC]

I would speculate that since Tieflings are going to be in the PHB, it is likely that we will see them as open content, as all of the core classes and races in 3X were open.

But, if they're not for some reason, we have a much more gray area. In 3X they were open content, and once you open something up for public use, it is difficult to take that back. At the very least it would be something that would be decided in court, and taking something like that to court would utterly destroy the OGL, so I expect that's fairly unlikely to happen.

When you reference something in section 15 of the OGL document, almost every company I've ever seen does so in an utterly generic (and, IMHO, fairly useless) manner. You wouldn't say "Tiefling NAME is from 3X SRD, Tiefling MECHANICS are from 4E SRD," you'd simply declare both the 3X and 4E SRD were used in your product.

Take a look at the last page in some OGL products to see what I mean. There's very little useful information in most of them, unfortunately.

--Steve

 

[Varianor Abroad]

Tieflings might be open content, but I won't be surprised to see some sort of new IP name for them all the same.