C&Ds for Online D&D 5E Character Generators

Ed Friedlander reports that WotC has asked him to remove his D&D character generators. Ed ran the generators at his site, Pathguy.com, including a D&D 5E character generator. His Pathfinder RPG character generator is still running. Thanks to Slayyne for the scoop (who also reports that at least one other site has also closed). [Update: while the actual request has not been shared, others have reported that these are very amicable requests].

You can see his closing note here.

"After almost two decades, Wizards of the Coast has asked me to remove my online character generators. I appreciate the many people who have written and thanked me for my work, and I hope you will continue to enjoy the hobby.

As a physician and gamer, I've supported and defended the hobby, and helped concerned families understand its value.

The "Dungeons and Dragons" phenomenon has encouraged young people to study other cultures. It is a game in which people work together to accomplish a meaningful goal. Characters even define themselves in terms of their good morals and their ethics. On one level, it simulates the spiritual warfare described in the Christian scriptures and in the Arthurian legends on which the game is based. I am proud that I was able to make a contribution.

My generator for Pathfinder will of course remain online. Click here for more information about this role-playing game.

May your dice come up 20s.

Ed Friedlander MD"

Back in November, the D&D Tools website suffered a similar fate, as have a couple of spellcard websites. While WotC appears to be largely easygoing as far as fan creations are concerned, they do take action when content from their products is copied or distributed.

Ed's character generator created characters by selecting a number of options, and output a character sheet similar to below. I'm not all that familiar with it, so I don't know what text, if any, it may have borrowed from the official rules.

As yet, there's no license (Open Gaming or otherwise) for D&D 5th Edition (although WotC does intend to do so), although a number of publishers have published books anyway using the older Open Gaming License for D&D 3E and 3.5.

What is interesting to hear is that some people who have received such requests describe them as very amicable. Toxic Rat says "Speaking from personal experience, I received a very nice email asking that I take down particular content owned by WotC. No threats, no warnings of legal action, just a request to honor their copyright." That's great to hear.

​

 

[Morrus]

He's also choosing not to share the details of the request (and I asked him on Facebook). So I'm half inclined to think there was an alternative resolution he chose not to adopt.

 

[Dire Bare]

Those generators had all kinds of references to WotC trademarks. PHB, DMG, book names, monster and character names. They were a mess in terms of compliance. They also had all of the options available from all of the books. Something that you couldn't do just by using the SRD.

Not really responding to Weldon here, but I've noticed something in some quotes of folks on my ignore list.

I'm not familiar with Pathguy's generators, but it appears he's been making them since the 2E days for all the successive versions of D&D, including Pathfinder. It was implied by a previous poster that Pathguy had TSR and later WotC's permission to do so. So the question was, "why now"?

While I'm of course not privy to the details, the answer to that seems simple to me. Pathguy never had permission from TSR, WotC, or Paizo to create any of his generators. He was not asked to remove them earlier, because he wasn't on TSR/WotC's radar until now. The internet is a big place, and I bet there are all sorts of IP, trademark, copyright, and license violations going on all the time that the IP holders simply don't know about.

Just because nobody's telling you to stop, doesn't mean you are following the rules correctly. And it won't stop somebody from bringing down the hammer years later when they finally stumble upon what you are doing.

 

[Icon_Charlie]

He's also choosing not to share the details of the request (and I asked him on Facebook). So I'm half inclined to think there was an alternative resolution he chose not to adopt.

Thank you for the followup. It is good to know as much information as possible before coming to a conclusion.

 

[Evenglare]

Heh. No.

WotC isn't stomping on anyone's creativity, and they aren't doing their own game a disservice. Outside of some small internet circles, no one even knows who Pathguy is much less that WotC has asked him politely to remove his generators. And many of us who are aware agree with the actions WotC has taken. Pathguy chose not to follow WotC's guidelines on fan content, and was asked to stop. He could have taken the time initially to make sure he was in the clear with WotC, but did not. Not saying he's a bad guy, I'm sure his intent wasn't ill.

You want to play somebody else's game? Play by their rules. Don't like it? Don't play.

Please for the love of god link these 5e guidelines! PLEASE! I want to follow them, show me where they are and I'll be HAPPY to follow them!!

 

[ren1999]

The problem with crushing fan created tools that this big gaming company has failed to provide us is that it causes us no longer to be fans. I'm upset with the firing of employees and now I'm upset about this big gaming company asking fans to remove these wonderful character creation tools. So what I'm going to do is stop supporting this big game company and go over to Pathfinder. I'm going to take the best of Pathfinder and 13th Age and I'm going to design a better game myself and promote it.

 

[Stormonu]

"big Gaming Company?"

There's like eight guys now.

 

[Ranes]

note that you can reference trademarks as part of fair use

Others have observed that Pathguy's work was a minefield of potential trademark infringement. I don't know if that's the case or not but there's a wider problem with the nominative use defence and that is this:

It's US law. Trademarks must be protected internationally (unless you want to stick to the US, of course). Many countries have no equivalent of the US concept of 'fair use'. (Shock, horror.) Nominative use is no defence in much of the world. And if you do not vigorously protect your trademarks, you are asking to lose them.

 

[ren1999]

Excuses, excuses. Copy right this and slap a lawsuit on that. Pathfinder is now king in my world. I will now actively create tools and promote Pathfinder. That other company be damned to fail.

 

[Iosue]

(In case you are wondering, my country's name roughly translates to what I said in the sidebar -just adjusted to sound more poetic-. You just need to say it in a certain language, and curiously that language's endonym is roughly the same word as the country's name)

Say, here's an idea. Instead of making everyone guess what country you're from, or go looking up country name etymologies to figure it out, why don't you just tell us where you are from?

/kramerasmoviephone

"big Gaming Company?"

There's like eight guys now.

The eight guys responsible for D&D R&D are not the whole company, and likely have the least amount of input on whether to allow generators, put out an OGL, or PDFs, or whether to hire or fire anybody.

 

[MoonSong]

Others have observed that Pathguy's work was a minefield of potential trademark infringement. I don't know if that's the case or not but there's a wider problem with the nominative use defence and that is this:

It's US law. Trademarks must be protected internationally (unless you want to stick to the US, of course). Many countries have no equivalent of the US concept of 'fair use'. (Shock, horror.) Nominative use is no defence in much of the world. And if you do not vigorously protect your trademarks, you are asking to lose them.

But it is the internet, we also need to decide whether the most strict or the softest law apply. Because if it is the strongest then Mexico's law on copyright applies, which deprives the public domain in the net of every work done after 1915 -no explicit provisions for early release into pd- and of every author who died after the same year -100 years after death of the autor-, oh and the OGL just doesn't work -we oughta tell Paizo that one-.

Say, here's an idea. Instead of making everyone guess what country you're from, or go looking up country name etymologies to figure it out, why don't you just tell us where you are from?

Where's the fun in that?

Not really responding to Weldon here, but I've noticed something in some quotes of folks on my ignore list.

am I on your ignore list?