D&D 5E Everybody's got to have a Patron deity. Where did it come from?

[Shasarak]

Yes, and there are many games that are open these days. All of Pathfinder, except as related to Golarion, Fate, Gumshoe, Appocalypse engine. More that are open than are not these days it seems.

Yes, things have certainly moved on from the old T$R days.

 

[Hussar]

/snip

Whoops, that was a mistake. Nothing to see here. Move along. Thanks.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

Spell lists make sense, that is rules text, but what about setting material?

IF I post a setting where elves and dwarves live in harmony under the sea, WoTC can’t tell me that my homebrew setting violates their IP. Maybe they could if I claimed it was a DnD setting, but that is a slippery line if I say “this is the setting I used for my DnD campaign” because I could move that setting into different systems and then it isn’t a DnD setting, it is just a setting.

There is a tumblr friends of mine go to all the time that is overflowing with homebrewed monsters and classes and races, some of which are from things like Dark Souls which is a very specific setting and would seem to cause them problems with both DnD and the video game company. Yet, they are still up there.

Also, technically, a setting could be under a different SRD. How restrictive is the 3.5 SRD or the 4e SRD in terms of setting material? Evil Hat, Pathfinder? It’d be a nightmare to pursue something like that in terms of someone posting city names and a continent and saying this is the setting they used for their college game.

As long as you avoid selling your setting or claiming it to be official, I don’t think you are really going to get a lot of flak. And if you need to change the rules, well, you print that part out and hand it to the players directly.

The only thing WotC restricts is their IP. That is, anything that they produced that's not in the SRD.

No setting is under any WotC SRD (notwithstanding FR and Ravenloft for DMsGuild).

So sites that posted all of the spells with spell descriptions, including the ones from PotA were asked to remove the offending content. Sites that include only the spells in the SRD, plus as many home-brew ones as they want are fine.

WotC has no interest or right to have you pull material from somebody else's IP. So if you make 5e stats for Dark Souls, LotR, Harry Potter, or anything that's not WotC, it's up to the owners of those IPs to determine what, if anything, they want to do. If your Dark Souls class used and published spells from PotA, then Wizards might contact you.

Note that policing IP is a very time consuming thing, so they have to find it, determine how infringing it is, and then pursue that.

The SRD is specifically so you can publish home-brew things anywhere you want. The only restriction from WotC is that you can't use any of the rest of their IP - that is, anything they published that isn't in the SRD.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

WotC has been providing their system free since 2000 so that is hardly something new.

True, but the d20 SRD removed some key parts of the game (character advancement being one of them if I recall).

But the DMsGuild thing is new, and a huge change. The fact that anybody can use not only the entire 5e ruleset, not just the SRD, and any material published at any time by TSR/WotC as long as the product produced is published only at DMsGuild, and must be generic, Forgotten Realms, or Ravenloft goes way beyond the d20 SRD. I'm not sure there was a 4e SRD.

For example, in the past, WotC decided what Forgotten Realms material to publish, and even if the author of a product was Ed Greenwood, they still got to edit it, and excise or change what they wanted. Now somebody like Ed Greenwood can release as many products for the Forgotten Realms as he wants, which potentially provides far more material for folks like me than ever before.

It also means that I can publish my material, etc.

The changes for the 5e SRD combined with DMsGuild is pretty big. And since Ravenloft was opened up when CoS was released, I expect that if/when they get around to releasing an AP for another setting, that will be open as well. Perhaps they won't even wait for that. Maybe they decide they aren't going to release an official Dragonlance project, so they just open it up.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

Yes, and there are many games that are open these days. All of Pathfinder, except as related to Golarion, Fate, Gumshoe, Appocalypse engine. More that are open than are not these days it seems.

That may be, but as you stated, Golarion isn't open. And are they the complete ruleset? Because as long as what you're publishing is generic, FR, or Ravenloft, you have access to the entire ruleset for DMsGuild.

 

[Shasarak]

But the DMsGuild thing is new, and a huge change. The fact that anybody can use not only the entire 5e ruleset, not just the SRD, and any material published at any time by TSR/WotC as long as the product produced is published only at DMsGuild, and must be generic, Forgotten Realms, or Ravenloft goes way beyond the d20 SRD. I'm not sure there was a 4e SRD.

You are right, being able to write your own official Forgotten Realms material is a cool addition.

 

[Chaosmancer]

The only thing WotC restricts is their IP. That is, anything that they produced that's not in the SRD.

No setting is under any WotC SRD (notwithstanding FR and Ravenloft for DMsGuild).

So sites that posted all of the spells with spell descriptions, including the ones from PotA were asked to remove the offending content. Sites that include only the spells in the SRD, plus as many home-brew ones as they want are fine.

WotC has no interest or right to have you pull material from somebody else's IP. So if you make 5e stats for Dark Souls, LotR, Harry Potter, or anything that's not WotC, it's up to the owners of those IPs to determine what, if anything, they want to do. If your Dark Souls class used and published spells from PotA, then Wizards might contact you.

Note that policing IP is a very time consuming thing, so they have to find it, determine how infringing it is, and then pursue that.

The SRD is specifically so you can publish home-brew things anywhere you want. The only restriction from WotC is that you can't use any of the rest of their IP - that is, anything they published that isn't in the SRD.

So I think we are in agreement here. The only way you could get in trouble is by publishing rules text from something not in the SRD (Such as publishing the text to Aganazzar's Scorcher) or trying to publish a Forgotten Realms book featuring Driz'zt without permission.

Simply writing a campaign setting with no rule text cannot get you a Cease and Desist, because they can't claim IP over the things that make a setting unless you are straight up stealing things from one of their other settings.

 

[Mirtek]

You are right, being able to write your own official Forgotten Realms material is a cool addition.

Your own material is not official. You're merely allowed to work copyrighted stuff into it and sell the result

 

[LordEntrails]

... Serving a deity is a significant part of AD&D, and all player characters should have a patron god. ....

"Should" IS NOT EQUAL to "Required"
Thank you for quoting something that proves my point.

 

[LordEntrails]

I quoted two, the 1e Deities & Demigods, and the 3/3.5e PHB (although it didn't require it).

In terms of the character sheet, it's not convoluted logic when they had separate character sheets for each class, and the Religion and Patron Deity fields were on every sheet, regardless of class. It implies that it is expected, if not required.

That's what led me to look in the 1e core books. AD&D was much more rigid in the way they presented the rules. So if the character sheet had it, then there must have been a rule somewhere. And so there was...

Again, thank you for proving my point. Implying is not Requiring. Just because you ass-u-med something doesn't make it right.

But why does it even matter if it's some rule said it was recommended, required, or implied anyway? This is D&D, every table runs the way it wants to run and uses the rules it wants to use.