4th Ed D&D just like Old School D&D-- when it comes to Cease & Desist Letters

So I noticed that Ema's character sheet website was served with a C&D by WotC. Then they declared war on their customers by serving 4epowercards.com with a C&D. Why? Because WotC is making their own CRAPTASTIC powercards. These are hardcopy cards that you can lose, mix up, forget to bring to game, etc, that cost an arm and a leg, that you have to sort through to choose, and in general don't save any time at all.

The cards at 4epowercards.com let you sort by class, level, type of power. You only needed to print out as many as you needed for your character. Forgot to bring them to game? That's cool, just print them out again when you get there, or read from your laptop. The site was also of great help for building your character-- choosing the powers you were going to take. With the Deck of power cards (BTW you will have to bend over to WotC because the Martial Power and PHB power cards are sold separately by class) you would have to sort through card after card to figure out what you want to make your character. No different from flipping through the book (except that the cards are easier to lose than pages in a book).

Well Wizards, this is my message to you "Cease and Desist being jerks". If someone made a free application to help make a D&D character back in the TSR days, they got sued-- but that was the kind of thing you guys used to mock! Now you are turning into that kind of company? You used to be cool Wizards... what happened?

epochrpg said:

You used to be cool Wizards... what happened?

Click to expand...

IMO, two things:

1) License change. 4E is not open as 3.x was. Many of the things you could get away with (by posting the OGL alongside what you were doing) is not an option now. People may be incorrectly presuming what was allowed under the OGL (such as reposting huge parts of the SRD) is still allowable now.

2) D&D Insider. The websites that have been issued C&Ds provided tools that are (in some form) a feature of D&D Insider.


I'd also guess (but could be completely wrong) that ongoing revenues for both 4E and DDI are lower than expected/hoped at this point, and the idea of giving something away for free via these websites is seen as taking away from revenues that would otherwise be going to WotC.

Maybe it's also the fact that both of these sites were blatently infringing on WotC's copyrights and IP?

Ema's sheets used the tragemarked logo's and full descriptive text of feats, spells, powercards etc.

And 4epowercards also included the full text of the powercards.

Nylanfs said:

Maybe it's also the fact that both of these sites were blatently infringing on WotC's copyrights and IP?

Click to expand...

Really?

Ema's sheets used the tragemarked logo's and full descriptive text of feats, spells, powercards etc.

Click to expand...

Do you know for a fact that this is not within fair use in Italy?

And 4epowercards also included the full text of the powercards.

Click to expand...

They included most of the text of the powers from PH. So how much can you include? One power? Two? Three? Had the PH been a book of food recipes, you could certainly include a lot of those recipes (as food recipes are not covered by copyright). Is the description of a power that much different from a food recipe? Do we know for sure where to draw the line?

Blatantly infringing, you said? (actually, you didn't, but I'll assume you meant that.) You're sure they didn't assume that the infringement was so minor, their sites did more help than harm?

Another reason for the OGL. The OGL saved money on lawyer fees for WotC. Whatever profits 4E makes, they will now be reduced by whatever they have to pay lawyers to protect their now closed IP. With the OGL there was alot less infriingement to worry about legally.

Brown Jenkin said:

Another reason for the OGL. The OGL saved money on lawyer fees for WotC. Whatever profits 4E makes, they will now be reduced by whatever they have to pay lawyers to protect their now closed IP. With the OGL there was alot less infriingement to worry about legally.

Click to expand...

Agreed.

Also, had their fan site policy been out before release of the game, the sites in question would have at least known what was (and wasn't) expected/permitted. Considering the past (TSR), it may have been a prudent move. Of course, the fan policy is still not out, so if you want to have a fansite, you do so at your own risk. (Unless, of course, you are a fan of 3.5, in which case if you follow the terms of the OGL, you're good to go!)

Do we really need another version of this thread?

Epochrpg, simply give it a rest. The days of the OGL are gone forever.

CapnZapp said:

The days of the OGL are gone forever.

Click to expand...

A prophet! A seer!

CapnZapp said:

The days of the OGL are gone forever.

Click to expand...

They are?

(Someone might want to tell Paizo....)

For 4E customers. Wizards will not go back to the freedom of the 3E days.