D&D 5E Necromancer Games - 3 5E books announced!

[Azgulor]

I also just tweeted Mearls about this, saying that I hope WotC embraces the OGL. He favorited my tweet.

I speculate that Mearls is an OGL supporter, and either a) they've already decided to do OGL, and Mearls wants to raise buzz, or b) they haven't decided whether or not to do OGL, and Mearls wants to convince the higher-ups that it's what the customers want.

Considering how much work Mearls got in the 3e/3.5 era under the d20 & OGL licenses, he'd have to be a bit of a hypocrite not to be an OGL fan. Mr. Mearls doesn't strike me as a hypocrite.

I could be wrong, however. I've been a pretty big fan of Schwalbs' work in the past but I thought his recent blog was 90+% full of crap.

I'd bet that there is a plan for a license & Mearls is pushing for the OGL to be used instead of the planned-for version.

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

Glad to see Necromancer Games have come back from the dead.

 

[Mistwell]

Hot damn that was fast

"The System Reference Document v5.0 is written, owned, and Copyright 2014 Jim Walkoski. System Reference Document v5.0™ and SRD5™ are trademarks of Jim Walkoski."

I wonder how long Jim Walkoski will keep that copyright

Yeah, he screwed that up, and is going to get slapped for it. Even if WOTC puts all of that in the SRD (which they have not), he did it wrong, and baldly laid claim to WOTC's copyrighted material as his own.

 

[Sanglorian]

Yeah, he screwed that up, and is going to get slapped for it. Even if WOTC puts all of that in the SRD (which they have not), he did it wrong, and baldly laid claim to WOTC's copyrighted material as his own.

Hey Mistwell, I'm interested to hear more about this. The SRD5 clone relies on names and game mechanics, neither of which are subject to copyright. However, I know of one lawyer who believes that OSRIC, Swords & Wizardry, and other retroclones infringe a kind of aggregate creative expression even though their components are not subject to copyright.

Which parts in particular of SRD5 do you think infringe US copyright law?

 

[ccooke]

Hey Mistwell, I'm interested to hear more about this. The SRD5 clone relies on names and game mechanics, neither of which are subject to copyright. However, I know of one lawyer who believes that OSRIC, Swords & Wizardry, and other retroclones infringe a kind of aggregate creative expression even though their components are not subject to copyright.

Which parts in particular of SRD5 do you think infringe US copyright law?

I know little about US copyright law, but I can't see WotC allowing him to claim that all the material he's copied from the Basic PDF is his copyright, with the names and rules intact.

Even the - really dodgy looking - "trick" where he's claiming that every word in a wordlist, plus all the two-part compounds and pairs you can make from it are released under his license won't help him much, since he's copied names of abilites in the Backgrounds, Races and Classes sections. I am pretty sure that a trait "Shelter of the Faithful" of an "Acolyte" Background that is a direct paraphrase of the text under the same name in the Basic PDF wouldn't be looked upon kindly by any sane court.

The request for donations and the license that he's posted that requires him to be informed of any use of the content *and* for any third party to use his logo is, I think, the bit where it crosses the line from "Optimistic but inadvisable" to "Foolishly premeditated law-breaking". At least to my mind.

 

[Mythmere1]

Well, I hope this thread doesn't become sidetracked into what's being attempted with this SRD5 thing.

 

[ccooke]

Well, I hope this thread doesn't become sidetracked into what's being attempted with this SRD5 thing.

Good point.

Although to be on-topic... I'm sad that you can't get the individual books on their own. I'd only be interested in the spells as a resource, personally. But then, I'm not in the US so there isn't much reason to back for an individual book even if I *could*, since it's been said that the books will be available after the kickstarter but without free postage... and if I back the kickstarter, it'll cost me $30 shipping.

It's great news that the kickstarter exists, though

 

[Sanglorian]

Well, I hope this thread doesn't become sidetracked into what's being attempted with this SRD5 thing.

That's fair - I've created a new thread for us to talk about 5SRD. Look forward to seeing you there, ccooke and Mistwell (and everyone else who's interested, of course).

 

[Gundark]

I think this bodes well for 5e that this funded in less than a day and has 58 more days to hit stretch goals

 

[Nebulous]

I think this bodes well for 5e that this funded in less than a day and has 58 more days to hit stretch goals

At this rate they're all going to be full color leatherbound tomes.