D&D General What Actually Is Copyright Protected In The SRD?

[doctorbadwolf]

I've seen a lot of vague indications that no one really knows for sure, ie it isn't settle law, but I know we have some lawyers around here who are pretty knowledgeable, and could possibly posit some ideas?

So, as someone who is planning to publish a game within the next year or two (the pandemic pushed things back bc my work was busier than it's ever been, and I've been working 50+ hours a week), I have to wonder, what DnDisms are actually DnDisms, and what is "just mechanics" or otherwise generic enough it can't be protected by copyright?

Like, if I use action, movement, and bonus action, as my action economy, is that in the danger zone?

What about, like, the 6 stats, even if a couple are renamed and they work differently from any edition of dnd?

 

[mamba]

The correct answer is 'no one knows'. IANAL I'd say your action economy might be an issue, having the same number of attributes probably isn't, unless you just rename Constitution to Physique or so and all 6 are functionally the same as D&D's

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

After reading a of this stuff in the past few days, I came to the conclusion than it would probably be possible to rebuild 5e without the 5e SRD if you are careful about your terminology and the specific expression of your rules.

If your stats works differently, just sharing the name of a game mechanic from D&D should not be too much of a problem. Same thing for your action economy: sharing the names is not too bad, but if they work essentially the same as the D&D ones that could be considered as going too far.

 

[Lanefan]

For ironclad sure there's a dozen or so specific monsters that are at least name-protected (Bulette, Beholder, and Yuan-Ti are three). Some you could easily enough reinvent - I mean, part-human part-reptile creatures is a trope that's been around for ages so refluffing and renaming Yuan-Ti should be trivially easy to do - but others (e.g. Beholder) would be much harder to pull off without it being an obvious ripoff of the original.

As for actual mechanics, terms, or rules I have no idea.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

After reading a of this stuff in the past few days, I came to the conclusion than it would probably be possible to rebuild 5e without the 5e SRD if you are careful about your terminology and the specific expression of your rules.

Yeah probably. Honestly with like 6 classes at least halfway done, I’m tempted to put out a game that reworks anything that seems protected, and put it out…

But I don’t need a second rpg to build lol

If your stats works differently, just sharing the name of a game mechanic from D&D should not be too much of a problem. Same thing for your action economy: sharing the names is not too bad, but if they work essentially the same as the D&D ones that could be considered as going too far.

Yeah I may drop Charisma, anyway, and I have Wits and Will which are genuinely different from Int and Wis. I think I’m fine there.

For the action economy, turns and rounds don’t even work the same as D&D, much less actions. But you do have 1 action per round, can move any time you do anything else up to a total of your speed in yards, and you have 2 quick actions which can be used alongside actions on your “turn” (which is really just there to be where you use actions, where you can use all your movement if you want, where things start or end for different effects) of to interrupt or react to something. Each rounds has 3 phases, and the team with the initiative chooses turn order each phase.

For ironclad sure there's a dozen or so specific monsters that are at least name-protected (Bulette, Beholder, and Yuan-Ti are three). Some you could easily enough reinvent - I mean, part-human part-reptile creatures is a trope that's been around for ages so refluffing and renaming Yuan-Ti should be trivially easy to do - but others (e.g. Beholder) would be much harder to pull off without it being an obvious ripoff of the original.

As for actual mechanics, terms, or rules I have no idea.

Anything with a proper noun, for sure, unless it’s definitely a generic term like Druid or thief.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Six ability scores: Traveller has had them since 1977, and they are somewhat similar to D&D: Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Intelligence, Education and Social Standing.

Come to think about it, the order listed is similar to the order in modern D&D, but not the order of D&D at the time. You could argue D&D copied Traveller.

 

[Zardnaar]

Six ability scores: Traveller has had them since 1977, and they are somewhat similar to D&D: Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Intelligence, Education and Social Standing.

Come to think about it, the order listed is similar to the order in modern D&D, but not the order of D&D at the time. You could argue D&D copied Traveller.

D&D 1974

Basically if it's in an edition of D&D it might not be safe at least in expression.

The 6 ability bscores might be safe but +1 at 12/13, +2 at 14/15 etc might not be.

If the IGL goes away if it's in an edition of D&D it might bit be safe beyond basic names. Copying any specific mechanic or expression of it could be messy.

Playing it safe I wouldn't make it class based.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

D&D 1974

If I remember correctly, D&D originally listed ability scores in the order STR, INT, WIS, DEX, CON, CHA. It later switched to physical first then mental, copying Traveller.

 

[Zardnaar]

If I remember correctly, D&D originally listed ability scores in the order STR, INT, WIS, DEX, CON, CHA. It later switched to physical first then mental, copying Traveller.

Ah gotcha derp.

I've been thinking of a very simplev2d6 system for a while using modifiers instead.

-1, 0, 0, +1, +2, +3 as stats and they top out at +3.

DCs
Very Easy 3
Easy 5
Moderate 7
Hard 9
Very Hard 11

I'm sure you can see where this is going.

 

[Yora]

The SRD text itself should be entirely protected by copyright. WotC giving other people permission to use the text in commercial and noncommercial works in its original form or altered does not in any way reduce their copyright to the SRD text.

When it comes to creating new original text from scratch that describes the same game mechanic, I believe the issue is no longer about copyright specifically.

When it comes to names and terms, I think this might actually fall under the case of trademarks. Which I believe is why lots of retroclones have monsters that are functionally straight up beholders but don't use the name beholders.

(Though then there's of course the whole space of plagiarism and I really have no clues what the laws on that might be.)