Legal Eagle ft Matt Colville on the OGL

[darjr]

Dungeons & Dragons Rolls a 1 on New License (OGL 1.1) ft. Matt Colville

 

[darjr]

@Morrus

 

[overgeeked]

From the other thread...

I think one thing he mentioned is worth repeating endlessly.

Words with Friends can exist because you cannot copyright the rules to Scrabble.

A VTT does not reproduce the copyrighted expression of the rules of a game. It uses non-copyrightable rules and processes. VTTs are safe. WotC can sue, because anyone can sue for any reason. But they'll likely lose. I am not a lawyer.

For an example using Hasbro IP. The board game Diplomacy. There are at least two websites that host games of Diplomacy with no connection or license to do so by Hasbro. Because they don't need one. PlayDiplomacyOnline and Backstabbr. These sites are VTTs for Diplomacy.

 

[overgeeked]

The gofundme Legal Eagle mentioned is here:

Donate to Reasonable Minds Can REBUILD!, organized by Katie Johansen

Hey Friends, Mrs. HoegLaw here, I asked Rick’s sister to write this up, because it was ju… Katie Johansen needs your support for Reasonable Minds Can REBUILD!

www.gofundme.com

 

[Ondath]

He gave a shoutout to the Opening Arguments episode on the debacle, which I find rather disappointing. Those guys were essentially claiming Linda Codega wrote a hitpiece and signal boosting that voice is not cool IMO.

 

[mellored]

TLDR: you don't need permission to make something "compatible with" DnD. Home brew and 3rd party adventure where always legal.

You just need it for using stuff like their logo, beholder, drizzt, or directly copying rules from the SRD, like quoting the fireball spell in a monster stat block.

OGL gives permission for some of that stuff.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

TLDR: you don't need OGL to make something "compatible with" DnD. Home brew and 3rd party adventure where always legal.

You just need it for using stuff like their logo, beholder, drizzt, or directly copying rules from the SRD, like quoting the fireball spell in a monster stat block.

NO.

INCORRECT.

Bolded bit is NOT ALLOWED BY ANY SRD. Explicitly! Please can people stop repeating this canard? You've always needed a separate licence to do that. DM's Guild's licence allows that, but that means you lose 50% of the revenue of your product AND can't publish it anywhere but DM's Guild.

 

[mellored]

NO.

INCORRECT.

Bolded bit is NOT ALLOWED BY ANY SRD. Explicitly! Please can people stop repeating this canard? You've always needed a separate licence to do that. DM's Guild's licence allows that, but that means you lose 50% of the revenue of your product AND can't publish it anywhere but DM's Guild.

Fixed.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Fixed.

It's not showing as fixed for me, but ok.

 

[mellored]

It's not showing as fixed for me, but ok.

The main point is that you don't need permission, at all, to make homebrew and 3rd party adventures for 5e.

Rules and ideas can not be copywritten.

Specific wording can be though.