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I don't believe it. I'm sure that federalism, and the appropriate size of political structures and design of political layering, is a fascinating subject in political science, and maybe it comes up more in EU politics. But I don't recall any cases in American politics where states rights weren't...

One classy move? Basically, these people paid $150 and got the same thing as the people who paid $40 (who didn't sound real impressed). To give them a book (MSRP $50) and video game (MSRP $60) is just paying back their $110 in a manner cheaper then cash to WotC and less convenient to the...

Yes, you need the OGL. WotC owns the copyright to the D&D setting (and settings), and any time you pull out a bulette or a dragon color-coded for your convenience for non-fair use purposes, you need that OGL to protect you. Worrying about terms like "hit points" makes people ignore the real...

What you said was "What the OGL does for you is open up a whole lexicon of words ("hit points", "armor class", "saving throw", etc.) to you," In no meaningful way is that true. The OGL opened up a lot of more specific concepts and creatures that WotC could have sued over and won, and opened a...

Agreements are made because there's a colorable claim on one side. There may be other factors besides copyright, but copyright was a huge factor in the OGL. Nobody needed a safe harbor from those terms. When it comes to 5E, it's important to know what you need the OGL for. If you're stressing...

I'm not aware that WotC had trademarks on those words. Copyright simply doesn't protect words like that*, and most of those words have seen use elsewhere in other games. As was said at the dawn of the OGL, copyright didn't stop Palladium Fantasy and Rifts from being written. * "Copyright does...

I've stopped buying the APs a couple times, not being a fan of pirates and not interested in the Mythic rules. But while I liked the ideas behind Shattered Star, Mummy's Mask and Giantslayer, I think it's good that they mix up their traditional APs with stuff that's a little more out there.

The horror one had a Lovecraftian adventure, but not the whole adventure path. The Shattered Star is pretty much straight dungeon crawl for the MacGuffin; nothing horror about it at all.

Long after the Dragon CDs were produced, there was a case with National Geographic Magazine, Greenberg v. National Geographic, where the courts in 2007 ruled that National Geographic's reprints, as whole magazines, were legal. Given that pre-1989 ads needed a separate copyright notice to be...

That is the type of stuff that copyright law does not care about. Just because one person uses the term "muggles" doesn't stop someone else from using the term. The OGL is not particularly clear here, in my opinion; I'm not sure that changing the name from Advantage is necessary, nor that...

The WotC-Palladium lawsuit is quite relevant here. WotC apparently did consult an attorney, and they still got burned. Which brings up a very real question of whether a thousand dollars or whatever to an attorney is going to be a better deal then that same money to your artists. WotC's sanction...

I would say the Holmes estate can't claim copyright over retirement, either, but they sued over it. Can people use the distinctive plot elements unique to the 5E Monster Manual versions of OGL creatures? I'm not nearly so calm as you that they can't claim ownership over them.

Why would you think that? An attorney can't give you a clear pass, like the OGL combined with a friendly WotC can. Can you publish a book about an ettercap-fey war, given that the SRD ettercap entry said nothing about the fey and that was all new to 5E? What happens if you have a darkmantle show...

I don't if this is why you chose it, but a lawyer might well recommend that you don't touch the displacer beast at all, given how it's a copy of A. E. van Vogt's coeurl from The Voyage of the Space Beagle. Sure, it's been used for 40 years by D&D, but to be entirely clear and safe... Same thing...

What does that have to do with discussion about the Confederate Flag? The reason for its creation in the 1860s was to symbolize a country founded on the principles of slavery and white supremacy. The reasons and symbolism for it being flown in the 1960s was to object to the Civil Rights Movement.

I don't see the point in getting a lawyer, especially for something like PCGen. Are they going to go back everytime they have a new file to get it vetted? I'm not aware of any case law on the subject that would allow a lawyer to give a good clear answer. They can say if you do this, you'll...

I was looking at the Aventyr Bestiary Kickstarter and it reminded me of a running frustration with D&D/Pathfinder bestiaries; most of them seem so generic. Paizo and (3.x/4th era) WotC pumped out a number of generic bestiaries for their market plans. But after 5 Paizo Bestiaries, who really...

For around $5000, you could rent a theater for a showing a day for ten days in LA, and be put on the eligible movie list. Given the cost of making a movie, that's not huge. And then somehow you have to get someone to nominate it... If a fan movie can win the Oscars, then the movie studios need...

That's not a question of fact; the universe has no opinion in the matter. The French can love Jerry Lewis and Americans not, and neither one is objectively wrong or right. If you're an American being dragged to Jerry Lewis films by your French SO (and you hold the stereotypical views on the...

And I feel it's BAD to express opinions that don't need to be justified at all on a discussion board, since if you can't justify your position, there's no way to discuss the issue; it just produces heat and annoyance, not discussion. Everything causes HARM. You haven't bothered to weigh that...