3rd-Party Apps for 5E Rising From The Dead!

To quote Monty Python, "I'm not Dead Yet!" Over the last few months, a number of D&D 5E third-party electronic tools have been removed from the web at WotC's request. Some of the creators of these tools cited Cease-and-Desists and posted angry "closing down" messages, while others indicated they'd had friendly requests to observe WotC's IP rights. What's interesting is that some of these tools are now reappearing, apparently after having met WotC's requests as to what can or can't be included - whch appears, at least at first blush, to be Basic Rules material, along with some minor trademark usage restrictions.

A couple of notable examples include Pathguy's D&D Next character generator. He closed his generator last month, leaving a closing message, but now the generator is back and running, noting that "I've been granted specific permission by WoTC to publish and distribute this generator. However, I've been asked to limit my "Fifth Edition" character generator to the content of the free online D&D Basic Rules."

That's not the only one that's risen from the grave! The d20 Fight Club for Fifth Edition iOS app was removed from Apple's App Store, citing an actual "cease and desist order from Wizards of the Coast". This, too, is back, under a new name! The creator notes that "To be compliant with Wizards of the Coast copyrights and trademarks this app will no longer contain any content from the Dungeon Master's Guide or use the trademarks "Dungeon Master" and "D20"

So what's happening? It seems that two things are going on. First, the C&Ds folks are talking about don't sound like they're particularly stern, and WotC is happily working things out with the creators of these apps and the like. Secondly, it appears that WotC is limiting use of certain trademarks (which is hardly surprising) and allowing content from the Basic Rules, although that's not 100% clear.

Does this hint at any kind of longer-term policy or license? These are individual agreements at present, but this may be a clue as to what we migh be able to expect in the future.

The D&D Tools website is still closed, but that was a rather different kettle of fish.

​

 

[Nellisir]

Basic as SRD would hobble 3rd parties, in my opinion.

How so? (I'm not disagreeing, just wondering what your reasoning is.)

 

[Dausuul]

How so? (I'm not disagreeing, just wondering what your reasoning is.)

Mostly because Basic is extremely limited in scope. In 3E, the open material included probably 95% of the PHB, the DMG, and the Monster Manual. It was just a handful of monsters and spell names that were excluded, so you could produce third-party software that would come very close to fully supporting a D&D campaign. You might have to manually type in the stats for a mind flayer, and your character sheet would refer simply to disjunction instead of Mordenkainen's disjunction, but most things would work fine.

Basic includes only a third of the classes in 5E--with only one subclass for each!--and maybe a quarter of the monsters. That's a pretty crippled subset for anyone wanting to run a game out of the core books. An online character sheet is a lot less helpful when you have to type in your entire class writeup plus half your spells.

 

[Nellisir]

Mostly because Basic is extremely limited in scope....
Basic includes only a third of the classes in 5E--with only one subclass for each!--and maybe a quarter of the monsters. That's a pretty crippled subset for anyone wanting to run a game out of the core books. An online character sheet is a lot less helpful when you have to type in your entire class writeup plus half your spells.

OK, so you (are you Charles Wright? I'm asking; I don't know.) are looking at it from an electronic tools perspective. Yeah, I can see your point, but there aren't the same drawbacks for the 3rd-party publisher market as the electronic market. I wouldn't be at all suprised if WotC did want to restrict the development of electronic game-play aids. It would seem to me that those would be in much more direct competition with a WotC product than most books.

This hadn't occurred to me, but I think the books & electronics 3rd-party realms are dissimilar enough that we might see different licenses. I don't know of any publishers that produce electronic game-play aids, or developers that write a lot of books, so a license could directly impact one and not the other.

 

[Dausuul]

are you Charles Wright? I'm asking; I don't know.

No, should have made it that clear. Sorry.

OK, so you are looking at it from an electronic tools perspective. Yeah, I can see your point, but there aren't the same drawbacks for the 3rd-party publisher market as the electronic market.

True to an extent, but a Basic SRD would still be a pain for adventure writers. Say you're writing an adventure involving combat with a dragon. If you're limited to the Basic Rules, your options are a young green or an adult red, or to have a dragon without a statblock and just refer the DM to the Monster Manual.

I wouldn't be at all suprised if WotC did want to restrict the development of electronic game-play aids. It would seem to me that those would be in much more direct competition with a WotC product than most books.

Maybe before the Trapdoor/Dungeonscape fiasco, this would have been the case, but I can't imagine they're holding onto any such ideas any more. They have nothing in the way of digital support except a rather feeble website and a few PDFs. Given how small the D&D team is nowadays, I think it highly unlikely they have anything significant in the works. Building software ain't cheap. And, not to mince words, Wizards has repeatedly demonstrated they suck at it.

I suspect sheer necessity will drive them to do what they ought to have done years ago: Provide a licensing scheme for digital and let the fans compete to build e-tools.

 

[DEFCON 1]

As I said on the other thread, hopefully in addition to opening the foundations through Basic, WotC will also allow people to reference other things (especially monsters) by name, even if they can't reprint.

This is how I'd see adventures from 3rd parties working... especially considering we saw exactly what it would look like in the two Tyranny books. Any time there's an encounter, it says in bold the names of the monsters that are in it, thereby directing players to the Tyranny supplements that listed the monster statblocks. I would imagine that a 3PP adventure would probably do the same thing, except rather than WotC providing a downloadable file of the monsters mentioned (since this wouldn't be a Wotc-published product)... you'd be directed to the Monster Manual for all requisite mechanical information.

 

[MartyW]

IP is usually shorthand for Intellectual Property, which is not the same as Product Identity (PI). Since there is no license as of yet, there may very well be items in Basic designated PI or it's 5e equivalent. We don't know.

Yeah, actually I'm aware of the differentiation and I made the mistake of using the abbreviations in successive sentences which muddied my meaning.

My intent was to state that if they made all of Basic open gaming content, that weakens the D&D intellectual property because you need to specifically call out parts consist of the Product Identity which remain protected. If you call out nothing, none of your intellectual property is protected.

If you protect nothing, then anyone can take what you wrote and re-print it word for word and put it up for sale. This has actually happened in the OSR community recently. One of the publishers put their entire book out as open content. Another person came along and essentially changed nothing but the name of the rule book and republished it on RPGNow with a slightly lower price.

While this is ethically the dirt-baggiest thing in the world to do, it was technically legal because the entire book was specified as open gaming content.

WotC wouldn't want to make the same mistake (like they did in 3.x) in allowing the entire text of Basic to be re-used as is. If anything, one might consider a revised version of the OGL that stipulates that a straight-up reprint is not allowed, but sections may be re-used if, for example, the reused portion doesn't exceed a given percentage of the content of the new publication (just an example of a future state, not saying that is currently stipulated anywhere).

Right. You can't copyright a game mechanic, but you can copyright its expression (how it's written down). What the OGL does is allow you to use other people's expressions of game mechanics (or anything else, really) to save time and effort; create compatibility between products; and lessen confusion. It allows for a standard vocabulary across platforms and publishers.

It's not necessary, but it is useful. Hopefully the 5e license will be likewise.

Yeah, and this was what part of that article was expressing. There are a lot of thing that the OGL "allowed" in its text which were actually already allowed under regular copyright law. The OGL merely stipulated them in a way that allowed publishers to not require a gaggle of copyright lawyers in order to publish d20 content.

In that we agree that a document that stipulates exactly what one can and can't reference is needed... but it doesn't have to be a new license like the OGL. We really only need a document that lists things like: "You are allowed to name monsters, but not reprint stat blocks as they are seen in the MM" or similar.

Fortunately, some publishers like Goodman Games, already know what can and cannot be done in product and they are already doing so... but it would be nice for the rest of us to have that clarity.

For example, I think I can put out an adventure with a "Red Dragon" for 5e with my own stat block (as long as the presentation differs from the MM), but I'm pretty sure I can't use "Beholder" since that name is specifically protected. I also am not sure if I can used the word "Advantage" in order to describe rolling 2d20's and taking the better result... Is the word "Advantage" protected? Or do I have to "create" a similarly named mechanic for use in my product? (such as calling it the "Plus Die" or "Minus Die" or some other silly shenanigan to be copyright legal).

Has anyone compiled a list of do and do-nots along these lines?

 

[Charles Wright]

How so? (I'm not disagreeing, just wondering what your reasoning is.)

Dausuul hit the nail on the head.

 

[Charles Wright]

OK, so you (are you Charles Wright? I'm asking; I don't know.) are looking at it from an electronic tools perspective. Yeah, I can see your point, but there aren't the same drawbacks for the 3rd-party publisher market as the electronic market. I wouldn't be at all suprised if WotC did want to restrict the development of electronic game-play aids. It would seem to me that those would be in much more direct competition with a WotC product than most books.

This hadn't occurred to me, but I think the books & electronics 3rd-party realms are dissimilar enough that we might see different licenses. I don't know of any publishers that produce electronic game-play aids, or developers that write a lot of books, so a license could directly impact one and not the other.

I'm not even looking at it from an electronic tools perspective. 4 races and 4 classes to work with? Not good.

 

[Nellisir]

If you protect nothing, then anyone can take what you wrote and re-print it word for word and put it up for sale. This has actually happened in the OSR community recently. One of the publishers put their entire book out as open content. Another person came along and essentially changed nothing but the name of the rule book and republished it on RPGNow with a slightly lower price.

While this is ethically the dirt-baggiest thing in the world to do, it was technically legal because the entire book was specified as open gaming content.

Ayup. The thing that makes it interesting, though, is how rarely that happens. It's been the boogeyman literally since the OGL was released, but I can count the number of times something like that has happened on one hand. Many, many publishers release functionally all of their under the OGL.

WotC wouldn't want to make the same mistake (like they did in 3.x) in allowing the entire text of Basic to be re-used as is.

The thing is, the Basic Rules aren't the SRD. The Basic Rules are a severely clipped version of the core rules, AND presented in an attractive, printable format, for free. The SRD was 98% of the "core rules", spread over...honestly, I forget. PDF documents, I think. Pretty bare text. Intended as a publisher's resource, not a public offering. So reprinting the SRD put you in direct competition with the PHB, DMG, and MM. Reprinting Basic puts you in direct competition with a free product.

If anything, one might consider a revised version of the OGL that stipulates that a straight-up reprint is not allowed, but sections may be re-used if, for example, the reused portion doesn't exceed a given percentage of the content of the new publication (just an example of a future state, not saying that is currently stipulated anywhere).

There won't a version 2.0 of the OGL. It'll be a new license. That caveat aside, yes. That's a possibility. I think it's unlikely because it's small and fidgety, not open and obvious.

Yeah, and this was what part of that article was expressing. There are a lot of thing that the OGL "allowed" in its text which were actually already allowed under regular copyright law. The OGL merely stipulated them in a way that allowed publishers to not require a gaggle of copyright lawyers in order to publish d20 content.

I'm not sure that's entirely true, or at least it's simplifying the issue. The point of the OGL wasn't to protect or allow game mechanics to be reproduced, it was to allow the reproduction of the expression of game mechanics. Which you couldn't do under default copyright.

In that we agree that a document that stipulates exactly what one can and can't reference is needed... but it doesn't have to be a new license like the OGL. We really only need a document that lists things like: "You are allowed to name monsters, but not reprint stat blocks as they are seen in the MM" or similar.

This would be a license.

For example, I think I can put out an adventure with a "Red Dragon" for 5e with my own stat block (as long as the presentation differs from the MM), but I'm pretty sure I can't use "Beholder" since that name is specifically protected. I also am not sure if I can used the word "Advantage" in order to describe rolling 2d20's and taking the better result... Is the word "Advantage" protected? Or do I have to "create" a similarly named mechanic for use in my product? (such as calling it the "Plus Die" or "Minus Die" or some other silly shenanigan to be copyright legal).

Agreed on all points, although if you go outside the OGL, you also have to address the issue of "Feats", for example.

Has anyone compiled a list of do and do-nots along these lines?

I can't help but think that would be incredibly risky legally. I wouldn't want the responsibility and potential liability of doing so if I were a lawyer.

 

[weldon]

I'm glad to hear that pathguy has been given some leeway to bring his character builder back online, but I think the restriction to the basic rules serves to underline the point that a chargen program is really only useful if it contains all of the material available.

I wish wizards would be willing to try working with a third party here. Even something like a limited license that doesn't allow for the use of descriptive text (labels only) would be welcome and would allow for a lot of creativity. That would certainly not discourage anyone from buying the books because they'll definitely need it for spell effects, class features, etc. If they want to release an "official" tool later, I think the descriptive text would be a draw.