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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cadfan" data-source="post: 4547589" data-attributes="member: 40961">I don't think the OGL was a major effect. 4e had to be a big change.  Edition changes are BIG DEALS within the gaming community.  If you're going to do one, you'd better grab that bull by the horns, you know?  A meek edition change would be worse than pathetic, and it probably wouldn't sell either. As for the [adjective] + [noun] naming structure, the idea that it was done with an eye towards copyrightabilty is just silly.  In 4e's monster design paradigm, there are lots of different types of each monster.  When you have a [NOUN], and you want to describe several different types of [NOUN], the format [ADJECTIVE] + [NOUN] is the one endorsed by english grammar. And the icons are useful. In general, when a change serves a logical game design goal, it doesn't make sense to use that change as evidence of change for the sake of copyrightability.  Even if that change also mildly affects copyright law.  And I say "mildly" on purpose- lets say that there's a 3e OGL monster called a Glumph, and 4e doesn't have a regular Glumph, it just has the Shadowy Glumph and the Darklord Glumph (a paragon tier version of the regular Glumph).  And lets say that "Glumph" isn't copyrightable on its own, because its either a real word, or its in 3e's OGL.  The absolute worst thing this does to a company who wishes to appropriate the Glumph for their own third party adventure is this: they'll be forced to create an "Umbral Glumph" instead of just using the Shadowy Glumph stats. Who.  Cares.  This does little to nothing for WOTC, and inflicts little to no penalty on the third party.  Which makes me think it wasn't set up this way to punk them.</blockquote>

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