A d20 NPC Wiki?

[Roudi]

Wikicities already uses a different Open Licence, and thus can't use the OGL. As it was explained to me, game terms don't fall under copyright, but text from the SRD or other sources might be more legally dubious...

The SRDs are copyrighted to Wizards of the Coast. Other, non-WotC books are typically copyrighted to their publishers or authors.

Do you have the link explaining the Wiki's open license agreement? I'd like to see what's causing the conflict.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Do you have the link explaining the Wiki's open license agreement? I'd like to see what's causing the conflict.

Wikicities uses this policy.

The d20 NPCs Wiki doesn't fall under the OGL, but under the WotC fan site policy. Thus, creating stat blocks created with the SRD should be okay, but copying (for instance) whole monster entries from the SRD wouldn't.

At least, that's how I understood certain earlier posters in this thread, and I seriously hope they are right. So unless I get some official notice from WotC, I'll be sticking with this.

 

[Yair]

Wikicities uses this policy.

The d20 NPCs Wiki doesn't fall under the OGL, but under the WotC fan site policy. Thus, creating stat blocks created with the SRD should be okay, but copying (for instance) whole monster entries from the SRD wouldn't.

At least, that's how I understood certain earlier posters in this thread, and I seriously hope they are right. So unless I get some official notice from WotC, I'll be sticking with this.

The conflict I see is essentially this text in the bottom of the edit page:

You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see project:Copyrights for details). DO NOT SUBMIT COPYRIGHTED WORK WITHOUT PERMISSION!

WotC's policy doesn't relinqish their copyright over their work, nor gives anyone else copyrights. If you copy something from a WotC book, you're doing it without having the copyright and hence in violation of the WikiCity license. If you're copying something from an OGL source you again don't have a copyright (you would if you published under the OGL, but you can't publish under both the OGL and the GFDL).
If you don't COPY anything but just use the same format, feat names, and so on then you MAY not be in violation of COPYright at all and so can use the GFDL. I'm not sure if that's true, though, it smells to me like derivative work. But I am not a lawyer.

I personally think the best way to do it is to use a site that doesn't follow the GFDL or any other license; to basically ignore all laws/licenses and just publish the site under WotC's fan-site policy. (Ignoring also the fact that you're publishing other company's stuff.) By using the GFDL you are making claims you can't back up (you don't own the copyright), and allowing others to do stuff you have no right to allow (anyone can take the stuff and publish/edit it under the GFDL).

That said, if WikiCities or WotC and so on don't make a fuss over it, then I probably shouldn't either.

 

[Fieari]

Phew. This project is really giving my character creation skills a run for their money. Just spent several hours making a kobold sorcerer lich (and plopped him down pre-lich too for good measure). I'm always amazed at how much work this is... I hope more people make use of this. Esspecially for higher level stuff, which is where I'm starting to game at and which takes the most work.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Yeah, this is going to be a great resource. I'm going to add in some of my monsterous classed stuff that I use a lot, too. I have some classed hobgoblins, kobolds (lots of kobolds!), gnolls, and some other stuff.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

26 entries so far!

Keep them coming, guys!

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Added:
Advanced Crysmal CR4
Phrenic Wight

 

[Infernal Teddy]

I'll try and cook something up for this asap, just have to find out how to use wiki...

The last time I coded anything, it was assembler-code on a C64...


Edit: Should the NPC's be completely genertic, or can they be tied to a specific setting, for example Arcana Unearthed, Forgotten Realms, usw...?

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

I was thinking that a separate Arcana Unearthed wiki could be added later, but we might want to have a game-world organizer for standard D&D characters, for those worlds that have unique races, like gold dwarves or changelings.

 

[S'mon]

If you don't COPY anything but just use the same format, feat names, and so on then you MAY not be in violation of COPYright at all and so can use the GFDL. I'm not sure if that's true, though, it smells to me like derivative work. But I am not a lawyer.

It wouldn't IMO be a derivative work in UK, it might be in USA where the concept is broader. It might be fair use in USA though. Anyway WoTC have said they don't mind fan sites posting NPCs so unless they publicly change their mind we shouldn't worry about it.