A d20 NPC Wiki?

[Yair]

Sigh. I really wanted to avoid being a moderator for this, but I guess I have no choice...

I just submitted a proposal to Wikicities. Now we can only wait for their answer...

I'm sorry to rain on everyone's parade, but doesn't Wikicities use the Share-Alike copyleft license? This would make it impossible to add an OGL-based wiki to it, you can't use both licenses at the same time. I think.
In my search of wiki farms for a similar project, I could only find one that, to the best of my knowledge, did not restrict the license - Riters, which seems rather primitive. Of course, I was not thorough.

I'lll gladly contribute some NPCs to this, and even more gladly take some...

 

[Yair]

Thanks, Jurgen. I'm sure we'll all share the "fun" of managing it.

While that's going, let's hash out some categories...

Well, for one thing I suggest basing the categories on CR rather than ECL. I'm not looking for player characters, I'm looking for opponents (or allies, where neither is important), and those two can differ greatly.

Another option in addition to adventurer should be Improved Monster. Those things can be just as difficult, and just as useful.

I think a good idea would be to have the NPC's "niche" identified, i.e. to come up with an extensive list of NPC and monster roles in an ecnounter far beyond Adventurer or BBEG. I'm thinking of a classification akin to the Penumbra Fantasy Bestiary: an entry might be an Deus-Ex-Machina-Rescue, an Informant, a Trader-of-Goods, an Evil Priest, an Evil Wizard, a Trick-Combatant, or so on.

A key to this working is to have a good search and good categorization.

 

[S'mon]

I'm sorry to rain on everyone's parade, but doesn't Wikicities use the Share-Alike copyleft license? This would make it impossible to add an OGL-based wiki to it, you can't use both licenses at the same time. I think.

There's no need to use the OGL unless you're planning to publish some material that's copyright of WoTC, like the stat block of a monster from the SRD or an NPC based directly off that. The terms themselves aren't copyrightable - I was planning to use my quick-NPC stat block (in sig).

Edit: Anyway this is a non-commercial fan operation like the ENW Rogues' Gallery, right?

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

There's no need to use the OGL unless you're planning to publish some material that's copyright of WoTC, like the stat block of a monster from the SRD or an NPC based directly off that. The terms themselves aren't copyrightable - I was planning to use my quick-NPC stat block (in sig).

Can we get some sort of Official Word on this? I'd really like to know before I set it up. You know, since I am officially responsible for it and everything...

I mean, effectively all NPCs are based on the SRD, right? And what about "variant monsters" - like advancing existing monsters to a larger size (complete with HD and skill increases), or applying templates to them?

Edit: Anyway this is a non-commercial fan operation like the ENW Rogues' Gallery, right?

That, certainly.

 

[JimAde]

There's no need to use the OGL unless you're planning to publish some material that's copyright of WoTC, like the stat block of a monster from the SRD or an NPC based directly off that. The terms themselves aren't copyrightable - I was planning to use my quick-NPC stat block (in sig).

Edit: Anyway this is a non-commercial fan operation like the ENW Rogues' Gallery, right?

Exactly. If EN World and similar sites can exist, so can this Wiki. Same thing.

So Yair raises a valid point. We should set down rules about what to include. To me the term "NPC" means an intelligent creature whose abilities come primarily from class levels. So advanced Gargoyles, while potentially interesting, aren't NPCs. But, of course, I may have the minority opinion on this.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

So Yair raises a valid point. We should set down rules about what to include. To me the term "NPC" means an intelligent creature whose abilities come primarily from class levels. So advanced Gargoyles, while potentially interesting, aren't NPCs. But, of course, I may have the minority opinion on this.

Well, if there are no legal problems with including it, I would say we should put advanced monsters in there. After all, the main purpose of this is providing DMs with ready-made stat blocks so that they don't need to prepare them themselves - and advancing monsters also takes a lot of time, just as with "normal" NPCs...

 

[JimAde]

Okay. Add in the AdvancedMonster category!

So as I see it we have the following so far:

AdvancedMonster
LevelECL1 (etc.)
RoleBBEG, RoleMundane, RoleAdventurer

Also, people could include their own categories. So say I decided to post all the people that work at the Red Mastiff Inn in my campaign city of Linnburg. So I add the keywords

RedMastiffInn CityOfLinnburg

Then I put a quick description under both of these headings and if somebody finds my innkeeper he might see the RedMastiffInn link. He clicks on it, and sees that several other NPC pages reference this and can grab them all.

Wiki is a great tool for this. I'm psyched.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Advanced monsters are almost a requirement, since advancement by class levels is basically what an NPC is. The difference between a gnoll 4 barbarian and a wolf with extra Hit Dice is actually insignificant in the d20 system.

 

[S'mon]

Well, if there are no legal problems with including it, I would say we should put advanced monsters in there. After all, the main purpose of this is providing DMs with ready-made stat blocks so that they don't need to prepare them themselves - and advancing monsters also takes a lot of time, just as with "normal" NPCs...

Hi Jurgen - I discuss the legal situation a bit here - http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=136725 - but I don't think it's the law you're concerned with* so much as WoTC's policy on fan sites. TSR used to have a "no fan D&D materials except in the Authorised Zone" policy, but WoTC has never attempted to control fan sites & materials on the Internet. You can check their policy on fan sites if you like, it's probably on their web site. Note that they will NOT actually _authorise_ you to do anything with their IP, for lawyerly reasons. What you want to know is whether they'll send you a cease & desist letter (which they could do if they wanted whether or not there was any legal basis for so doing). AFAIK they definitely won't for the kind of thing we're discussing here; or else a lot of Internet sites would have been shut down.

*FWIW: copying & pasting a paragraph straight from the SRD without using the OGL is potentially copyright infringement. Listing an NPC's stats without using WoTC's stat block format isn't, IMO, at least in UK. To infringe copyright you need to copy a substantial part of a work, generally more than a sentence but less than a paragraph.

 

[S'mon]

AFAIK Ryan Dancey's fan site policy still stands:

"Right now, my plan is pretty simple: If you're charging money for any aspect of D&D, you're going to be required to use the OGL and the d20 STL. If you say you're following the OGL or the d20 STL, you're going to be forced to follow them. So, if you've got a fan site that's a collection of characters, and they don't claim to be using the OGL or the d20 STL, and they're not charging money, we're going to ignore them."

From
http://www.enworld.org/forums/article.php?a=15