Attn: Paradigm any word on Unveiled Masters?

[tensen]

So how many copies are in the print-run? Time to corner the market and scalp the books like concert tickets

 

[HellHound]

Yeah, suddenly sounds like it is time to call up the printers and double the print run size.



After all, this book and the Slayer's Guide to Yuan-Ti from Mongoose are instant collector's items!

PS: Instead of sending me a single contributor's copy... make it a case.

 

[Gez]

The art is great, but... I understand what Ryan said on the OGL list. These flayers on the cover are dressed the same as the one in the MM, even with the little skull on the waist chain. :/

 

[rpace]

Er -- since Todd Lockwood did the MM illos of the flayer it makes a certain sense that his UM cover flayers look an aweful lot like them.

I'm not sure what you're referring to when commenting on what Ryan said. . . .

And, er, the little skull on the waist chain? I don't see one in the MM.

Take care,

Richard Pace
~Art-Golem

 

[Gez]

I was speaking of that (don't know if my English is very proper, but I can't call it a belt since it hangs like a necklace, so I coined waist chain, but well):

 

[Gez]

Here's from the MM illo, although a bit different we still have the same "chain and skull" scheme:

 

[Gez]

And, from an even older sourcebook, the illithiad:

 

[Gez]

That last one was really hard to find.

About what Ryan said, I refer to a message you can see on these forums, quoted by Jaldaen on page 2 of the Update SRD - Critters thread.

More specifically, this passage:

> Ryan, is this an oversight or is it intentional?

When preparing the monster sections of the SRD, I tried to remove all specific physical descriptions of the creatures. I did that because it would be very hard for a publisher to understand the difference between creating a derivative work based on WotC's illustration, and creating a derivative work based on a physical description. The former is a copyright infringement, the latter would be standard use of the OGL.

The SRD is drafted with an eye towards making it as easy as possible to tell a publisher "if you use what's in the SRD and ignore D&D, you >will< comply with the OGL, and the d20 System Trademark License, and won't infringe WotC's copyrights or trademarks".

Thus, if you want to create illustrations for creatures in the SRD, you need to create them from whole cloth, not by starting with the description in the Monster Manual. For most creatures, that's neither hard to do, nor very time consuming. For a handful, it's both. For most of the creatures, the illustrations you're likely to create will be recognizable to the average gamer, because those monsters are drawn from myth and legend and have commonly accepted forms and shapes. For the handful that don't, you are a bit out of luck. (Although, as I said before, they could be black-boxed. If you started with someone who had never seen an illustration of a Mind-Flayer, and gave them the SRD
description, and they gave you back an illustration of an octopus-headed humanoid, you'd be in the clear, since your work was not derivative of WotC's copyright).

Of course, this is a bit tricky. Since WotC fired its artists, they need to find jobs somewhere else, and they'll tend to picture the same creature the same way. Taking Ryan's logic to the extreme, one could say you are forbidden from employing illustrators that have worked on the Monster Manual for for working on SRD creatures.

If I were in the mood for socio-economico-political debate, I would say we see there the superiority of the French "droit d'auteur" system over the copyright system, as the autor of a piece of work (text, music, picture, etc.) keep his rights over the material he has created.

 

[Tewligan]

Gez, please stop posting close-up pictures of mind flayer crotches. It makes me feel dirty. My only consolation is that their robes make it impossible to know the toe.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Somebody (Henry, Hellhound?) step in here and help me out with an OGL question.

If Wizards allows this release, what impact does that have on others who want to use Open Content from Unveiled Masters?

Or will UM have to have some kind of sticker or addendum to the print-version of your OGL that explicitly retains the Mind Flayer IP for Wizards?


Wulf