D&D General Critical Role Ending

[Mort]

It was a beholder, WotC just refuses to let CR use the product identity stuff. Which is why certain creatures don’t appear and some spells are renamed. It’s Cat’s Claw instead of Bigby’s Hand. Widogast’s Nein-Sided Tower instead of Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Mansion. A person with nine eye stalks that shoot beams that just happen to almost perfectly match a beholder’s eye beams, but not the angry floating no-butthole having rage monster. Etc.

Is that confirmed? Seems a bit odd.

There were absolutely no problems using the product identity stuff in campaign 1 (from Bigby's hand to the Magnificent Mansion to beholders). And now, they're even more intertwined with WoTC, from having an official supplement out to having one of the lead WoTC guys on the show once or twice.

And as @Parmandur said they use WoTC IP all the time - Matt made a point early on to use Volo's and Mordenkainen's new stuff.

I thought the name changes were more a flavor thing.

 

[overgeeked]

Is that confirmed? Seems a bit odd.

There were absolutely no problems using the product identity stuff in campaign 1 (from Bigby's hand to the Magnificent Mansion to beholders).

Right. And they haven’t used any of that a single time in C2. Or anything else that’s trademarked by WotC.

And now, they're even more intertwined with WoTC, from having an official supplement out to having one of the lead WoTC guys on the show once or twice.

An employee of a company appearing on your show has nothing to do with whether IP lawyers will do their job.

And as @Parmandur said they use WoTC IP all the time - Matt made a point early on to use Volo's and Mordenkainen's new stuff.

Using the monster stat blocks from a book is not the same as using trademarked names and monsters.

I thought the name changes were more a flavor thing.

They could be. I thought they were as well until I caught people giving Sam and Liam withering looks when they used words like Bigby and beholder in C2. I could absolutely be wrong. Considering how they used them in C1 then there’s a complete clamp down on the same in C2. Something’s up. Best guess is WotC drew a line and said no. Trademark and copyright are weird. If you don’t actively defend it you risk losing the protection.

 

[MarkB]

I thought the name changes were more a flavor thing.

That certainly seems to be more the case. Caleb is very much an independent researcher when it comes to spells, and he puts his own spin on the established spells.

 

[billd91]

It's possible they have moved up to a level of notice that they had to follow license terms to stay on WotC's good side and avoid any stickiness with the Hasbro legal department.

 

[Parmandur]

Best guess is WotC drew a line and said no

More likely they want to make the Critical Role IP as clean as possible, since they realized it had value.

 

[MarkB]

More likely they want to make the Critical Role IP as clean as possible, since they realized it had value.

That much is true. There are already parts of Campaign 1 that won't make it into the animated series because they strongly feature IP such as mind flayers. If they have designs on eventually similarly adapting campaign 2, it makes sense that they'd want to avoid such issues going forward.

 

[Mort]

More likely they want to make the Critical Role IP as clean as possible, since they realized it had value.

That's true. No matter how friendly they may be with WoTC - it won't get them out of (at a minimum) licensing fees if WoTC sees them using the IP for profit. It's one thing on the stream, but absolutely best avoid it for future stuff.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Right. And they haven’t used any of that a single time in C2. Or anything else that’s trademarked by WotC.

An employee of a company appearing on your show has nothing to do with whether IP lawyers will do their job.

Using the monster stat blocks from a book is not the same as using trademarked names and monsters.

They could be. I thought they were as well until I caught people giving Sam and Liam withering looks when they used words like Bigby and beholder in C2. I could absolutely be wrong. Considering how they used them in C1 then there’s a complete clamp down on the same in C2. Something’s up. Best guess is WotC drew a line and said no. Trademark and copyright are weird. If you don’t actively defend it you risk losing the protection.

Nah. If this was the case, other actual plays wouldn’t be using those terms. High Rollers had a beholder recently, for instance, right after featuring Grazzt. There are people running live plays in FR and Eberron and Dragonlance.

 

[Oofta]

It was a beholder, WotC just refuses to let CR use the product identity stuff. Which is why certain creatures don’t appear and some spells are renamed. It’s Cat’s Claw instead of Bigby’s Hand. Widogast’s Nein-Sided Tower instead of Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Mansion. A person with nine eye stalks that shoot beams that just happen to almost perfectly match a beholder’s eye beams, but not the angry floating no-butthole having rage monster. Etc.

I'd need some proof of that, it seems a bit questionable. They still use plenty of terms and spells that are not in the basic rules.

On the other hand, I change the fluff, names (if I even give the name) and descriptions for monsters all the time so that it fits my vision. It has nothing to do with legalities.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I'd need some proof of that, it seems a bit questionable. They still use plenty of terms and spells that are not in the basic rules.

On the other hand, I change the fluff, names (if I even give the name) and descriptions for monsters all the time so that it fits my vision. It has nothing to do with legalities.

Yep, combined with them making up new spells, it’s a great way to make arcane magic feel like something that is being advanced and developed by living spellcasters.