D&D General Critical Role Ending

[pemerton]

Trademark and copyright are weird. If you don’t actively defend it you risk losing the protection.

This is not true of copyright. And in the context of both it would be very straightforward for WotC to grant licences. That's not to say you're wrong about the lack of licences, but the reasons for not granting any - if they haven't been granted - would be strictly commercial, not legal.

 

[Oofta]

There's a difference between a troll and a beholder. The troll is generic and not under copyright, the beholder is unique and under copyright. The SRD lists what WotC considers Product Identity. On that list are "proper names (including those used in the names of spells or items)" followed by a long list of specific locations and characters and it finishes off with "beholder, gauth, carrion crawler, tanar’ri, baatezu, displacer beast, githyanki, githzerai, mind flayer, illithid, umber hulk, yuan‑ti." Of that entire list, I think only beholders and illithid / mind flayers appeared in C1. I know displacer beasts and yuan-ti appeared in C2...but I don't remember if either were actually name dropped in the episodes.

There's also a huge difference between the level of scrutiny most DMs have to deal with and what Matt does on Critical Role. You can use whatever you want and call it whatever you want. No matter how much you violate someone's intellectual property, you're not going to get a call from anyone's lawyer. On CR the cast has to drink from unlabeled cups and they have to cover any logos because they're broadcasting to however many millions of viewers on a weekly basis. They have to follow much different IP rules than the rest of us.

They use classes and spells that are not in the basic rules. As far as monsters, Matt does some custom stuff for monsters and classes that are unique to his campaign world. Others come from various published sources other than the basic rules. When it comes to spells, Liam likes to add his own spin. But things definitely come from the published books. For example, Fjord casts Thunder Step which is from Xanathar's. Laura plays a trickster cleric, Taliesin is a Firbolg grave domain cleric and so on. Those aren't in the basic rules. He does have a custom subclass for Marisha and other custom things. So do a lot of DMs.

Just because Matt likes to make up new stuff, doesn't mean there are any licensing issues. If the Wildemount book reprinted things directly from WOTC, it could be an issue. Running a streaming game? There's no issue unless they claim the rules as their own.

You have no basis for your claim, sorry.

 

[pemerton]

There's a difference between a troll and a beholder. The troll is generic and not under copyright, the beholder is unique and under copyright. The SRD lists what WotC considers Product Identity. On that list are "proper names (including those used in the names of spells or items)" followed by a long list of specific locations and characters and it finishes off with "beholder, gauth, carrion crawler, tanar’ri, baatezu, displacer beast, githyanki, githzerai, mind flayer, illithid, umber hulk, yuan‑ti."

I believe WotC's interests here are broadly in the realm of trademark rather than copyright.

There's also a huge difference between the level of scrutiny most DMs have to deal with and what Matt does on Critical Role. You can use whatever you want and call it whatever you want. No matter how much you violate someone's intellectual property, you're not going to get a call from anyone's lawyer. On CR the cast has to drink from unlabeled cups and they have to cover any logos because they're broadcasting to however many millions of viewers on a weekly basis. They have to follow much different IP rules than the rest of us.

The difference isn't about scrutiny. It's about whether or not someone else is using IP's intellectual property, without being licensed, in the course of trade. When I GM a game at home I am not trading. I think CR are trading - they are commercial service providers.

As I posted, the issues are primarily commercial, not legal. See further these posts:

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.

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

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.

 

[pemerton]

Just because Matt likes to make up new stuff, doesn't mean there are any licensing issues. If the Wildemount book reprinted things directly from WOTC, it would be an issue. Running a streaming game? There's no issue unless they claim the rules as their own.

If your streaming is a commercial venture, and you use WotC's trademarks without a licence, that would be an issue. I would strongly suggest getting legal advice if you are planning to do this.

 

[Rikka66]

If your streaming is a commercial venture, and you use WotC's trademarks without a licence, that would be an issue. I would strongly suggest getting legal advice if you are planning to do this.

WoTC cracking down on streamers for using beholders would be a very poor decision on their part.

I agree with the suggestion that this is likely just a choice on CR's part to avoid problems with the non-stream products than Wizards getting on their case. But maybe they big enough and close enough that it came up.

 

[pemerton]

WoTC cracking down on streamers for using beholders would be a very poor decision on their part.

WotC objecting to other traders using their trademarks without a licence would be rational protection of their product identity.

I don't know how many streamers count as traders, but it seems to me that Critical Role certainly does.

 

[Jaeger]

But they ARE delivering at a higher standard.

LOL. Wow. Your definition of “home game standards” is a bit skewed

I have a much different opinion of Critical Role and their standards of performance.

LOL, this is what I get for waiting until after the weekend to respond.

A total loss of context to my comment.

At the time of the original exchange, I am commenting on the lack of rules-mastery CR still shows after years of play.

Their lack of rules mastery is the 'home game standard' I am referencing.

In replying to a post over 7 pages back, I get how that could get lost.

There is clearly some magic that resulted from the mix of ingredients, changing to a "rules light" system may change something in that magic formula that could result in a worse show.

Ehhh maybe,

I'm thinking of a system more medium-lite, between outright rules-lite like PbTA, and 5e RAW.

I think that it is the chemistry of the cast that seems to be the main draw if this thread is anything to go by.

But either way, CR and D&D are joined at the hip for the foreseeable future. It would take a major unforeseeable change for them to part.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

WotC objecting to other traders using their trademarks without a licence would be rational protection of their product identity.

Suffice it to say that legal departments and PR departments often find themselves at odds with each other, and brand management is inherently a battle between the dueling ethos of each.

 

[Rikka66]

WotC objecting to other traders using their trademarks without a licence would be rational protection of their product identity.

Rational on the lawyer side. A nightmare on the PR side. I will clarify that I'm not saying it would be a financial disaster, but it would probably end up similar to when Nintendo tried to crack down and take a cut from content producers.

 

[Oofta]

If your streaming is a commercial venture, and you use WotC's trademarks without a licence, that would be an issue. I would strongly suggest getting legal advice if you are planning to do this.

What I was objecting to is the theory that CR only uses OGL materials and didn't use a beholder because of legal issues. They use many things that are not in the basic rules and they have used a beholder.

As far as legal obligations, CR does not charge people to view their content. Therefore I don't believe there is not any licensing issue because of the Fan Content Policy [1] [2]. Yes they sell merchandise, but it's not D&D copyrighted merchandise. The CR cartoon will obviously be a different issue, as is the Wildemount guide.

If you are a lawyer, or if you can point to any evidence at all, I will bow to legal expertise. Until then, it's not worth arguing about.