D&D 5E Expected Additions to SRD 1.2

[I'm A Banana]

Is there any problem saying please reference the PHB page X for information on the wood elf?

Probably totally cool in DM's Guild Land.

In OGL land, iffier, I think. The safest path is not to reference the PHB.

If you're going into OGL land, it pays to either follow the path blazed by popular OGL and non-OGL stuff already (especially the 5e stuff written before the 5e rules had an SRD), or to spend the money for a good legal counsel.

 

[Mark CMG]

Is there any problem saying please reference the PHB page X for information on the wood elf?

That might run afoul of section 7 of the OGL, "You agree not to indicate compatibility or co-­‐‑adaptability with any Trademark or Registered Trademark in conjunction with a work containing Open Game Content except as expressly licensed in another, independent Agreement with the owner of such Trademark or Registered Trademark."

 

[Parmandur]

An independent agreement such as...the Content guidelines for the DMGuild, perhaps?

 

[bmfrosty]

That might run afoul of section 7 of the OGL, "You agree not to indicate compatibility or co-­‐‑adaptability with any Trademark or Registered Trademark in conjunction with a work containing Open Game Content except as expressly licensed in another, independent Agreement with the owner of such Trademark or Registered Trademark."

I was under the impression that the DM's Guild might allow such a thing.

I haven't spent the time reading into it yet. I'll have to do so when I can find some time.

 

[Mark CMG]

I was under the impression that the DM's Guild might allow such a thing.

I haven't spent the time reading into it yet. I'll have to do so when I can find some time.

Using the DMGuild, you'll have access to the Wood Elf. Using the OGL and SRD, you currently do not. When you mentioned wanting to reference the PHB page #, I assumed you meant while using the OGL and SRD, since with the DMGuild deal you'll have all of those rules available to you. Whether you can reference core book page numbers under the DMGuild deal, I do not know.

 

[delericho]

Sure, but you can't produce an adventure, book of villains, or NPC compendium that includes a Wild Magic Sorcerer, for example.

It would certainly be good if they would open up at least the names of things, precisely so that people can reference them in their own works. Obviously, I'm cool with them choosing not to do so, but it would be a nice-to-have. But it's much easier if a 3pp can just reference Wild Surges (or whatever) without having to dance around them not being in the SRD.

 

[Uchawi]

For the most part, missing sub-classes aren't a big deal. A 3pp player-focused product should be about adding new options, new classes, new sub-classes, etc, not old ones. But, a few sub-classes have unique mechanics that could have other uses, and could have been a better choice for inclusion. Going with Champion rather than Battlemaster, for instance, means CS dice and maneuvers are out of bounds. Which is too bad, they had a lot of potential to 'build off,' either to add more meaningful options for the Battlemaster at higher level, or to expand into more interesting martial classes. The last UA used variations on CS dice in two fighter sub-classes, for instance. A 3pp couldn't do anything similar, with just the Champion to work from. Same goes for Wild Magic, it's only found in the missing Sorcerer sub-class, but it has a lot of potential uses - magic items, artifacts, magical accidents, chaos zones or whatnot - D&D magic is usually very dependable and predictable, locking away the best example of the opposite we have in 5e is unduly limiting. I suppose the Wand of Wonder could always be an alternate starting point for that though.

Backgrounds, OTOH, don't seem like a problem. Can't use the Soldier background? Substitute an Officer or Legionnaire or Mercenary or Militia background.

I do not think it would be too hard to come up with a martial maneuvers system that uses variable damage dice for weapon that scale (just like spells scale with level). That would include weapon properties and things like stances to totally rewrite the martial side of things. At the same time you could simplify casters to pure vancian or spell point. The key would be not to go overboard and try to emulate every class currently in 5E. Just start with the basics like fighter, wizard, thief and cleric.

Overall 5E is simple, but adds more complexity with certain sub-systems. You could make it easier to read and be closer to 4E from an action economy standpoint without all the interrupts.

The above would be a product I would like to see.

 

[Awesome Adam]

It would certainly be good if they would open up at least the names of things, precisely so that people can reference them in their own works. Obviously, I'm cool with them choosing not to do so, but it would be a nice-to-have. But it's much easier if a 3pp can just reference Wild Surges (or whatever) without having to dance around them not being in the SRD.

I think them not being able to is the point. If you want to make something that ties to D&D so closely that your referencing official D&D stuff and not your own creations they want you to use the DMguild

 

[delericho]

I think them not being able to is the point. If you want to make something that ties to D&D so closely that your referencing official D&D stuff and not your own creations they want you to use the DMguild

I don't think it is. If they'd wanted to force people doing, say, splatbooks to use the DMguild, they wouldn't have bothered with the OGL at all. As it is, they're clearly relaxed about people publishing stuff outwith their appstore.

I can certainly understand them wanting to keep the mechanics of, say, Wild Mages locked up so people can't use them. But I suspect locking up the names and so making things like splatbooks that much harder may well be an unintended side-effect.

 

[Alzrius]

The safest things is just not to go there, if you can at all avoid it. Don't try and publish some rules that are like that. Do something else.

I don't particularly agree with this. Pushing the envelope is a good thing, since that's how we got stuff like OSRIC, which lead to an Old School Renaissance that, in turn, helped to shape attitudes that themselves helped to shape 5E.

IANAL, but what you could probably get away with, legally speaking, is some sort of text swap. If you really need, say, the Wood Elf, for your product to be complete for whatever reason, and you can't go with the DM's Guild, you could re-write the wood elf from the PHB and as long as it wasn't a copy-paste job, you'd likely be OK. Change a few cosmetic things if you want to be extra-safe.

I'm pretty sure that's what I said, what with mentioning that so long as you didn't go word-for-word the same you were probably fine. Heck, you could use the flavor text description for wood elves (sparse as it is) as a race from the 3.5 SRD - though you'd still need to make sure the delineation of their game rules wasn't a cut-and-paste of what's in the 5E PHB - so long as you made sure to credit both SRDs in your Section 15.

But I think the key question would be, why do you need the wood elf? If you're just self-publishing your homebrew setting, do you need to be explicit about wood elves and reproduce their abilities? And is it important that they are exactly the same as the WotC's wood elf?

In all honesty, I don't think that's the key question at all. In fact, I find that to be the least important question that could possibly be asked. It implies that there needs to be some sort of good reason to do something. Maybe when you're cloning dinosaurs you should be more concerned with if you should than if you could, but I don't find any similar sort of impetus for wondering about whether or not something should be tried when it comes to pushing the limits of the OGL (so long as you don't violate the terms of the license, of course).

I'd hope that the lack of a wood elf would inspire people to think about what they could use instead of wood elves, and add interesting and creative new ideas to the world. I get that that's not always possible, but I'd really hope that folks would seriously examine the elements that they'd like to reproduce (but for SRD not including them) and ask themselves if it's something that's really all that vital to what they're writing. Polishing the serial numbers off the WotC wood elf should be a last resort.

Again, I disagree with this. The proliferation of "almost-like's" when trying to recreate something that isn't Open strikes me as something that causes more confusion than anything else, since you have instances of something that's very similar to what's in the PHB but technically using different rules, which are easily forgotten and lead to questions of "wait, are we using what's in the PHB, or this?" Far better to just recreate the original material if that can be done within the bounds of what's Open Game Content.