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<blockquote data-quote="Kevin Brennan" data-source="post: 3984112" data-attributes="member: 35183">Short answer is talk to a lawyer before you assume that game rules aren't copyrightable (at least at the scale of a whole RPG).I did have the benefit of actual legal advice on &quot;derivative&quot; works a while back. It wasn't in regard to RPGs, but the upshot of it all was that case law on what is and is not a &quot;derived&quot; work is actually very thin, and it's not really clear how different something has to be before it is no longer considered derived for legal purposes.But those of you thinking that WotC's material is somehow &quot;open&quot; because it's also found in the SRD are simply wrong. WotC is granting third parties the right to create derived works using the SRD through the OGL. Because WotC's right to create derived works is not based on the OGL, but rather through its status as the copyright holder of the original, NOTHING WotC publishes is Open unless they choose to explicitly make it so through designation as Open Game Content.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Kevin Brennan, post: 3984112, member: 35183"] Short answer is talk to a lawyer before you assume that game rules aren't copyrightable (at least at the scale of a whole RPG). I did have the benefit of actual legal advice on "derivative" works a while back. It wasn't in regard to RPGs, but the upshot of it all was that case law on what is and is not a "derived" work is actually very thin, and it's not really clear how different something has to be before it is no longer considered derived for legal purposes. But those of you thinking that WotC's material is somehow "open" because it's also found in the SRD are simply wrong. WotC is granting third parties the right to create derived works using the SRD through the OGL. Because WotC's right to create derived works is not based on the OGL, but rather through its status as the copyright holder of the original, NOTHING WotC publishes is Open unless they choose to explicitly make it so through designation as Open Game Content. [/QUOTE]

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