Frylock, of Frylock's Gaming & Geekery, is a lawyer. He recently received an email from WotC requesting that he take down his one-stop stat blocks, a request with which he has chosen not to comply. He has put together the first of three blog posts outlining the legal situation.
In the first, he outlines some basic copyright law concepts. His next one will look at spell descriptions, and the third one will "expose the true nature of the Open Gaming License".
The email from WotC seems fairly benign (they’ve sent me much sterner emails in the past!) It’s fairly friendly, and framed as a request. I don’t know what the tone of his response to them was like.
He opens with the statement that "WotC has a history of taking advantage of gamers’ ignorance of contract and intellectual property law and lack of wealth when making similar demands, thus harming the gaming community and industry, so it’s time those issues are addressed."
His essay goes into some depth, and is an interesting read. But here's his conclusion: "If stat blocks don’t go beyond the traditional description of the traits of a mythological creature, or how those traits are expressed properly within the context of 5th edition mechanics, then the game designers have no right, nor should they, to forbid them from being republished by a third party. Drawing that line can be difficult, but even if there’s an arbitrary choice being made in a stat block, it still may be safe to republish, as that choice must represent a modicum of creativity to warrant protection. A stick figure is creative in nature and thus copyrightable subject matter, but most of them aren’t creative enough in practice to warrant a copyright. Some are. For the vast majority of stat blocks, the analysis is easy, and you should be able to republish them. Just keep in mind that large companies are better able to finance a lawsuit than you are."
It's not legal advice, and I'm not enough of an expert to evaluate it in any way, but it's certainly interesting.
In the first, he outlines some basic copyright law concepts. His next one will look at spell descriptions, and the third one will "expose the true nature of the Open Gaming License".
The email from WotC seems fairly benign (they’ve sent me much sterner emails in the past!) It’s fairly friendly, and framed as a request. I don’t know what the tone of his response to them was like.
He opens with the statement that "WotC has a history of taking advantage of gamers’ ignorance of contract and intellectual property law and lack of wealth when making similar demands, thus harming the gaming community and industry, so it’s time those issues are addressed."
His essay goes into some depth, and is an interesting read. But here's his conclusion: "If stat blocks don’t go beyond the traditional description of the traits of a mythological creature, or how those traits are expressed properly within the context of 5th edition mechanics, then the game designers have no right, nor should they, to forbid them from being republished by a third party. Drawing that line can be difficult, but even if there’s an arbitrary choice being made in a stat block, it still may be safe to republish, as that choice must represent a modicum of creativity to warrant protection. A stick figure is creative in nature and thus copyrightable subject matter, but most of them aren’t creative enough in practice to warrant a copyright. Some are. For the vast majority of stat blocks, the analysis is easy, and you should be able to republish them. Just keep in mind that large companies are better able to finance a lawsuit than you are."
It's not legal advice, and I'm not enough of an expert to evaluate it in any way, but it's certainly interesting.
Last edited:
