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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 4330249" data-attributes="member: 42582">This is a far more useful analogy then an earlier one from some other poster about after-sale car parts. (I had been thinking of posting a hypothetical, of someone other than Games Workshop releasing a Talisman expansion.)Like such support products, a 4e module is useful to its intended market only because that market is using WoTC's IP, and because that market will understand certain of the words occuring in the module as referring to aspects of that WoTC IP. Unlike those support products, the actual amount of IP that is implicated is much greater - 100s of pages of rulebooks rather than maps and comparatively brief rules texts.LIke such support products, a 4e module also obtains a market at least in part because of the goodwill that WoTC enjoys in that same market.These are the features of the situation that make me think the copyright/trademark route may not be as straightforward as some are suggesting.The goodwill issue is not something I have any competence to elaborate on, but one way of dealing with the copyright issue might be to do what someone else suggested above, and include no stats at all except generic descriptions using non-copyrighted/non-trademarked descriptions (goblin level 2 x2, etc). The module text would then, in effect, be nothing but fluff (which just happens to generate a playable D&D adventure when read in the context of the 4e core rulebooks).Once the module text starts to use power descriptions (for example) which are obviously intended to be read in conjunction with the conditions descriptions on p 277 of the PHB, and the power rules on pp 54-59, then I think it all gets a lot murkier.I will certainly be interested to see what Goodman Games is doing.</blockquote>

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