Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mark CMG" data-source="post: 3081623" data-attributes="member: 10479">Straight as they are or adjusted, and thus derived in some manner, NPC stats are about as purely mechanical as you can get, IMO.  There's no real legal reason (IANAL) someone cannot take an NPC stat block from an OGL product and re-release it verbatim as or in their own OGL product unless it has some unique qualities to it that are closed (Product Identity) such as the name or an unusual title, etc.  (The description, of course, is another matter entirely and is likely protected under copyright beyond the reach of the OGL unless released as OGC by the producer.)All that said, this isn't really the same thing for WotC as it is for other publishers since WotC doesn't release material as OGC under the OGL very often, nor do they have to do so.  WotC's stat blocks are quite likely protected by copyright as is despite being in almost all ways similar to what a publisher would have to release as OGC.  Of course, once you go down that road you start to dilute your user base (some people will find such gathering techniques as acts they would rather not be associated with) and run the risk of other action from WotC.Let me state, too, that I think the NPC Wiki is a cool idea as a gathering place for material created by people who want to share it in that manner but as a place to potentially house large swaths of material stripmined from other sources, I do not care for it.My dilemma, however, is more of a straightforward business question.  Since anyone can add to the NPC Wiki, and since OGC is allowed to be straight out copied, and since NPC stat blocks released under the OGL are OGC, what incentive is there to a publisher to risk having his work stripmined in that manner by leaving it unprotected/unlocked?  Remember, locking a PDF or protecting it in some way such as that doesn't chenge that the OGC was released, it merely thwarts the process of copying and pasting the material to another medium easily, which while a publisher is not required to allow certainly makes PDF products more useful to the typical DM and some DMs will shun a product that thwarts that allowance.So, is there some sort of a operational credo in place at the NPC Wiki that doesn't discourage publishers from releasing large amounts of the very material NPC Wiki users would love to have available to them?  There's a Catch-22 working on both sides of the equation whereas NPC Wiki users are definitely a part of the target audience for an NPC product but are the possible deterrent to its production even as such a product is just the type an NPC Wiki user would like to see in production but how can one ensure its production by pledging to forego the potential source to the Wiki?  It's a puzzler, no doubt! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

Verification