Is the AD&D 1E Revival here to stay?

[Rel]

I am a practicing lawyer, but no one should rely on legal advice they get over the internet. Including my advice. If you want legal advice, find a lawyer and talk to him face-to-face.

Turns out that he IS, PapersAndPaychecks. Regardless, I think that telling anybody here to "shut up" was a bit on the rude side and I expect the tenor of this conversation to move toward the calm end of the spectrum.

 

[Storm Raven]

Are you a lawyer?

Yes. I am.

If so, could you explain why, in your opinion, copyright isn't subject to laches or estoppel?

Estoppel is an equitable doctrine not at all applicable to a stautory scheme in which one party is infringing upon the other's rights, and knows or should have known that they are doing so (as equity requires that the one asserting it have clean hands). Laches is generally inapplicable to situations in which a staute of limitations has been defined, as is the case of copyright.

If not, could you just shut up please?

Reported.

 

[Lanefan]

The big stumbling blocks I encountered were the ability modifiers and the XP tables. Almost every other piece of the red-book system could have been simulated by playing with or excluding pieces of the open toolset. But there didn't seem to be a way to re-create the quirky ability mods or XP tables without dipping into closed content.

Because that information was not derived from a mathematical formula, I couldn't see how someone could claim they developed that information without pulling it from closed, copyrighted materials. A thousand monkeys banging on a thousand typewriters would need a couple of eons to independently develop something like the baroque "percentile strength" charts.

%-ile strength is an easy one to "fix": turn each gradation into its own whole number (with 18.01-18.40 remaining as 18), bumping each higher number up by one for each new number added in. So, (and I don't remember the exact %-age breakdown) 18.98 becomes 23, 18.00 becomes 24, and all the Giant strengths go up by 5 (thus, Storm Giants, once 25, are now 30). Then, you need to design an exceptional-strength-roll table; easy to do, and can now be broken down to allow different racial maxima for different races (Elves top out at 21, for example). A useful side-effect is that if you want to include percentile increments (first seen with the original Cavalier) they now function sensibly alongside exceptional strength. That said, whether the use of the very concept of "exceptional strength" will cause trouble is beyond my knowledge...

As for ExP tables, you could design your own formula for each class, work out the bump points accordingly, round to the nearest 1000, and present your players with a set of tables. As the original ExP tables don't seem to be based on a particular formula (or if they are, I sure don't know it) I can't see how you'd get in trouble for coming up with a formula and using it.

Lanefan

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

My apologies: over the last six months, I've grown enormously tired of seeing non-lawyers opining that OSRIC is illegal, and my patience with it has worn very thin. It's a refreshing change to be addressing someone with a legal qualification.

Bearing in mind that the OGL applies to OSRIC, please point out any specific instance in which OSRIC infringes on WOTC's copyrights.

 

[EditorBFG]

I think, like all things, the nostalgia craze will fade in time. So will the idea that a 30 year-old ruleset is better than everything that followed it.

What I think has life is the idea of a "1st Edition feel" (as Necromancer Games put it). That is not just applicable to those who played 1E, but those who may have been too young but saw the books in stores or their older brother/cousin's closet. Even without the experience, it had a feel. Unlike 2E or 3.whatever, which look and feel like "marketing", there was a 1E ambience that seemed forbidding and arcane-- somehow, the often poor artwork and black-and-white all added to that rather than detracting.

That said, there is a limit to how great the old stuff was, and how much we should return to. Going back to hit rolls going up but Armor Class going down? That way lies madness.

I think that the best way to marry basic D&D to the now is something like Microlite 20, created here on EN World, which is just golden and simplifies the current system without returning to the weaknesses of the old.

 

[PapersAndPaychecks]

Edit: Case cite removed; I probably shouldn't tip my legal hand on a public messageboard.

 

[Storm Raven]

Edit: Case cite removed; I probably shouldn't tip my legal hand on a public messageboard.

And this relates to laches and equitable estoppel how?

If you go back and actually look at my posts I have said a limtied number of things, none of which are "OSRIC is a copyright infringement". In point of fact, I have explicitly stated that we don't have enough information available to us to determine that here.

What I have said is:

1. Just because someone distributes something from the U.K. does not make them immune to a suit brought in the U.S. Under the "stream of commerce" theory of personal jurisdiction, such an individual could easily be sued in the U.S. if their goods ended up in a U.S. market.

2. Copyright does not expire as a result of inaction. If you don't take action to enforce a trademark, it becomes unenforceable. Copyrights, however, have no such limitation, and neither laches nor equitable (or collateral) estoppel generally applies in cases with a statutorily defined limitation.

3. Fair Use is more limited than most people on the internet seem to think. Among other things, there is no "10% rule", and the proposed use needs to fall into the categories of use that the exception covers (i.e. education, review, commentary, parody, etc.)

I will also note that the Milligan v. Worldwide Tupperware, Inc. case (972 F. Supp. 158) covers a very limited exception. The games in question were very short, and basically involved learning how to do basic math. That is very different from an RPG, in which a large volume of rules are very idiosyncratic to systems. I think you would have a much better chance of proving derivation in a long work, especially since the work claims to be drawn from it in the first place. I don't know enough about the specifics of OSRIC compared to 1e D&D (because I have not done a page by page analysis, which would be required) to make a determination as to whether there is enough similarity to say there might be infringement or not. And unless somebody decides to start paying me by the hour to do so (highly unlikely), I probably won't.

I'd also caution against relying on the Milligan case too much. It is a district court case, and as such, it is useful only for precedential value in the Western Distict of New York. It might be regarded as informative by another District court, but they are under no obligation to pay attention to it.

But, as I said before, I am not offering an opinion regarding whether OSRIC infringes or not. I am only talking about issues of copyright law that have been demonstrably misstated in this thread.

 

[Storm Raven]

Edit: Case cite removed; I probably shouldn't tip my legal hand on a public messageboard.

I don't think you have much to gain by "hiding" your basis for making your legal case. If this sort of thing ever comes down to litigation, the copyright law specialists who will be hired to handle the case probably already know about this case. And even if they don't, about ten minutes of research on Westlaw or LEXIS/NEXIS will find it.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

I think, like all things, the nostalgia craze will fade in time. So will the idea that a 30 year-old ruleset is better than everything that followed it. What I think has life is the idea of a "1st Edition feel" (as Necromancer Games put it).

I think it's more than mere nostalgia. In my case, "1E feel" has always been my preferred style, but I've also found that the rules you play under do make a difference. I don't believe any of the older editions are perfect, but I also reject the idea that newer is necessarily better. I do know the older rules-sets are a closer fit to my style of game and my "rules/DM philosophy." That, not mere nostalgia, is ultimately why I returned to them (although currently I'm playing C&C, so "returned to" isn't accurate, in that case. It does apply to BECMI, though, which I'm also playing).

Incidentally, there's a recent discussion of "1E feel" on the Necromancer Games boards. We talked about some of these thing, there.

Going back to hit rolls going up but Armor Class going down? That way lies madness.

Hrm. That's one of those things that I think doesn't really matter that much. I know it's an oft-cited flaw of earlier editions, but I just can't work up much condemnation or enthusiam about it. I don't have a problem with AC going up, and I don't have a problem with AC going down. To me, the differences that matter between the editions, system-wise are stuff like skills, feats, how balance is addressed, and the degree to which DM judgment plays a role in play.

 

[Ourph]

It seems strange to me that people are getting so worked up over OSRIC's legality again since (according to Mythmere's post) it seems that WotC has basically decided to treat it as a non-issue. It seems to me that if no legal gauntlets were thrown after the initial contact it would be highly unlikely that WotC is going to come back a year later or five years later or whatever and reconsider the issue. Not that they couldn't, but it does seem unlikely.

Either way, I suspect that the "AD&D revival" whether it's spurred by OSRIC products or projects like Rob Kuntz and Goodman Game's recent modules will likely persist as more and more of the huge number of kids who jumped on the D&D bandwagon in the early 80s reach the age where they are taking up the old games again either as part of a nostagic reliving of their childhood or as a means of connecting with their own kids. I am always amazed by the number of people of my generation who have no current interest whatsoever in gaming but have fond memories of playing D&D in their friends basement circa 1982 and fully expect to pull out their old books and play with their kids "as soon as I can trust them not to eat the crayon".