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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bendris Noulg" data-source="post: 1492886" data-attributes="member: 6398">See, I think the basis of it (OGC is shared, PI is not) is agreed upon by all (at least, that much is clear enough that there is no real debate).  The rest falls into details.  It's this ambiguity that has me more open to the concept of "crippled" OGC than others are; Of course, nothing prevents me from "uncrippling" those same rules, and I personally am opposed to releasing my own material "crippled". As for WotC's PI designation, I see a 4th possibility: on occassion, I stumble upon something in the SRD that isn't supposed to be there (page numbers, book references, etc.), so the PI designation could very well just be a safety net for oversights in the pre-SRD scrub down, preventing terms/titles from becoming OGC because of an editing error.  Although it's not a perfect example, we can consider the fact that, because of certain spells, the Shadow Plane, Ethereal Plane, Elemental Planes, Astral Plane and Outer Planes in concept and name were already OGC long before the MotP material was ported into the SRD.  I also recall, after Mind Flayers, Displacer Beasts, and other critters were removed from the Draft SRD and thus never really released, that "final" versions of some things made mention of "the skin of a Displacer Beast" and another section (the summon [X] spells, I do believe) still listed creatures that weren't OGC (in short, the names of these things are OGC because they appeared in the released SRD, but the things themselves are not). Does the "safety net" theory seem close to mark? I seem to recall that interview (Ryan Dancey, here at ENWorld, right?  Can't find it in the archives anymore...).  At any rate, I don't think it's as "over the line" as it may appear.  After all, it's purpose (small formatted rules content for easy portability) is clearly beyond the capability of the Player's Handbook (full sized and loaded with access information that may or may not be relevant to your individual game, such as Grayhawk deities and the like). So, let's quantify the question with a few more examples: Is Green Ronin's Pocket Grimoire: Arcane over that line?  How about their Pocket Grimoire: Divine?  Pocket Magica? Is Mongoose's Ultimate Feats or Ultimate Prestige Classes over the line? I guess I don't see there being a question in regards to compiling OGC for distribution; the companies are doing it, have been doing it, and will continue to do it.  So it's either wrong (companies and fans can't do it) or it's right (companies and fans can do it), but it can't be right for some (companies can) and wrong for others (fans can't).  Mongoose has done it.  Green Ronin has done it.  d20X is doing it.  Ryan Dancey is (presumably, based on his proposed idea back in January) doing it (then again, he might not).  Cergorach is doing it, as stated in this thread.  And who knows how many others. To which, I again state: Any business model that fails to take the re-distribution of OGC into account is a poorly thought out business model when applied to the Open Gaming environment which is designed around the concept of OGC re-distribution.</blockquote>

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