Legal Eagle ft Matt Colville on the OGL
- Thread starter darjr
- Start date
overgeeked
B/X Known World
From the other thread...
I think one thing he mentioned is worth repeating endlessly.
Words with Friends can exist because you cannot copyright the rules to Scrabble.
A VTT does not reproduce the copyrighted expression of the rules of a game. It uses non-copyrightable rules and processes. VTTs are safe. WotC can sue, because anyone can sue for any reason. But they'll likely lose. I am not a lawyer.
For an example using Hasbro IP. The board game Diplomacy. There are at least two websites that host games of Diplomacy with no connection or license to do so by Hasbro. Because they don't need one. PlayDiplomacyOnline and Backstabbr. These sites are VTTs for Diplomacy.
I think one thing he mentioned is worth repeating endlessly.
Words with Friends can exist because you cannot copyright the rules to Scrabble.
A VTT does not reproduce the copyrighted expression of the rules of a game. It uses non-copyrightable rules and processes. VTTs are safe. WotC can sue, because anyone can sue for any reason. But they'll likely lose. I am not a lawyer.
For an example using Hasbro IP. The board game Diplomacy. There are at least two websites that host games of Diplomacy with no connection or license to do so by Hasbro. Because they don't need one. PlayDiplomacyOnline and Backstabbr. These sites are VTTs for Diplomacy.
overgeeked
B/X Known World
The gofundme Legal Eagle mentioned is here:
Reasonable Minds Can REBUILD!, organized by Katie Johansen
Hey Friends, Mrs. HoegLaw here, I asked Rick’s sister to write this up, because it was j… Katie Johansen needs your support for Reasonable Minds Can REBUILD!
www.gofundme.com
mellored
Legend
TLDR: you don't need permission to make something "compatible with" DnD. Home brew and 3rd party adventure where always legal.
You just need it for using stuff like their logo, beholder, drizzt, or directly copying rules from the SRD, like quoting the fireball spell in a monster stat block.
OGL gives permission for some of that stuff.
You just need it for using stuff like their logo, beholder, drizzt, or directly copying rules from the SRD, like quoting the fireball spell in a monster stat block.
OGL gives permission for some of that stuff.
Last edited:
Ruin Explorer
Legend
NO.
INCORRECT.
Bolded bit is NOT ALLOWED BY ANY SRD. Explicitly! Please can people stop repeating this canard? You've always needed a separate licence to do that. DM's Guild's licence allows that, but that means you lose 50% of the revenue of your product AND can't publish it anywhere but DM's Guild.
mellored
Legend
Fixed.
Ruin Explorer
Legend
It's not showing as fixed for me, but ok.
mellored
Legend
The main point is that you don't need permission, at all, to make homebrew and 3rd party adventures for 5e.
Rules and ideas can not be copywritten.
Specific wording can be though.
Willie the Duck
Hero
Which is fine, but if you don't want to fix post #6, why did you say in #8 that is was fixed?
see
Pedantic Grognard
The biggest problem with "you don't need the OGL to be compatible" is that it leans heavily on what the OGL declares is always OGC, and not on the "any additional content clearly identified as Open Game Content by the Contributor".
Yes, it is entirely possible to make things that are mechanically compatible with D&D without a license. On the other hand, there's a substantial amount of lore, particularly around monsters, in both the SRDs and the Tome of Horrors that, if you try to reproduce without a license, is going to get you in trouble.
People can sit back and tell me that Pathfinder 2 is not dependent on the OGL all they like. I look at the Bestiary, and I see things like the devil/daemon/demon distinction being a law/neutral/chaos distinction, the lawful ones living in Hell and the chaotic ones living in the Abyss, and a long list of which beings by what name are which kind and their appearances and relative power levels. And I'm looking at a lot of material quite directly based on a substantial body of creative work under WotC copyright.
If you don't use the OGL, you don't need to care what the OGL says. You only need to care what intellectual property law says. But here's the thing: the OGL provided certainty, which is essential to running a business. So while, sure, you could make D&D compatible adventures just by fair use or whatever, you couldn't predict whether a large corporation would come down on you for it, right or wrong. So people -- hundreds, thousands probably -- built businesses and livelihoods on the OGL.
The argument LE makes about game rules and copyright may well be correct, but it is irrelevant to those that did in fact build their businesses and livelihoods on the OGL. THAT is what all of this sturm and drang is about.
Right. Sure, you can make an adventure and just say "three goblins (hp 3, 5, 6)" but can you put a full statblock in?
see
Pedantic Grognard
Well, yes, but the stuff that the OGL says is always OGC is the stuff least protected by copyright, the raw rules and mechanics. Thus the statements by people like Legal Eagle, the EFF, Cory Doctrow, and many others that the OGL didn't really give people anything, based on their looking at what was specifically enumerated in the OGL.
The problem is that they're overlooking the "any additional content clearly identified as Open Game Content by the Contributor" clause, treating that as negligible. But it isn't. Over and beyond mere "certainty", the OGL licenses as OGC a lot of proprietary creative work under that clause.
Greggy C
Hero
Why is Professor Mcgonny in every single thread 50 times.
I gave up searching for Matt Colville in this video.
Hats off to the lawyer for his amazing marketing ability on youtube, bit too brutal for me though watching someone that just chases headlines.
mellored
Legend
What part is wrong now?
It's about expression. You can say a wizard in your adventure can cast "magic missile." And you can say "magic missile creates three bolts that unerringly strike their targets for 1d4+1 hit points of force damage" but if you wanted to repeat the SRD description of magic missile word for word, you would need the OGL.
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