Legal question.

[Halivar]

My introduction to the world of roleplaying was a RoM 2.4 MUD way back in my freshman year of college. I spent four years as a MUD coder, and I came to loathe the "rules" upon which most MUD's are written.

Fast forward several years later. Today I vastly prefer D&D 3rd Ed., and the coder inside me yearns to capture it in a MUD, if nothing other than for the challenge.

Question: is it legal to implement the 3rd Ed. SRD in electronic form? Is that considered "public display," or is it an alternative form of DM'ing? Does WotC have an official line on this?

In the past, TSR was not favorable to this, but does the OGL nature of the SRD change that at all?

 

[Buttercup]

I think you should ask WotC's legal department. Regardless of what advice you get here, they're the only ones whose judgement really matters, you know?

 

[WayneLigon]

At least two SRD MUSHes exist, Treyvan and Tenebrae: The Emblem of Ea. Not sure how many MUDs but I'm betting there are at least a couple.

 

[Wippit Guud]

Out of curiosity, which ROM?

I played both Rivers of Mud (guess why it's called RoM?) and the MUD that was basically the beta-test site for switching over from 2.3 to 2.4 - that was was called Moosehead SLED (Slightly Liquid Earth Dimensia... mud, I guess )

... oh, and to put them all up, aslo played Dark and Shattered Lands and Arcadia, in the event someone from here has heard of them.

 

[Halivar]

Hey Wippit,

Started out on the Turning Point (my first character, EVER, was a chaotic evil healer), built on a RoM 2.3 codebase. Then moved on to an generic out-of-the-box Anatolia (RoM 2.4 with every patch on the planet in it, which sucked) before I moved on to a fresh RoM 2.4 codebase and helped hacking on it (Cities of M'Dhoria). That one was my favorite, because I helped write it.

 

[seankreynolds]

I believe the SRD/OGL/d20 still specifically rules out software usage, at least in most cases.

 

[Greatwyrm]

When I followed the d20 developer's mailing list, this issue was more than a dead horse. The horse had been beaten, beaten while dead, resurrected, beaten... I swear, that horse must be down to one HD and one point of CON by now.

Anyway, the generally accepted position is that you pretty much can't do it and still be OGL compliant. If you want to see the reasons, head over to the Open Gaming Foundation and check the archives.

In the long run, it would probably be easier to whip some mechanics up on your own than to go d20/OGL at this point.

 

[Wippit Guud]

I don't understand why Wizards would be so against game that, 99 out of 100 times, are completely free. It's not like thei're losing profit or potential game sales... it's a TEXT - based video game!

 

[Planesdragon]

Let me show you the dead horse.

Question: is it legal to implement the 3rd Ed. SRD in electronic form? Is that considered "public display," or is it an alternative form of DM'ing?

As has been said above, the d20STL does have a prohibition against this kind of thing, and this topic has been beaten to death (many times) on OGF-L.

However, I've been there to see the beating, and the end result is: you CAN do it, but only if you use ONLY the OGL and not the d20STL (and thus, none of WotC's trademarks.)

Also, you'll have to find some way to mark your work as OGC--and everything that's derivitive has to be clearly indicated as such. Which, depending on what environment and codecs you use, may present a serious problem; whatever you don't release as OGC (due to it belonging to someone else, for example), you must clearly indicate, and that "Clear Indication" can really bite you on the ass.

But, to say it again, it CAN be done--you just need to watch out for the pitfalls. (Most of the dead-horse beating was over what exactly pitfalls are. But everyone concedes that, if you can get clear title to contribute every part of your program as OGC, the OGL won't stop you from making it.)


My amateur suggestion is to either use seperate files for any closed-code you need, and have a list of the files included in the program with a flag on which ones are OGC, write the darn thing in a scripting language and OGC the whole shebang, or find BSD-style-license components and OGC the whole shebang.

 

[smetzger]

This shouldn't be a problem as long as you do _not_ make it a d20 MUD. The d20 license explicetly forbids the determining success or failure of stuff (i.e. an attack or a skill check).

So, as long as you only have an OGL product, which cannot reference D&D in any way, and you use the SRD then you should be fine.

You should check out what Luke has done with RolePlayingMaster. You may even be able to extend RPM to be useable as a MUD.

*:>Scott