My Homebrew SITE Online!!!!

[Torm]

Also not a lawyer, but I AM a Lawful Good deity, so:

1. Do you intend to make any money off of your site in any way - including selling advertising space, or even selling your D&D materials shown there WITHOUT advertising them as being for sale, there?

2. Do you intend to promote your site beyond just telling people you "know" - friends, family, message board acquaintances like us, links on friends' sites?

If the answer to both of the above is "no", then I would say your site is pretty much a personal site only - the online equivalent of your bedroom, as opposed to a storefront. This ISN'T LEGAL ADVICE: I don't know about you, but if I want to print out a picture I find on the Internet and tape it to my wall for myself and friends I invite over to look at, I don't believe I owe anyone anything for that priviledge. Its personal use, and as long as you're not offering images at a quality good enough to make prints from suitable for hanging, any artist would have one heck of a time proving that you are taking food out of their mouths. If anything, you're advertising FOR them, in a manner of speaking. To that end, I agree with Turanil about stating who they are by, if you know, and further, you should link the picture to their site, if they have one, so that maybe they can generate some print sales or something.

Completely aside from that: Dude, don't call your stuff "crap", even if you think it is. It's bad form, and certainly won't make people want to waste time and bandwidth to download it.

 

[Chainsaw Mage]

I don't know about you, but if I want to print out a picture I find on the Internet and tape it to my wall for myself and friends I invite over to look at, I don't believe I owe anyone anything for that priviledge. Its personal use, and as long as you're not offering images at a quality good enough to make prints from suitable for hanging, any artist would have one heck of a time proving that you are taking food out of their mouths. If anything, you're advertising FOR them, in a manner of speaking.

My view of such things is rather Machiavellian, I suppose. Any artist that posts his or her work on the internet better *expect* that people will snatch it and make use of it. If they say it's illegal, fine, sue me. If they say it's immoral or unethical, my response is, "Says who?" Morality is in the eye of the beholder.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

I don't know about you, but if I want to print out a picture I find on the Internet and tape it to my wall for myself and friends I invite over to look at, I don't believe I owe anyone anything for that priviledge. Its personal use, and as long as you're not offering images at a quality good enough to make prints from suitable for hanging, any artist would have one heck of a time proving that you are taking food out of their mouths.

This might be the case if the website was only accessible to him and his friends. However, by putting them on his website, he basically publishes them for the whole world to see - and that's technically illegal without the explicit consent of the copyright holder or creator of the images.

In these cases, it's better to ask first rather than ask for forgiveness later - at least, if you want to be on the legally safe side. Or you can do what I did for my site: Subscribe to ClipArt.Com for a week and download as many appropriate images as possible during that time. These can be used without any copyright hassles...

Granted, they don't have all that much fantasy art, but they do have a great number of period drawings and paintings which might be useful to you.

 

[Telperion]

I'm in the process of creating my own campaign website, and expect to have it up by the end of 2004. It's nice that I'm learning XML, UML, HTML and Java Script while I'm building my site, so maybe I'll have a better understanding of what I'm talking about later on...

For now, here are some comments made with my limited understanding of web design and such things:

As others have stated before. Red on black hurts the eyes after a while. Also , you might be interested in some background pictures. There are plenty of sites on the internet that offer free backgrounds that you can use legally. It's a small detail, but the all black background can get a little boring after a while.

I'm also incapable of drawing anything, but that doesn't stop me from using photo-copies from published books. The trick is to abide by the rules that publishers have set for their fansites. I'm using Sword & Sorcery Studios stuff, which are published by White Wolf, so I use their rules.

Please avoid using the "links-within-links" pages. Particularly I'm referring to your Races of Grimstone: Evolutions link. It opens up to a practically empty page that simply has two links on it. It's annoying to have to go trough link after another simply to get to the material that you want to show me. Website design and organization is important, even if it is (again) a small thing.

I have to say that waiting for that PDF to open up was a bit frustrating.

Okay, finally got it open.

Okay, here comes the difficult part. Since you have used pictures, rules and terms that aren't yours and plain out copied stuff from PHB 3.5 the question becomes: what falls under OGL and what is free for use (under certain restrictions). I would hazard a guess that what you have done is illegal, but I'm not a lawyer, so don't take my word for it.

BTW: I think the Persecution part of the Cleric is just...bad...This just doesn't work in any form or shape without creating societies that have only one religion, one race and one tyrant.

Yes, I have a problem with the fact that you are copying stuff straight out of the PHB, although the Elven Noble wasn't so bad. The fighter and the cleric however...

The prestiges classes seem nice enough, and they are probably okay, but you should always give credit to those whose work you are using to create your own stuff. The fact that you have done it doesn't make it yours.

Finally: you have a dead link on your pages.
The Personal Thoughts -link doesn't work, and you should always remove any non-functioning links from your website entirely or until such a time as they start working.

Personal opinion: your website requires a lot of work and you should check out the rules for creationg fan websites from Wizards of the Coast and from any other companies whose material you are using.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

My view of such things is rather Machiavellian, I suppose.

Have you actually read Machiavelli's works? He's not quite what most people think he is...

Any artist that posts his or her work on the internet better *expect* that people will snatch it and make use of it. If they say it's illegal, fine, sue me.

Well, they can. Which should be taken into consideration.

If they say it's immoral or unethical, my response is, "Says who?" Morality is in the eye of the beholder.

I'd say it is always safer to ask. If they allow their images to be copied, then groovy. If not... well, best to move on and look for other sources.

The way I see it, they created the pictures, so they get to say what can happen to it.