D&D 5E Necromancer Games - 3 5E books announced!

[Charles Wright]

We will be sticking with B&W (there are reasons that are talked about on the Kickstarter comments).

And we don't want them to be ALL leathers! The poor artists would never get their art shown that way!

 

[Artificer]

I know little about US copyright law, but I can't see WotC allowing him to claim that all the material he's copied from the Basic PDF is his copyright, with the names and rules intact.

Even the - really dodgy looking - "trick" where he's claiming that every word in a wordlist, plus all the two-part compounds and pairs you can make from it are released under his license won't help him much, since he's copied names of abilites in the Backgrounds, Races and Classes sections. I am pretty sure that a trait "Shelter of the Faithful" of an "Acolyte" Background that is a direct paraphrase of the text under the same name in the Basic PDF wouldn't be looked upon kindly by any sane court.

The request for donations and the license that he's posted that requires him to be informed of any use of the content *and* for any third party to use his logo is, I think, the bit where it crosses the line from "Optimistic but inadvisable" to "Foolishly premeditated law-breaking". At least to my mind.

I agree that we should not side-track this thread, and I will use the new one for other replies, but I wanted to clear up a few things that ccooke asserted.

1) SRD5 is not created with the intent of damaging Wizards of the Coast or breaking laws. The OGL is part of the reason 3rd edition was so unanimously adopted. It is also highly unlikely that SRD5 will ever become a profitable venture.

2) As mentioned by another poster, it is my understanding that you cannot copyright game rules, so the copyright statement you have quoted is simply referring to the parts of SRD5 that can be subject to copyright. ie. Trade dress, formatting, etc. Paizo has established copyright for their OGL material as well.

3) As with all OGL content, you are free to use the content under the terms of the OGL. SRD5 content is no different. The SRD5 Compatibility License is optional, and SDR5 is required to provide it as per the OGL's requirements in section 7, "Use of Product Identity" in order for anyone to be allowed to indicate compatibility. OSRIC does something very similar.

You don't need to use the logo, but if you want to use a logo, you have to use the same one that everyone else is using.

Jim

 

[Abstruse]

I agree that we should not side-track this thread, and I will use the new one for other replies, but I wanted to clear up a few things that ccooke asserted.

There's a separate thread where we're discussing the legal issues (TL;DR: This guy is screwed as soon as Hasbro Legal shows up), but what Necromancer is doing is completely different. As long as they don't step on D&D's trade dress, don't use the "D&D" trademarks, and other issues, they should be okay.

 

[Mistwell]

I agree that we should not side-track this thread, and I will use the new one for other replies, but I wanted to clear up a few things that ccooke asserted.

1) SRD5 is not created with the intent of damaging Wizards of the Coast or breaking laws. The OGL is part of the reason 3rd edition was so unanimously adopted. It is also highly unlikely that SRD5 will ever become a profitable venture.

2) As mentioned by another poster, it is my understanding that you cannot copyright game rules, so the copyright statement you have quoted is simply referring to the parts of SRD5 that can be subject to copyright. ie. Trade dress, formatting, etc. Paizo has established copyright for their OGL material as well.

3) As with all OGL content, you are free to use the content under the terms of the OGL. SRD5 content is no different. The SRD5 Compatibility License is optional, and SDR5 is required to provide it as per the OGL's requirements in section 7, "Use of Product Identity" in order for anyone to be allowed to indicate compatibility. OSRIC does something very similar.

You don't need to use the logo, but if you want to use a logo, you have to use the same one that everyone else is using.

Jim

Jim, I am an attorney. I've been an attorney since 1995. I represent some OGL game companies, whose names you would know. While I do not call myself an "expert" in intellectual property matters, I do handle them on a regular basis, as a highly paid and respected professional.

I am speaking to you now as just a peer, rather than an attorney. I am just a guy trying to look out for your best interests here. So I say this with all genuine sincerity: you're getting yourself into trouble. You did not do this right. It's not as easy as you think to simply try and pull this all under your own license, and you screwed it up badly, and you're going to get slapped down for it. And the problem is, since you have an Amazon link and donation link, you're doing it on a for-profit basis. So you risk incurring actual damages rather than just a cease and desist. And as you did it under your own name, rather than a corporate name, you have no liability protection to speak of.

You don't have to take my advice, though it's heartfelt and honest and meant to help you. If you want to do this, you need to consult with an attorney. That's what OSRIC did, that's what Paizo did, that's what Necro did, that's what Green Ronin did, that's what all the companies you're comparing yourself to did. It's not as easy as you just going in and trying to copy what they did and apply it to something new - that's not how this works, even if from a casual glance it seems like that's what they did.

Anyway, that's my $0.02. And I understand it if you ignore it, as free advice from an anonymous stranger on the Internet is often as valuable as the money you pay for it. But, I think it would be wise if you re-think this plan of yours.

 

[Artificer]

Thanks for the advice Mistwell. If you have any more please send me a PM or email. This thread is supposed to be about a kickstarter.

 

[Charles Wright]

Speaking of which...


We are very close to meeting our second stretch goal!

 

[Xantherion]

I will be helping kickstart this product soon. I am really excited to see this company coming back. I look forward to hopefully to lots more products in the future.

 

[caudor]

Looks like next stretch goal has now been reached.

 

[Charles Wright]

That it has!

There will now be an extra 20 monsters in Fifth Edition Foes which brings the total to 220.

 

[Abstruse]

Leaving the legal issues aside, I'm curious exactly what all the content will be in this and how closely they're going to follow WotC's take on the rules. Will I need any of their rulebooks to run their adventures, for example? And is this being written based on the monster math that WotC used in the playtest, in the core game, or something they've come up with all on their own.