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Message: <blockquote data-quote="see" data-source="post: 8889306" data-attributes="member: 10531">I'm not sure exactly what you're saying here, so, let me try to be clearer.That the Pathfinder 2e Bestiary as it exists is a derivative work of WotC's copyrighted material is pretty certain. Setting aside the specific mechanics, a huge number of the monsters as "literary works" are very closely based on their portrayal in WotC-owned works that are substantially the original work of TSR and WotC over the publication period of 1974 to 2003. The OGL 1.0a didn't change the fact that it's a derivative work; it was, rather, a license to make/publish/sell derivative works.Now, that's just copyright law; it's a matter entirely aside from the contract law issues of whether and how WotC can revoke or terminate the OGL 1.0a, and what rights Paizo would retain regarding the Bestiary as a result of the license terms and various statements WotC made about what the OGL meant. There are lots of opinions on that, which I am convinced, from the last few days, that I am completely unqualified to judge.But without something outside copyright law giving Paizo permission, the Pathfinder 2e Bestiary is not something Paizo could have legally published. A theoretical 2019 Bestiary published without a license from WotC would have had to have been a substantially different work.So, similarly, if Kobold Press were to attempt to create a 5e compatible game without a WotC license, they might very well be able to get a very good match on the core mechanics, plus a reasonably familiar set of classes and subclasses. But if they tried to reproduce substantial sections of the SRD5's monster entries, they'd have trouble. Stuff matching folktales, public domain material, and common tropes, with occasional resemblances to WotC material is one thing; repeated and concatenated similarities to things that first appeared in D&D are another.(I'm reminded here of White Wolf's lawsuit against Sony over Underworld. None of the points of similarity brought up in the lawsuit was something unique to White Wolf's products, but so many points of similarity in a single stack amounted to a credible lawsuit that was able to extract a settlement in four days. Granted, probably in part because the amount of money was likely too small to count as a line item in Sony's promotional budget for the movie, but still.)</blockquote>

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