[OGL Questions] Is Dungeons and Dragons a game?

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Folks, I see a few of you descending into snarkiness. We have a set of Rules for posting here, and some of you are beginning to stray. Please stop the pot-shots at one another - if you find you cannot respond to another poster in a civil, respectful, and polite tone, please don't respond to them at all.

If you've got a question about this, please take them to e-mail. The addresses for the moderators are in a thread stickied to the top of the Meta forum.
 

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billd91 said:
This thread has given me a chuckle or two. I'll come right out and say I'm not a lawyer but my reading of copyright law does state that you could come up with a set of game rules, compatible with D&D, and publish something about them without violating copyright.

That's because IP laws are insanely complicated. When dealing with an issue like this, never take a single line out of context.

When I did competitive debate in high school, I was a master at grabbing a line from a speech or report here and there and cobbling together things that were 180 off from their intent. I even managed to successfully stymey one opponent by "proving" that Ronald Reagan was pro-Communist -- using his own words. I didn't falsify anything, but I was very selective on my context. If I'd been up against a varsity debater, I'd have gotten creamed, but that wasn't the case and the lack of context was overlooked.
 
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Chaos Disciple, what do you make of everyone on this thread disagreeing with your statements? I would suggest that you come up for an expalantion of this social phenomenon before you post anymore. If I'm in a situation where everybody states that whatever I'm proposing is either laughable, actionable, offensive or all three, I find that to be a good time to "take a moment."
 

Chaos Disciple said:
Most people on this thread seem to be confused about what is owned material and what is not (the OGL was created to clarify this to publishers).

No, in fact, it was not. The OGL was created to provide publishers with a license which doesn't require them to determine what is legally owned and what is not, because doing so is very difficult and cannot, ultimately, be decided except by a court of law. As you've been told before in this thread, your interpretation of what constitutes copyright protected material from the SRD, WotC's interpretation of what constitutes copyright protected material in the SRD and a court's interpretation of what constitutes copyright protected material in the SRD may all disagree. Unfortunately for you, the court would be the one who gets the final say. Using the OGL means WotC gets the final say, but it also means you don't have to go through a bunch of legal hassle and potentially lose the rights to your finished work in order to reach that conclusion.
 

Chaos Disciple said:
Most people on this thread seem to be confused about what is owned material and what is not (the OGL was created to clarify this to publishers).

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that at least one individual who has posted in this thread is not at all confused about the OGL.

Ignoring some of the snarkiness, CD, you must realize that people in this thread are trying to help you...right?
 


Mercule said:
Please don't do this thing. You have taken a single passage out of copyright law and are trying to use it as a perfect shield. First, consider that IP law gives tax law a run for its money in terms of complexity (or is it the other way around?). A single passage will not save you, should WotC decide to sue.

A couple of significant, specific points:
1. Giving it away for free. Doesn't impact the legality one iota. This is not even relevant to the discussion. Please don't bring it up again.
2. Taking your name off. Again, doesn't impact the legality. As someone else pointed out, should your publication be found illegal, this would be the equivalent of wearing a mask. The most likely impact is that it would negatively impact any penalties against you, should you be found guilty. But, for purposes of determining if this is legal or not, it doesn't matter at all.
3. Improving the game/industry. Just because you think you're doing the game a favor doesn't give you the legal right to publish. If what you are doing impacts WotC IP, they have every legal right to mismanage their IP into the ground. Don't use your intent to muddy the waters.

You have demonstrated an appalling bad grasp of even some rather basic legal principles. You don't even seem to have a grasp of the difference between the SRD and the OGL. If you move forward with this project the way you seem hell-bent to do, your hope of avoiding procecution lies not in any legal high ground, but in pure obscurity. In other words, the best thing that could happen to this project is that no one ever looks at your document.

Your interpretation of what constitutes "uncopyrightable" mechanics is way off base. You can pretty much use "you gather as a group, build characters, and roll dice to resolve tasks". You could probably get away with rolling a d20 for most resolutions. When you start getting a list of classes that mirror the D&D classes in function, if not in specifics, you running into a copyrighted expression of the work. The fighter class is IP and just renaming it doesn't change that.

Putting the material in the SRD does not put it into the public domain. Quite the opposite, really. The terms of the OGL allow WotC to explicitly retain ownership of the IP. What it does is allow others to use that IP in a standardized manner without being a threat to WotC's ownership of it. If you use that IP in a manner inconsistant with the license (OGL = Open Gaming License), it is a violation of that agreement and becomes a threat to WotC's IP.

Now, WotC did not have to create the OGL and SRD. It actually cost them quite a bit of money to do so. It already spells out a nice, safe way for you to use their IP. It seems disrespectful to work rather hard to circumvent that license, especially considering you get nothing out of it.

Your stated reason for not wanting to use it is that you don't want to advertise for WotC. Help me understand how you could enjoy the game so much that you want to release a suppliment for it, but do not want to prompt anyone to purchase it. I assume I missed something there because that seems a bit counter productive.

Im guessing you didnt see this before you made your post

"Most people on this thread seem to be confused about what is owned material and what is not (the OGL was created to clarify this to publishers). My ideas are not some kind of game supplement produced by an indie publisher they are basically just ideas and therefore cant be copyrigthted and for this reason might not even qualify for the OGL."
 

FickleGM said:
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that at least one individual who has posted in this thread is not at all confused about the OGL.

Ignoring some of the snarkiness, CD, you must realize that people in this thread are trying to help you...right?


This thread is filled with people helping me alot and I really appreiceate it

I hope others realize Im really trying to help the RPG community by crafting game mechanics and exploring these points about copyright and the OGL before releasing them.
 

Chaos Disciple said:
This thread is filled with people helping me alot and I really appreiceate it

I hope others realize Im really trying to help the RPG community by crafting game mechanics and exploring these points about copyright and the OGL before releasing them.
Perhaps I missed it in one of your posts, but are your mechanics going to be a stand alone roleplaying game?
 

Hey, law stuff! I'm a lawyer!

And here's what I tell folks every time this sort of talk starts up:

Don't worry about whether you think you are ultimately acting within the law.

Worry about what you are actually going to do when you get that cease-and-desist, and then get served with a Complaint and petition for preliminary injunctive relief, and then get hit with a court date. Worry about Hasbro's giant lawyers with their high Charismas and black hearts.
 

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