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Message: <blockquote data-quote="1QD" data-source="post: 9890960" data-attributes="member: 7053892">As some of you may know I have been wary of sharing too many ideas for fear of them being copied. Now before you jump up to make a statement like, ideas can't be copyrighted, yes...I know. However after spending many years in isolation in regards to my system, I have come to the community to find that the back and forth passing around of mechanics, commonplace. Not always ethical, but common place.With that in mind, having the subject being discussed elsewhere, I was asked, "Well what is the difference?" I was raised with the idea that copying someone else's idea was wrong, poor of character and morally devoid of creativity. So with that in mind I answered as follows. I think when you hear an idea  and you think to yourself, I need a way to express that in my game system, then you create your own mechanic, that is inspiration.  When you hear an idea like,  critical hits are determined by rolling 3d6 and any roll above 12 is a crit.... and that becomes your rule for critical hits, then you are plagiarising. There is no move to express the critical in a way that is unique to you or your system. Derivative work is like  rolling 3d6 and taking any roll above 14. There is an attempt to make it unique but only minimal effort of which you can't really call it unique.Oddly enough this pairs quite ironically with AI. From what I can see, AI is a pariah in the TTRPG scene and no creator will touch it with a 10 ft pole. This however what I find curious. Is that while the scene stands on the moral high ground with AI, that the theft of ideas is wrong, it rather hypocritically and with open arms does the exact same thing with other peoples mechanics. Since neither are copyrightable, where is the moral high ground, or even the difference for that matter? Please, spare me the environmental concerns, as I am only looking at the moral descrepency here. Environmental concerns are not what I am debating here. I think those will be dealt with in the future.I am curious how people merge the two without sending themselves into a data loop.</blockquote>

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