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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Staffan" data-source="post: 404614" data-attributes="member: 907">Disclaimer: I am neither a lawyer nor a publisher. I have however been following various discussions on d20/OGL, so I like to think I have some understanding of it.As for your question, WOTC allows other publishers to make stuff for D&D/D20 because they make most of their money on the sales of the PHB primarily and other core books to a lesser extent. Ryan Dancey once described the rest of the D&D product line as advertising for the PHB that pretty much pays for itself - people are more willing to buy the core books for a system with lots of support. However, since that support is less profitable for WOTC, they're happy to let others do it for them.You're not allowed to quite from the rule books, that's right. However, you are allowed to quote material from the System Reference Document (at <a href="http://www.wizards.com/D20/article.asp?x=srd" target="_blank">http://www.wizards.com/D20/article.asp?x=srd</a> and <a href="http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/srd.html" target="_blank">http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/srd.html</a> - the one at the WOTC site is official and at ogf.org preliminary). The SRD has pretty much all the rules-based materials from the three corebooks as well as the Psionics Handbook.Note that in some cases, the SRD and the core books differ. In those cases you have to rely on the SRD since that's what's been released under the OGL.The only problem with the second is that you refer to the Monster Manual by name, since they've trademarked that name and the various licenses don't give you the right to use that trademark. However, you would be allowed to use:4 orcs (see MM, page 26 for stats): hps: 8, 6, 4, 4.IIRC, one of the documents advices that you don't use page references since those might change in future printings but I don't think there's a rule against it.For that matter, you could include the whole orc stat block, since it's in the SRD.You could reference the ranger in the PHB if you wanted to. You wouldn't be able to quote the flavor text or anything else that's not in the SRD, but the rules from the SRD are perfectly OK to quote. If you wanted to save space, and your ranger is just a minor variation on the standard ranger, you could even include a passage like:Note that there are some terms you can *not* change the definition of if you want to use the d20 logo (there's no such limitation on the general OGL though). For example, you can't create a d20 game with a rule that defines "Armor Class: The amount by which you reduce the damage from any physical attack that hits you," because Armor Class is one of those "protected terms" listed in one of the d20 documents. However, if all you want to do is publish some adventures that shouldn't present any difficulty.You can give complete descriptions, as long as you don't use the actual text from the MM.</blockquote>

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