Retrocloning or duplicating D&D from the materials WotC is releasing under Creative Commons

overgeeked

B/X Known World
The fun thing about going this route is that you could then slap "Compatible with Dungeons and Dragons" on the cover and Wizards would have no way to stop you.

Aside from the benefit to creators of being able to openly advertise this, it would be deeply satisfying to see Wizards ending up with less control of their brand.
You can do that anyway. There are a lot of people producing compatible materials for various games and no one gets sued over it. Unless you make stuff compatible with GW games.
 

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Faolyn

(she/her)
I hate to say this, but the one good thing that might come out of WotC not allowing their non-mechanic stuff to be used, except possibly under a special and currently undisclosed license, is that this might force creators to be actually creative about their D&D clones.

As I said in another thread, we hardly need to have the same old series of giants and dragons and the like get statted out again and again. And the same goes with classes and races and the like.
 


Haplo781

Legend
You mean take previous editions out of the permissive license they are currently available under and reducing the content to a tenth the amount?
Which editions other than 3.x and 5e are under a more permissive license currently?

Here's a handy chart in case you need a refresher on the ones you might be forgetting about:
Screenshot_20230121-130325.png
 


Dausuul

Legend
You can do that anyway. There are a lot of people producing compatible materials for various games and no one gets sued over it. Unless you make stuff compatible with GW games.
In principle, yes, but the CC license would make it significantly easier and cheaper to avoid infringement. Less stuff to rewrite, less stuff to double-check with counsel, smaller potential for mistakes.

It was even easier using the OGL and accepting the restrictions, which was why it was a savvy move by Wizards -- it gave 3PPs a real benefit in exchange for keeping distance between them and WotC's trademarks. Blowing it up takes away that incentive; and releasing a bunch of stuff under CC reduces the cost of making a clone that doesn't have to play nice.
 


Voadam

Legend
I believe WotC's tweet was that they were looking at putting the older OGL SRDs (so d20 Modern, 3.5, 3e) into SRDs under 1.2. I wouldn't count on a lot of that making it into CC or any non OGL SRD stuff making it in.
 

Hriston

Dungeon Master of Middle-earth (He/him)
I believe WotC's tweet was that they were looking at putting the older OGL SRDs (so d20 Modern, 3.5, 3e) into SRDs under 1.2. I wouldn't count on a lot of that making it into CC or any non OGL SRD stuff making it in.
They said they "are actively looking at adding previous edition content to both the CC and OGL 1.2."
 


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