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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Staffan" data-source="post: 7690164" data-attributes="member: 907">Basically: game mechanics are not covered by copyright. The expression of those mechanics is. There's also something called "character copyright", when an author can have copyright to fictional concepts beyond their expression - for example, you're not allowed to write your own Lord of the Rings story, because that world and those characters is under copyright belonging to Tolkien and (now) his heirs.As for exactly where that line deciding what is OK and what isn't is drawn... that's what copyright lawyers are for. And due to the nature of civil lawsuits, the richer party has an enormous advantage when it comes to grey areas, because they can drag things out and file motions and countermotions and whatever until the other party can't afford any more legal action (that's basically what happened to GDW when they were sued by TSR over Mythus, which wasn't even close to D&D - they gave up and settled and sold the rights and the stock to TSR). The OGL and the SRD serve a useful purpose in this regard, because they say "These are things we don't have any problems with you doing, and you can even copy the exact text used." If you want to rely on fair use and the rest of copyright law, you really should run things by a lawyer.</blockquote>