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Message: <blockquote data-quote="trancejeremy" data-source="post: 6526565" data-attributes="member: 924">OGL isn't about sharing mechanics, it's about sharing text.At least that was WOTC's original idea. We let you use some of our text (what we released in the SRD) and in return, you give up certain rights, like claiming compatibility with your products, except under terms of a separate license (the d20 License).They were trying to avoid something like the Mayfair Roleaids lines, where they had dozens of products that had something like "Presented for Use With Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" on the cover. Basically the same way generic medicine says "Compare to Tylenol" or "Compare to Claritin". They didn't use any TSR text from AD&D, but the same mechanics.So the goal of the OGL, was that you could use the same text that D&D used, but you couldn't use the trademark (that's specifically a provision of the OGL) without an additional license (in this case, the d20 system trademark license). However, a lot of third parties didn't want to do the same. They wanted to keep their own material closed as much as possible. so they used vague open content statements that probably go against the spirit of things, essentially rendering their products unusable by other people, because they couldn't tell what was open content or not. Or made every piece of non-mechanical text product identity.Anyway, other than Fast Forward, I don't think there is any company that has been hit by a C&D, despite a lot of companies not using the OGL correctly. Fast Forward got into trouble because they used WOTC D&D stuff that was not in the SRD. And it probably didn't help that it was Jim Ward's company, who used to work there, and probably had a higher profile than other companies. (Troll Lord released a product with WOTC non-SRD stuff, but after getting caught got special permission - The Lost City of Gaxmoor).And lastly you can put out compatible games without the OGL. Spears of the Dawn from Sine Nomine is pretty much an OD&D based game, yet was not released using the OGL.</blockquote>

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