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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pbrink" data-source="post: 4346246" data-attributes="member: 16457">This is probably quite true. But my initial post was also a, somewhat sad, query on the reasons why people are so afraid of producing accessories to RPG:s in general. There are a lot of myths circling around out there, quite a few of which (of course) are faulty ideas about what you can do but there are also quite a bit of unfounded fear.As Madelf pointed out, discussions about under which circumstances one don’t need a license are as valid (I think) as discussions about issues relating to the license(s). And this will become even more pronounced when WotC releases their fan site policy.We don’t seem to agree on the scope of the protection the “fluff” in RPG:s have. I seem to be more pessimistic (from the copyright holders POW) about the possibilities to protect a concept thru its expression compared to you. I would argue that the fantasy and RPG genre has assembled a huge amount of genre specific common goods, also called a genre’s “scenes a faire”. Scenes a faire are the situations, plots, settings, character archetypes and all other elements that are necessary for a work to be recognized as a belonging to a specific genre. What makes the scope of Fantasy RPG:s scenes a faire so large is that almost any concept that exists in a RPG can be found in multiple examples either in literature or in anyone of the thousands of RPG:s that have been published over the last 30+ years. There has been a huge amount of borrowing over all these years. There is simply hardly ever anything new under the sun. This increase of the genres scenes a faire is an ever faster going process, which dilutes the scope of copyright protection of RPG:s. The implication of all this is that, IMO, the scope of protection that the “fluff” in RPG:s have, copyright wise, is not that great. What’s protected is the specific expression, any similarities as far as the properties of the fluff goes, i.e. society, habitat, behaviour etc., lies outside the scope of protection. Personally - I don’t see this as a problem. The producers of RPG:s are protected against direct copying of their “fluff” in any case and one cannot copy RPG books because then one would copy a lot of other copyright protected materials, such as maps and illustrations.</blockquote>

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