D&D General What monster names are public domain?

EzekielRaiden

Follower of the Way
You may have your dragons backwards. The Red is one of the most common in the public conversation. The metallics seem to be a D&D invention.

Plus there are several dragons that are very rare in D&D that are common in the real world lore (Lung and other Asian varieties including the jaculus).
As noted above, Gold and Bronze dragons predate D&D by a minimum of seven years (1967 for Dragonriders of Pern.) Metallic-type dragons as a general concept probably can't be copyrighted by D&D's rights-holder, and given their work has existed alongside McCaffrey's for the former's entire run, it would be a real stretch. Doesn't mean people wouldn't try per se, but even if they won they'd run the risk of McCaffrey's children/estate going after them on the precedent established by their case.
 

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Morrus

Well, that was fun
Staff member
How public domain work with respect to word combinations like "violet fungus," "ice devil" or "gibbering mouther". The individual words are PD, but are the concepts as monsters PD?
Well that’s the question, isn’t it? Both dungeons and dragons are common words, but put them together and you have a brand name. Micro and soft are normal words. Star and Wars are!
 

Parmandur

Book-Friend

Tonguez

A suffusion of yellow
The only declared IP is
  • Beholder
  • Gauth
  • Carrion Crawler
  • Displacer Beast
  • Githyanki
  • Githzerai
  • Mind Flayer (Illithid)
  • Umber Hulk
  • Slaad
  • Yuan-Ti
everything else that isnt a Name is good, although the specific expression (blue dragons breath lightning) is probably copyright
 

Morrus

Well, that was fun
Staff member
The only declared IP is
  • Beholder
  • Gauth
  • Carrion Crawler
  • Displacer Beast
  • Githyanki
  • Githzerai
  • Mind Flayer (Illithid)
  • Umber Hulk
  • Slaad
  • Yuan-Ti
everything else that isnt a Name is good, although the specific expression (blue dragons breath lightning) is probably copyright
Declared PI not IP. Different things. But that wasn’t really my question. :)
 

Parmandur

Book-Friend
Declared PI not IP. Different things. But that wasn’t really my question. :)
But that's why they separated out the Product Identity items: those were all the Monsters WotC lawyers at the time of the OGL felt confident they had copyright on. Not putting a Mosnter in PI was an admission that it wasn't hard copyrighted on the conceptual level, but dangled the carrot of using some actually protected ideas (Blue Dragons breath lightning) in exchange for the third party acknowledging more rights than WotC felt conifedent of defeincorrect. court.
 

Morrus

Well, that was fun
Staff member
But that's why they separated out the Product Identity items: those were all the Monsters WotC lawyers at the time of the OGL felt confident they had copyright on. Not putting a Mosnter in PI was an admission that it wasn't hard copyrighted on the conceptual level, but dangled the carrot of using some actually protected ideas (Blue Dragons breath lightning) in exchange for the third party acknowledging more rights than WotC felt conifedent of defeincorrect. court.
I’m not talking about the OGL, and PI is not copyright. Outside the OGL the term has no meaning.

This is just a question about public domain.
 

EzekielRaiden

Follower of the Way
Well that’s the question, isn’t it? Both dungeons and dragons are common words, but put them together and you have a brand name. Micro and soft are normal words. Star and Wars are!
My go-to is always to either look for prominent examples in unaffiliated fiction that also use the combined structure (as with McCaffrey's color-coded dragons above) or determine if referring to the creature with modifiers of this type has mythological precedent. Golems, for example, are most strongly associated with clay, but they can be made from all sorts of things, including mud and stone, so long as the material itself is inanimate. Further, referring to creatures as "<material> golem" is quite common in other fantasy works that aren't controlled in any way by the D&D rights-holder: Blizzard's Warcraft series and ArenaNet's Guild Wars (the original) has flesh golems, for example.

Hence, referring to an artificially-constructed being animated through supernatural means (whether necromantic or "merely" magical/divine) as a "<material> golem" is probably not copyright-able due to both historical precedent and competitors using the terms as they like.

But even there, it's worth being cautious. Aurene (a character from Guild Wars 2) and her siblings/mother/grandfather are all crystalline dragons who specifically have crystalline and (to a certain extent) mental powers, but I don't know if that's enough to justify the claim that "crystal" dragons work. If beefed up with a few more examples, e.g. Smaug being known for having a gem-encrusted hide and (say) finding evidence of ancient Asian stories involving ruby-colored dragons, then I could see some room for it. Alternatively, again to cite WoW, there's the Emerald Dragonflight (an alternate name for the Green Dragonflight), recognizing that some types of dragons are seen as having jewel-like scales. There's also the Black Jewels series, where the titular jewels (spoiler alert) are discovered to actually be dragon scales, which manifest either as finger-sized "uncut" jewels or roughly thumbnail-sized "cut" jewels after certain coming-of-age ceremonies, and thus provide a link between "gems" and "dragons."
 

Parmandur

Book-Friend
I’m not talking about the OGL, and PI is not copyright. Outside the OGL the term has no meaning.

This is just a question about public domain.
Yes, but thst is my point: the answer To your question is "what WotC did not designate as PI." They made that decision by picking out what they were certain wasn't public domain.
 

Morrus

Well, that was fun
Staff member
Yes, but thst is my point: the answer To your question is "what WotC did not designate as PI." They made that decision by picking out what they were certain wasn't public domain.
See, it doesn’t matter whether it’s in the public domain for Pi. They could have chosen goblins or the colour green. The word “and”. It’s just what they thought had value to them. There are PI elements which definitely do predate D&D. It’s nothing to do with copyright.

That’s why this question isn’t about the OGL or WitC’s PI declarations. The topics have overlap, but it’s not the same question.
 

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