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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kenada" data-source="post: 8614367" data-attributes="member: 70468">IANAL, so this is my understanding as a hobbiest who is using OGL games as a base for his homebrew system with an eye towards wanting to release stuff publicly someday in the future. There are three parts of the OGL that are important when making a game based on another game:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Open game content. This lists whatever you’re allowed to use from a game. Just because a game is covered under the OGL doesn’t mean much is usable. For example, Pugmire includes the OGL but declares everything that it can product identity. The advanced fantasy rules for OSE are the same way. On the other hand, OSE classic and Pathfinder are both very permissive.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Product identity. This is a list of whatever you’re not allowed to use. This almost always includes proper nouns and other IP, but it also can include design, artwork, branding, and so on. Some games also include mechanics as product identity (as noted above).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Section 15 declarations. This is a list of all the sources you used for your game. I’ve read that this list is transitive, so you are supposed to include the declarations from all sources you use, but this is (was?) often gotten wrong.</li> </ul>For example, here are open game content and product identity declarations from the Old-School Essentials core rules. Pathfinder 2e is pretty similar, but it’s written in a bit more legalese.Here is the declaration from the Advanced Fantasy Player’s Tome. Note how lengthy the open game content section is in comparison because it doesn’t want to declare any of the AD&D conversion as open game content. I’m using OSE as a base for my homebrew system, so I have been sticking to the core rules as much as possible. For advanced fantasy stuff I do want, I need to find other sources (such as the 3e SRD or Pathfinder) or do the conversion work again myself.Another, more important, thing is that WotC has never released any books under the OGL. The only OGL content they have released (as far as I’m aware) are the SRDs and updates to the SRDs. I’m a big fan of the <a href="https://www.d20srd.org" target="_blank">d20srd</a> site for referencing the SRDs because it’s nicely organized and loads very fast.</blockquote>

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