124
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] Neato@ttrpg.network 31 points 7 months ago

This includes all class features, monsters, rules expressions and anything that isn’t trademarked as intellectual property. Essentially, you get mechanics for cover but not Beholders, martial archetypes but not the city and denizens of Baldur’s Gate.

Is this even necessary? Isn't all of that stuff already non-copyrightable?

[-] DAMunzy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 25 points 7 months ago

You are correct. They do this because corporations in the past have sued over even though rules, etc. are fair use. When they first started the OGL they gained a lot of goodwill from the community.

[-] Flushmaster@ttrpg.network 3 points 7 months ago

Short answer, no. There is a lot of nitpicky fine print and "nuance" involved but while you cannot copyright rolling a twenty sided die you can copyright a bunch of distinct and organized thoughts and specific groups thereof, such as the collection of rules that make up a class or subclass. If that class, subclass, spell, made up monster with a specific name and abilities, etc is published in some work that is sold for profit then legal action can occur.

Anything under creative commons effectively becomes public domain. If it appears in a WotC book, digital content, etc and is not specifically under CC, like say spells and subclasses from any supplement not included in that (such as Xanathar or Tasha), it is copyrighted and WotC can and will sue you if you republish it.

this post was submitted on 23 May 2024
124 points (97.0% liked)

rpg

3210 readers
14 users here now

This community is for meaningful discussions of tabletop/pen & paper RPGs

Rules (wip):

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS