Travern

The BRP OGL is currently on version 1.0.2, so it's not set in stone. We raised the issue about Clause 10's ambiguity about maximum revision, and Chaosium clarified it here that it was 30% or more of the total word count and updated the license accordingly. (The question about whether this covers open content/legal information or only original content—a not inconsiderable issue for shorter works—remains open.) Chaosium has demonstrated that it's prepared to work with the community to improve the license. If it's option 1, then you're in effect negotiating permissions, and you'll need new contractual language for your project if Chaosium gives you their consent to go ahead. Anything else leaves you legally exposed. For option 2, well, my initial (Twitter) reaction to the news of a BRP SRD was unqualified enthusiasm. As I've said, BRP is my favorite rules system, and I've been looking forward to the SRD for quite some time. Admittedly, after reading the fine print and discussing it here, I now have reservations about the BRP OGL's current state. Having taken a public stance, though, I'd like to see it through. Sadly, there's no easy middle ground between overthinking a contract and underthinking one—and it's always safer in business to go for the former. Let's take your sci-fi game idea of Eldritch Mysteries on Mars! (which sounds pretty fun). "Eldritch" is a 16th-century adjective meaning "eerie", not a unique coinage by HPL, so the title is not a problem. As long as your aeons-old alien overbeings were original creations and not reskins of Cthulhu Mythos entities such as, say, CAS's Vulthoom, that should be fine. You could take the adventurer aspect from the public domain fictional character Gullivar Jones by Edwin Lester Arnold (who influenced Edgar Rice Burroughs's character John Carter—which is not public domain). For the antagonists, you could use H.G. Wells's Martians from The War of the Worlds, which is public domain (finally). The only complication, however, is that Wells's Martians appear in Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu supplements Cthulhu by Gaslight and The Malleus Monstrorum. Thankfully, @Rick Meints has clarified that they're OK to use as long as you don't copy-paste Chaosium's work in your own adaption of them. The obstacle here is that this is not reflected in Clause 1(e)'s language, which could be cited to revoke the project's license. I doubt the current Chaosium management would do such a thing, but in the BRP OGL's current form, a future one could easily. Moreover, such issues could potentially arise across all the product lines and literary works enumerated in Clause 1(e). That's the kind of legal loophole that absolutely needs to be closed before embarking on a licensed project.

But this misses the point of an open license. You don't have to petition to Evil Hat at all for permission to produce a FATE game since they released that under the regular OGL in the first place ("You don’t have to ask our permission or anything like that, though we’d love it if you let us know your product’s out there and maybe slide us a few free copies (digital is fine).") Established fair use practices, the public domain, and copyright law cover all the questions about intellectual property. There's a reason why FATE and PBTA are perennial recommendations in RPG design forums (n.b. Design Mechanism has a standard submission process). Why would you tell a prospective game designer they have to create pitch for an open license?

All of those are viable ideas for RPGs, simply as log-lines. (Plus they also overlap with my own interests—who knows what I may do with them?—though I also enjoy the works of Moorcock and Niven, which we haven't begun to address here.) The only one that isn't ready to go out of the gate is The Sword in the Stone–based game, which would either entail negotiating with T. H. White's estate or revamping as an original YA Arthurian squires-focused RPG. I wouldn't have proposed them otherwise. I appreciate how you'd like to cut the Gordian Knot of this conversion thread. It's not a matter of a single pitch, however, but of clarifying the language in Clause 1(e). Why would you ask a prospective game designer to go to the time and effort of conceiving and writing a detailed game pitch on the basis of an open license if there was a chance that it would be rejected on the basis of a "known unknown" interpretation of Prohibited Content? Elaboration on this in the context of Clause 1(e) would definitely be helpful.

Muzy's work looks superb as always, and these previews continue to whet my already slavering appetite for the final work. Will the new edition of the Malleus Monstrorum feature solely Muzy's art, or will there be a mix like the old one?

Rules-lawyering in the real world is just, you know, lawyering. This whole situation reminds me of book contract negotiations when the two parties can't agree on the general terms. Protracted multi-session meetings of the minds can be frustrating in business if the two parties have different outlooks when it comes to contractual language. My preference has always been to revise the general terms until mutual agreement can be reached, but some agents/authors prefer to come up instead with specific cases to address problems. I've found that the latter approach runs the risk of overlooking possible cases that didn't occur to anyone at the time the contract was being drawn up—hence raising hypotheticals now, rather than tackling with actualities later. Besides regular contract law, Murphy's Law applies especially here. And if you have to say you're not trying to be rude… I've come up with numerous pitches that I genuinely thought would pass muster but which have all run afoul of interpretations of the BRP OGL's "Prohibited Content" clause. How can you give me any assurance that another one would go any better with the current BRP OGL? As a matter of fact, I do have an old BRP campaign that I'd love to turn into a real game, but since it's a freewheeling, multi-setting concept, there's no way that it can be reconciled with Clause 1(e) in its present form. "All trademarks, registered trademarks, proper names (characters, deities, place names, etc.), plots, story elements, locations, characters, artwork, or trade dress" is an incredibly sweeping yet vague set of conditions, especially since it makes no distinction about those that appear in vs. originate in. Without certitude about how transformative works are dealt with in the OGL, the license in its present form contains potential problems for a prospective game developer. "You can use this open license but check with us first" is the antithesis of an open license. You simply don't have to do this with Creative Commons or GNU. Even the WotC OGL states precisely and categorically what they reserve as "Product Identity", and that's not exactly an uncontroversial document. Anyone looking to use an open license should be no less confident of its legal language than if they were signing a regular two-party contract. Just to be crystal clear, I would like to think that this is a question of aligning Chaosium's spirit about encouraging open BRP development with the letter of the OGL. If I didn't, I wouldn't be pursuing this issue with such tenacity.

From the QuestWorlds FAQ: This isn't even wrong. Fair use includes parody, for example, and it is perfectly legitimate to create a parody RPG of Star Wars, no matter what nastygrams and FUD Disney's lawyers may spread. EDIT: In another example of legitimate fair use of Star Wars, Andrew J. Luther discusses on his personal blog how to adapt Star Wars to HeroQuest (non-commercially, of course).

The problem is that the ambiguous language of Chaosium's OGL leaves it open to this. This isn't about rules-lawyering in a game, it's about the legal implications of a license.

In addition to my general questions elsewhere in this thread, I'm providing hypothetical examples to illustrate questions people have with the BRP OGL's language and the responses from Chaosium staff on these forums (just as g33k suggested). As I said before, hypotheticals don't carry the emotional investment of actual works-in-progress. That said, are Chambers's The Repairer of Reputations, Arthur Machen's The White People, or Lord Dunsany's Idle Days on the Yann not considered "Prohibited Content", their influence on Lovecraft/the Cthulhu Mythos notwithstanding? I appreciate the answers to the questions about the BRP OGL on these forums, even if they're not necessarily the answers I would have expected. Without them, I'd be working under incorrect assumptions. (For example, I would never have considered Chambers's The King In Yellow stories to count as echt Cthulhu Mythos, as opposed to Derleth's derivations from them.) I'd much rather return to evangelizing BRP elsewhere on the 'net, but not until the various questions have been clarified. The communities at Reddit, Twitter, Enworld, RPGPub, and RPG.net have been frank and freewheeling in their discussions about the BRP OGL. They won't be won over without airtight arguments. I've also asked if, pending revisions to the BRP OGL, the FAQ on Chaosium's site can be updated with the clarifications from Chaosium staff here. Chaosium.com is, after all, the first place where people will go.

No, Pym has been declared totally off-limits as "all works related to the Cthulhu Mythos, including those that are otherwise public domain" are covered in the BRP OGL as "Prohibited Content". Its cry of "tekeli-li" is enough to count it, retroactively, as a Cthulhu Mythos story for the purposes of the BRP OGL. Unfortunately, it's not simply a question of "tone" and "flavor". This line of discussion began at the very start of this thread, with the general question of Merlin in another era. A Morte d'Arthur-influenced Merlin in a contemporary urban fantasy setting—nothing remotely like Pendragon—was deemed inappropriate, because it derived from Malory. Similarly, a satiric steampunk adventure based on A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court—again, something that would not cause confusion in the marketplace with existing Chaosium products—was ruled to be unacceptable under the terms of the BRP OGL. These two examples are completely different in tone and flavor from existing BRP-based games, but that's not enough. Anything from, or influenced by, Malory is fruit of the poisonous tree. "No retro-clones" couldn't be clearer and is completely understandable. Similarly, Chaosium's guidelines about fair use and derivative works from the public domain are perfectly comprehensible: "If someone would mistake your content for material from one of the Chaosium games listed under Prohibited Content, it's not transformative." What's less clear, however, are the creative elements that actually fall under Clause 1(e) since clearly states, "The following items are hereby identified as “Prohibited Content”: All trademarks, registered trademarks, proper names (characters, deities, place names, etc.), plots, story elements, locations, characters, artwork, or trade dress from any of the following: […] all works related to the Cthulhu Mythos, including those that are otherwise public domain". For example, would these RPGs be acceptable to Chaosium under the BRP OGL: An alternate-history/weird fin de siècle RPG based on Chambers's The Repairer of Reputations? A folk-horror Victorian-era RPG based on Arthur Machen's The White People? A fantasy-adventure RPG based on Lord Dunsany's Idle Days on the Yann? Although they do not resemble any existing Chaosium property, Lovecraft drew inspiration from the original stories (in particular, Hastur, Aklo letters, Sheol-Nugganoth, respectively). Is that enough to count under Clause 1(e)'s "Prohibited Content" in the BRP OGL's current state?

Yes While Chaosium has confirmed this general policy on creative works pre-dating HPL's stories that he used in his own fiction, I had asked about the specific examples of Chambers's The Yellow Sign (because HPL mentioned "Hastur" and "the Yellow Sign" in The Whisperer in Darkness), Machen's The White People (because HPL adopted its "Aklo letters" in The Dunwich Horror and The Haunter in the Dark), Poe's Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (because HPL used "tekeli-li" in At the Mountains of Madness). I also asked about the status real-life examples, such as Margaret Murray's The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921) and Madame Blavatsky's The Book of Dyzan from her Secret Doctrine (1888) since Lovecraft also referred to those in his stories. So we're all clear, are these works considered "Prohibited Content" for the BRP OGL? So, being a matter of context, be careful of where you take Poe. This brings up a new question of "Mythos context". What the post-Lovecraft Cthulhu Mythos entails is a settled issue (comparatively), but if it retroactively includes works that Lovecraft alluded to or were influences, that opens up further complications—especially since Lovecraft is an allusively dense writer who drew numerous literary, historical, and scientific work for inspiration. HPL obliquely alluded to Poe's Masque of the Red Death and Berenice in The Outsider. Poe's Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar arguably inspired Lovecraft's Cool Air, although Lovecraft felt Machen's Novel of the White Powder was its chief influence. (And does this story even have "a Mythos context" since, apart from HPL's authorship, it does not contain any Mythos allusions?) Elsewhere in HPL's oeuvre, Machen's The Great God Pan is indisputably an influence on The Dunwich Horror, as is his Novel of the Black Seal. M.R. James's Count Magnus influenced The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, as was Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables, not to mention Cotton Mather's Magnalia Christi Americana. Are these considered "Prohibited Content"? What is the working definition of "a Mythos context" with respect to the BRP OGL?

Favorite Story: Pound for pound, King's first anthology, Night Shift, delivers so very many top contenders across different styles and subgenres—"Jerusalem's Lot", "Graveyard Shift", "Night Surf", "I Am the Doorway", "The Mangler", "The Boogeyman", "Gray Matter", "Sometimes They Come Back", "Children of the Corn", "One for the Road". (That's batting an impressive .500 for his debut.) "Gray Matter" may be the best of the lot, combining King's talent for depicting what should be merely comic-book horror and his eye for the realistic, with a social-issues subtext that drives it home. The novella The Mist is also very good, although by this point in his career, King can't bring himself to conclude on the bleak note his story demands (in general, he has always had problems with his endings). Favorite Movie: David Cronenberg's adaptation of The Dead Zone is quite good, especially featuring a restrained, vulnerable performance by Christopher Walken. It tends to get overlooked by The Shining, which, by the way, is an excellent Stanley Kubrick movie—chilly, tense, relentless—but entirely misses the empathy that is one of King's strongest suits. Carrie is the best "b-movie" adaptation of King, with a terrific performance by Sissy Spacek and de Palma cinematically in full force. Misery punches above its weight, thanks to excellent two-hander performances by Kathy Bates and James Caan and cinematography by Barry Sonnenfeld, but Rob Reiner's direction is pedestrian and William Goldman's screenplay too reluctant to fully embrace King's nuttiness. EDIT: I should add that on average King's work translates better to TV rather than film, even if there are much fewer great versions. Tobe Hooper's truly creepy miniseries of 'Salem's Lot is one of the best King adaptations, period.

What I said was that cosmic horror was fundamentally atheistic (and anti-anthropocentric). King doesn't put aside his vague deistic outlook and humanistic beliefs in his stories to engage in that, so no, he does not count an echt Lovecraftian author—not as far as cosmic horror—just a Lovecraft-influenced one. It's a bit like how an author must have an ethical or moral framework in mind when writing a detective story or else it'll break with the genre. Nor did I say that Lovecraft drew nigh-exclusively from nihilistic philosophy (not to mention Neitzsche himself is not a nihilist and Schopenhauer's a pessimist). What you're inferring is not what I'm implying. Again, I'm uninterested in being cast as your straw interlocutor. As a side note, Nodens is not a benign figure in Lovecraft's fantastic stories. He's more like a deity from the Classical Greek and Roman pantheon that HPL loved—"awful" in the old sense of the word, but not rooted in human morality. He's beyond good and evil, if you will. Concluding he's good merely because his foe Nyarlathotep is malign is a leap of faith, so to speak—and a creative misinterpretation Derleth makes when he depicts the struggle of the Elder Gods and Outer Gods as a 'War in Heaven', like Paradise Lost with tentacles. You seem rather fixated on atheists. I don't know what Joshi's personal beliefs are because he doesn't project them onto his examination of Lovecraft's philosophical outlook, which is what I recommend as contemporary scholarship. He does take Lovecraft's atheism seriously, however, and considers its importance in his fiction and his worldview. (Anyone interested in this can check out his website as a starting place.) Nobody's accused you of hostility, though. Perhaps the one thing we can both agree to leave aside this derail and return to the OP's topic of Stephen King?

Do you read Sutter Kane?

The Derlethian legacy debate reached a head in Lovecraftian criticism in the 80s. It's more or less subsided, which is why it's not especially interesting ground to retread. You've plenty of time to catch up—I'd recommend skipping ahead and reading S. T. Joshi on HPL.

In fairness, you're still telling other people what they mean. Can you appreciate how that might not be especially interesting to engage with, especially about 80s-era positions in Lovecraftian literary criticism?

A restricted dilettane would be, comically, a contradiction in terms. While I appreciate you obviously want to argue, mischaracterizing my positions to bolster your defenses doesn't leave me anything to work with. And telling me what I meant in my own posts is hilarious. I could go on about how you're also mischaracterizing HPL's creations such as Nodens by casting them in the light of Derleth's revisions, but I can't possibly predict how you would rework my position in your response. Of course

That's more dark fantasy–style horror, especially with the emphasis on the deity's interest in individual humanity (and HPL wrote dark fantasy, too, of course). Horror has plenty of subgenres to accommodate different styles and themes. You keep mischaracterizing my posts and putting words in my mouth (where did I call him "rigid"?). You're obviously very passionate about your literary opinions and defense of August Derleth, but I've no interest in being your straw man. !i!

I said, specifically, that cosmic horror is fundamentally atheistic (it's also philosophically pessimistic). Trying to force it into a theistic (or optimistic) framework breaks the genre. Lovecraft was a scientifically-minded materialist who was profoundly influenced by Nietzsche early in his life. Recasting him as some kind of heterodox dilettante is just bizarre. No, but one must suspend ones personal beliefs in, say, some kind of benign deity or human significance if one is going to engage in cosmic horror, where they have no place. King has a whole pantheon of benevolent deities in his overarching Dark Tower series and children defeating an eldritch entity through the power of friendship in It. Honestly, though, you seem to be taking this discussion entirely too much to heart. You're fighting battles in Lovecraft criticism that subsided long ago.

That kind of grand design works better as when instituted from the start. Deciding to embark on this overarching creative project part way through a literary career means going back to earlier works and shoehorning them into the scheme retroactively. Different tones and genres among the works also presents complications. Letting a grand design emerge organically has a better chance of success.

Chronological order would be fine. Starting out with Carrie and his short story collection Night Shift, King hit the ground running as a horror writer, and 'Salem's Lot and The Shining are tremendous follow-ups. (I'm less inclined to recommend beginning with King's later work, once his editors basically stopped red-pencilling him, but there's still good stuff there, such as The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon.) And King retroactively decided to start linking everything together in a grand design. That's just the sort of authorial intent I'd advise ignoring.

Seconding The Haunting. Plus, if you like Hastur/King in Yellow, there's reskinned version of it that recasts the antagonist as a Hastur cultist (the mechanics are for the Trail of Cthulhu RPG, but the atmospheric touches are easy enough to adopt for CoC).

Funnily enough, "completely wrong" is how a lot of people regard Derleth's Mythos contributions, particularly his attempt to introduce a systematized quasi-Catholic moral framework to the contest between the Elder Gods and the Outer Gods as a struggle between good and evil. Lovecraft philosophically grounded his cosmic horror in Neitzsche and Schopenhauer, not the Old and New Testaments. (Just look at the fun he had applying the adjective "blasphemous" to everything.) I'm perfectly content with a purist approach to the Mythos, even if it's necessarily narrower in scope. Honestly, though, the question of authorial intent and reader interpretation has been going on for a very long time (see the adage from Lawrence above), and it will outlast this thread. By all means, please continue your discussion, but please don't infer hostility or "edginess" on my part.

The old adage "trust the tale, not the teller" applies here.

Cosmic horror, which HPL is the most recognized example of, is fundamentally atheistic (and anti-anthropocentric). Stephen King, by his own admission, is a (deistic) believer and humanist. He's a first-rate horror writer, but he moved past HPL's influence very early in his career.

Yes, and because of all that, he doesn't truly count as a Lovecraftian author (only a Lovecraft-influenced one).