SevenSidedDie

I’ve noticed that the Chaosium fan base is extremely cautious around IP. Overly, so. Note that if you’re not using the benefits of the Fan Policy, you’re not bound by its stipulations: it’s a trade, you gaining permissions normally not available under copyright or trademark rules, in exchange for following procedures also not required by copyright or trademark. IANAL but I’ve spent 20 years deeply attentive to IP, licensing, and open/closed licensing—the open source movement caught my attention early on. Neither macro you've made use anything beyond what rights we all already enjoy under typical copyright and trademark rules. It doesn’t even use the word “QuestWorlds”, even though nominative use of RPG names is a well-established right (thanks for suing over that and losing, TSR!). It definitely doesn’t use any copyright-covered SRD text, so the QWOGL can’t apply even if you wanted it to. (The QWOGL exists to let us use copyrighted text with permission if we follow its other rules; it’s not relevant unless copying text from it.) I really appreciate how far Chaosium goes to be friendly to its fans with generous terms for fan-use of copyrighted materials, with the Fan Policy and the QWOGL. They’re doing it right. 🙂 But we as fans should also not hobble our outreach to others with tools we’ve made that aren’t restricted by copyright and don’t need the generous terms of the FP or QWOGL either, since that’s just limiting the spread of fandom more strictly than even normal copyright! And it would be a shame for the fandom to be smaller than it could be.

Chaosium is allowed to use QuestWorlds without having to go though the SRD license. They already own the words and can do whatever they want with them. For us, the Jonstown Compendium and the QWSRD don’t overlap. The QWSRD’s license exists to give permission to copy the text of the SRD, but under agreed limits. Unless you’re cutting & pasting from the SRD, you’re not using the SRD in a way that needs that license, so the license doesn’t apply. The “no Glorantha” means you can’t copy the SRD then add Glorantha material to it and publish your own version of HQG. If you’re creating content for the Compendium, you’re probably not copying SRD text. So the license doesn’t get involved at all. So for example, I can’t copy the SRD and then add in rules for making Balazaring characters, to publish “QuestWords: Adventures in Balazar”. The license prohibits that. But I can write up a book on Balazar for the Jonstown compendium with character creation material, because the Jonstown Compendium license gives permission to use Glorantha if I publish it there. I just can’t put anything it it taken from the QWSRD text.

That’s different. Those aren’t game engines Chaosium owns, so they can’t require people not to do Arthurian games with them. AFAIK Chaosium doesn’t own the license to Arthurian legends, just their version published in Pendragon books. But they do own QuestWorlds, so they can make it part of the permission to use the QuestWorlds SRD that nobody can use QWSRD with settings from official Chaosium games.