JonL

Here is an approach I took, sorting spells into grimoires roughly grouped by theme and power level. I actually have a lot of draft/notes for implementing a whole lot of D&D'isms like classes as keywords, distinct arcane vs divine magic styles, spells/day derived from ability ratings, advancement/resistance-progression framed in Low/Mid/High/Epic-Level terms, etc. I even went all-in on making alignment something that interacts interestingly with play, Alignment ratings work similar to how community resource ratings do, and your behavior and experiences cause them to fluctuate over time. You can draw upon them for augments when acting in accordance with primordial forces with which you are aligned (especially for Divine casters), use them to resist Charm effects, Flaws, or temptations/manipulation that would make you act against your alignment, and so on. With Mastery-rated alignment, you start to be affected by detect___, protection from____, etc. spells, and can hurt creatures that are immune to non-magical weapons. Alignment languages even get recast an intuitive understanding among those strongly enough alligned to the same primordial forces, usefull for expressing concepts and ideas relevant to the prordialstruggles of creation, but hard to express mundane ideas like "How much for the top-shelf brandy?". I stopped working on this uppon discovering that QW would have its own license, which is not only incompatible with directly incorporating D&D spell lists etc., but might also prohibit the alignment ideas as being derivative of story elements from the Moorcock BRP games. If we ever get a clear and definative answer on what Chaosium/MDP means by "story element" in the context of their licenses, I might revisit. The spell lists, classes, etc. could concievably be scrubbed of things that would infringe on WizCo's IP, but it would take a lot of work and care to get right. In the meantime, what attention I have available to devote to QW is going to be directed towards less fraught propositions. On a lighter note, @Newt's Yea Little Book of HeroQuest Dungeoneering has a lot of fun ideas in this vein as well. I hope he's able to re-release it at some point.

With an open license, there should be no need to pitch anything for approval, nor need for any of this sort of discussion. It should by clear from the license text itself what is or is not permitted.

I'd also consider waiting to see if it happens again. Hot streaks happen, but not every week.

Thanks for the bump. I'm working remotely while also supervising a pair of remote-learners, but I'm starting to have some brainwave bandwidth for QW again.

Asraelia vs Ty Kora Tek

It's only unproductive and frustrating because they refuse to directly answer two rather basic questions about what they meant by a couple of terms in 1(e). They wrote it, they should know the answers. This frustrating merry-go-round is ongoing entirely because they are being silent on those two points. Whithout clarity on the appearing-in/originating-in point in particular, setting anything on Earth is a risk, given the decades of CoC materials, many out-of-print, set in various locations around the world. I can see where defining "story-element" might take some careful thought, but they could clear this one up in less time that it took me to type this post. If, as one might hope, the correct interpretation of 1(e) is that "Arkham, Massachusetts" is a prohibited location/place-name but "Massachusetts" itself is not, I cannot fathom why they are chosing to keep that to themselves or only reveal the answer to someone with a pitch for a BRP game of Espionage in Colonial New England. That's not how open licenses work.

An alternate approach would be to express resistance by deciding the result of the gm "roll." A fairly low resistance could be something like "Fail at 8," middling could be "Success at 12," and so on. It would mirror the way masteres work.

Now I want to play a group of secretly-vampiric Troubleshooters in the Alpha Complex hunting down strange Poor Hygiene cults for Friend Computer.

The point of clearly defining where the boundaries are is for an author judge whether this license makes sense for a given project without having to badger you with questions. If you could please clearly and definatively state whether that crucial "from" in 1(e) is supposed to be interpereted as "originating in" or "appearing in" and share how Chaosium defines "story element" in the context of the license, the majority of the questions would evaporate.

Developments on Chambers's ideas in Derleth's and others' work and CoC adventures should clearly be off-limits, but Lovecraft was 5 years old when Chambers's book was published. This is the opposite of the standard that's been put forth for Malory. Are there any other works predating Lovecraft's literary career that need to be avoided in this light, and if so, what are they?

The week+ of silence on basic questions like asking what "story element" specifically means in the license context or for a clear general case answer on pre-existing proper nouns is deafening. These are basic things that need to be clearly understood in order to successfully follow the license.

Were it's release to be announced tomorrow, it would suddenly become relevant.

Part 2 raises the question of whether Paladin is considered part of KAP for purposes of 1(e). I recall there were Feudal Japan and Hellenistic era adaptations of Pendragon in the works at one point as well.

This is still not a straight answer on "originating-in vs appearing-in", nor an answer to the question in the post to which you replied. I have no desire to clone CoC, KAP, etc, but between the ambiguous language in 1(e) and y'all being deliberately evasive about it, I wouldn't currently feel comfortable using this license for a game set anyplace on Earth. There are CoC adventures set just about everywhere. I can respectfully follow the prohibitions on Arkham or Miskatonic U without any difficulty whatsoever, but you are for whatever reason refusing to go on record that Massachusetts in general is not also prohibited. This shouldn't be a hard question to answer, and yet you continue to refuse to do so. How is anyone supposed to place their confidence in the license in that context?

With all due respect, this is the second time in as many weeks that Chaosium has kindly and thoughtfully answered a question about how Arthuriana is to be handled while completely ignoring the general case question in the same post. Why are you doing this?

Distinguishing between Uther's distinct portrayal in the GPC (clearly prohibited) and Uther as portrayed in one of Malory's influences is indeed a fine point that may require special attention. However, clarifying whether the license language prohibits any real-world location/place name or historical figure that's ever shown up in a CoC supplement should not be a hard question to answer.

How about adding a relevant associated attribute to the die roll when trying to roll over the skill on advancement checks? That way you learn faster in subjects for which you have greater aptitude, and more slowly where you're weaker. If that's too big a bump-up you could do 1/n * attribute, attribute -10 or something instead.

(Replying in the discussion thread to keep the Q/A thread clean.) Despite my vehement calls for greater clarity and precision, I don't see their choice to carve out exceptions for certain properties as illegitimate in any way. That their approach to doing so silos BRP off from the broader open content ecosystems is a regrettable consequence, but it's an understandable choice they have every right to make. I don't expect them to abuse the unclear language either. Better language would protect adopters' work from the possibility of less friendly successors to the rights in the future though. Go for it! Check out what's being proposed over in this thread. Make something awesome!* * Presuming "setting X" is not Prohibited Content 😉

While I won't pretend that I like the choices you've made with this license, I do respect them. I'm not bringing things up in some sort of spiteful gotcha game. Even if your reasons for doing so are good and wise, the path you have chosen is already going to deter adoption to a fraction of what it could have been. I'm asking you to pin down vague language, undefined details, etc. because those are things someone with an idea for a project needs to be able to clearly understand in order to decide whether BRP makes sense as a foundation for their work. I'm trying to help you help your potential licensee authors feel comfortable and confident in choosing BRP. If Chaosium continues to dismiss or refuse to clearly and directly answer what should be simple general case questions like appearing-in vs originating-in or what you mean by "story element" that isn't covered by the other items on the list, do you think that will make potential adopters more inclined to choose BRP as a platform for their projects, or less?

The challenge of describing how incompatibly licensed rules interoperate in a single text without giving rise to content that is a derivative work of both sources and thus invalidating compliance is not to be underestimated. If it was just seperate stat blocks side by side in a monster book, or maybe a book with all the setting info up front and two appendices containing seperate parallel game mechanics implementations for each license-realm - maybe it could be done to the satisfaction of all upstream license holders. That's a lot of work and risk to take on for a small reward. Much wiser to stay within a single license realm and fill whatever gaps you have with original content.

I bet Rikard is being held for ransom by the Lunars, but the local lords are keeping that quiet and refusing to pay so as to maintain their power. Hopefully a hero will arise who can unite the diverse peoples of New Malkonwal and free their King...

Changing "from any of the following:" to "originating in any of the following:" in 1.(e) would clear up most of this.

Eegad, how would anyone who doesn't have that old book even know that Wells's Martians were in it?

@Jeff thoughtfully clarified the intended scope of the Mallory prohibition in the Q&A thread. We have still yet to see a clear statement on the general case of proper nouns etc. present within prohibited works that originated elsewhere. I don't for one minute believe that they intend to prohibit Massachusetts along with Arkham and Miskatonic University, but the current license text could be read either way.

Something that is more commonly done is for the owner of an original work to do parallel releases under different licenses. Fate for example is available under both the OGL & Creative Commons licenses. Works that derive from it must select one or the other license, and may thus intermingle with other content governed by the same license.