BRP's Hit Locations & Other SRDs

[RosenMcStern]

1 hour ago, LivingTriskele said:

Soliciting and/or offering medical, legal, or other professional advice. 

See? The customer relationship guys are prohibited from giving you any answers. It does not matter that what you intend to do is no-profit. If it is about IP, what you are requesting is a legally binding answer that only wotC attorneys can give you.

[LivingTriskele]

The question is in combining SRDs from different OGLs (d20 and ORC). In this case it would be Hit Locations with a d20 system built more like GURPS than D&D. I don’t think it’s necessarily a problem, but it feels like I’m getting pulled into arguments regarding scripture at the Council of Nicaea (it’s a good thing I’m a Gnostic at heart : - )

[LivingTriskele]

RosenMcStern: True that.

[Atgxtg]

30 minutes ago, LivingTriskele said:

The question is in combining SRDs from different OGLs (d20 and ORC). In this case it would be Hit Locations with a d20 system built more like GURPS than D&D.

Well hit locations are fair game, Chasoium doesn't own them and other games have used them since the 70s. GURPS itself has a hit location table, as does various editions of D&D. So I don't see how they could have a valid case. Who owns 'Right Arm" and "Left Leg" ?  A company can go after you for virtually anything. Whether or not their claim will hold up is court is another matter. Whether or not you can withstand the economic effect of being sued, if you are in the right or wrong, is also another matter. Sadly sometimes big companies can get away with things they shouldn't just because they have deep pockets and can make due process economically ruinous for the little guy. 

30 minutes ago, LivingTriskele said:

I don’t think it’s necessarily a problem, but it feels like I’m getting pulled into arguments regarding scripture at the Council of Nicaea (it’s a good thing I’m a Gnostic at heart : - )

I'm not a lawyer, and as other have said, you would have to consult with one to find out for sure- probably one who specializes in contract law, and even then there is always a chance that a company could come after you anyway. Should, would and could are three different words. 

But my reading on the licences is that whatever content is open is in fact open, and that the company that made the pen product can't tell you what you can do with the stuff that is open, only what you can and cannot do with the stuff that isn't.

As I pointed out earlier Loz says that you can mix the Mytharas Imperiative and Classic Fantasy Imperative ORC licences, which supports the idea that you can mix open content stuff. 

My advice would be to not use any licence then, and just create you own d100 based RPG similar to OpenQuest. The whole point of open license is to make some content open to make it easier for third parities to produce content and to let them tap into the market of the "parent" game, which in turn help to increase the market share of the parent game. But if there could be a problem then, go your own way. It's not like putting BRP compatible on something is going to have much of an impact on your sales anyway. Mythras isn't, technically BRP, but it's close enough to BRP that people can buy and use Mythras stuff in their BRP games with little trouble. So I don't think you'd lose many sales by not including BRP.  With d20/D&D is a bit different because it has such a market share that having D&D/D20 on the cover could greater increase the sales, but that might be ending soon now that WotC is so obsessed with shooting themselves in location 01. 

 

My view is that open content licenses were supposed be symbiotic relationships between the game owners and third parties, and if I were making a product and if using   OGL or ORC could result in any trouble to me, whatsoever, I wouldn't use it, but instead make my own game. It might use % dice, skills, have characteristics and so forth, but it would a distinct game system, and owned by the one person on Earth who I know can't sue me, even if he wanted to. Mythras and OpenQuest both exist in the same world as BRP and RQ,  so we know it can be done.

 

 

 

 

[LivingTriskele]

Hey Atgxtg, thanks for taking the time to contribute. To be honest, this is a labor of love and gift I'd like to share with a community I adore. It's a way of giving back to a hobby that has been such a tremendous boon in my life. This document will be free. I've got no intention of making any money off of it.

[Atgxtg]

23 minutes ago, LivingTriskele said:

Hey Atgxtg, thanks for taking the time to contribute. To be honest, this is a labor of love and gift I'd like to share with a community I adore. It's a way of giving back to a hobby that has been such a tremendous boon in my life. This document will be free. I've got no intention of making any money off of it.

Hey, I get the idea that this will be a labor of love. It kinda goes with RPG writing. There usually isn't enough money involved to make it it worth the time- at least for the authors. But that doesn't matter in a court situation. There are lots of cases where someone did something for free and still got sued by an IP owner. In the long run it ususally hurts said IP owner, especially with RPGs, but that's not much consolation if you get hit with court fees and and jusgement against you. 

So if you are worried about something from a legal standpoint, and don't want to invest the money to consult a lawyer,  it best not to do it.  You might be disappointed but it better than doing it, getting sued and the having the product pulled anyway. Play it safe. If you can do 90% of what you want without trouble, do the 90%. Maybe you can find an alternative for the 10% you can't use.Better safe than sorry.

 

[g33k]

Here's another idea:  It may be a longshot, but...  Consider contacting Azora Law.

That's the folks Paizo hired to write the ORC license (it's also who WotC hired to write the OGL!).
You probably won't get free legal advice out of them; but you might be able to pose the question in terms of "a needed clarification to the ORC AxE" ...

 

I really hope you work this out, if only because then I'd be able to point to your OGL/ORC hybrid and say, "It's a Half-ORC!!!"
 

[Atgxtg]

52 minutes ago, g33k said:

.... then I'd be able to point to your OGL/ORC hybrid and say, "It's a Half-ORC!!!"

ow

[LivingTriskele]

13 hours ago, g33k said:

Here's another idea:  It may be a longshot, but...  Consider contacting Azora Law.

That's the folks Paizo hired to write the ORC license (it's also who WotC hired to write the OGL!).
You probably won't get free legal advice out of them; but you might be able to pose the question in terms of "a needed clarification to the ORC AxE" ...

 

I really hope you work this out, if only because then I'd be able to point to your OGL/ORC hybrid and say, "It's a Half-ORC!!!"
 

That's great advice! Thank you! WotC's customer support just got back to me yesterday (I asked them if game rules qualify as "terms and conditions." It took them 13 days to tell me that they aren't able to clarify the wording of their own license: 

Hello,

Unfortunately, Wizards of the Coast cannot provide assistance with, or legal interpretations for, questions related to our licenses. If you require further assistance with something beyond what can be found on our website, we recommend that you consult with a lawyer or other legal professional of your choosing qualified to interpret such documents.
 
Permissions Team
Wizards of the Coast

Next stop, Azora Law. Thanks again!

[LivingTriskele]

So, I reached out to Azora Law, and got a response almost immediately (posting it below for posterity's sake). 

 

 

I hear you looking for a safe harbor in which to operate your business, and while I can give you my belief, if WotC takes a contrary position, you could still get sued. And you could still lose. I absolutely can’t offer an opinion on what WotC can or can’t do under the OGL (particularly to someone that isn’t my client.)

 

IMO, the “no additional terms” provision of the OGL and ORC relate to license limitations. That is to say that when you license stuff out, you can’t ask users of your content to agree to different restrictions than the ones you were subject to. 

 

Moreover, the “no additional terms” has nothing to do with adding or subtracting content. Being direct to your question:

“Do game mechanics from separate open sources qualify as additional terms or conditions?”

 

The game mechanics themselves do not qualify as additional terms or conditions, but let’s assume you take a license to use some game mechanics (call those the “Series A Mechanics”) under one license (“License A”) and you take a different license to use other game mechanics (“Series B Mechanics”) under a different license (“License B”). And let’s assume License A and License B have at least slightly different terms.

 

If License A and License B relate to your entire product, then you have a conflict and you are probably violating one or both licenses.

 

When we addressed a related question in the AxE, we provided the attached guidance (emphasis added):

Can I use OGL licensed content in my ORC Product?
o The OGL stipulates that “Open Game Content may only be Used under and in terms of the OGL License” (OGL Sec. 2). So we do not see any way that Wizards of the Coast’s Open Game Content you got a license to use under the OGL could be licensed out by you under the ORC unless they published an SRD type document with the ORC Notice in it. Despite that, if you published an OGL product, you could strip out any protectable expressions of game mechanics you received under an OGL license, and release that new product under the ORC.

 

I hope that helps.

 

Kindly,

Brian

[Ron Hale-Evans]

[deleted]

Edited July 28, 2023 by Ron Hale-Evans

[RosenMcStern]

On 7/27/2023 at 7:30 PM, LivingTriskele said:

So, I reached out to Azora Law, and got a response almost immediately (posting it below for posterity's sake). 

I hear you looking for a safe harbor in which to operate your business, and while I can give you my belief, if WotC takes a contrary position, you could still get sued. And you could still lose. I absolutely can’t offer an opinion on what WotC can or can’t do under the OGL (particularly to someone that isn’t my client.)

...

If License A and License B relate to your entire product, then you have a conflict and you are probably violating one or both licenses.

Quite useful. So the bottom line is "there is a non-trivial risk in mixing" and the advice is "publish everything under the ORC, even if it was previously under the OGL".  Souds like sound advice. Thank you for asking these questions Triskele.

[LivingTriskele]

2 minutes ago, RosenMcStern said:

Quite useful. So the bottom line is "there is a non-trivial risk in mixing" and the advice is "publish everything under the ORC, even if it was previously under the OGL".  Souds like sound advice. Thank you for asking these questions Triskele.

Sure thing! And I appreciate everyone's contributions on this thread!

[Ron Hale-Evans]

What Azora Law seemed to be saying, as I read it, was not "publish everything under the ORC, even if it was previously under the OGL" but "remove the material that was under the OGL and publish what's left under ORC". That's my paraphrase of "if you published an OGL product, you could strip out any protectable expressions of game mechanics you received under an OGL license, and release that new product under the ORC ".

Is someone paraphrasing something different that I haven't seen?

[LivingTriskele]

I think the new question in my mind is--what exactly are "protectable expressions of game mechanics.” I've always vaguely assumed this to mean things like specific classes, monsters and spell names, but I could be wrong.

 

For example (from what I understand) actual d20 game mechanics (i.e., Difficulty Classes) are not protectable.

Edited July 31, 2023 by LivingTriskele

[Ron Hale-Evans]

In the world of open source board game systems like piecepack, we usually phrase it something like, "Rules can't be copyrighted, but the way you write your rules can be." But rules can be patented, sometimes. You can't copyright a car, but you can patent some of the mechanisms that make up a car. And trademarks are yet a third form of "intellectual property" that apply to things like the make and model names of a car, or the name of your RPG.

[Atgxtg]

Yeah, that's pretty much what was said when MRQ came out. Basically you can pretty much made a game that is identical to another game mechanically, as long as you do not copy text verbatim or use intellectual property such as characters, settings, or stories. That's how we have games like MRQ/Legend, Mythras and OpenQuest. So you can get pretty close.

A good examples of a game that is pretty much the same an another game is Classified by Expeditious Retreat Press. Mechanically it is over 98% identical to the old James Bond 007 RPG from Victory Games, and is noted as being a retro clone on the table of contents. But Classified does not mention James Bond, or any of the characters, stories, or settings from the Bond books or films. 

But...even if something is not legally protectable a company can still take someone to court over it. In the courts, money makes a difference, and if a company wants to they can make it very expensive to proceed with a project or get injunctions that can delay the project. Ususally doing so is counter productive to a RPG company, but it can happen. So no ground is totally safe.

 

[LivingTriskele]

I had a feeling it would come down to the game-rules-can’t-be-copyrighted conclusion. Since this all just a labor of love anyway, I’m still going to finish it. Maybe it can be a prototype for a public open-source SRD. If not, I'm okay with it just being a collection of obsessively curated house rules 🤪

Edited July 31, 2023 by LivingTriskele

[RosenMcStern]

8 hours ago, LivingTriskele said:

Maybe it can be a prototype for a public open-source SRD. If not, I'm okay with it just being a collection of obsessively curated house rules 🤪

You still have a couple of questions to answer:

• What license are you gonna use to make it publicly available?
• What other SRDs are you going to reference, and who are you going to credit?

Depending on these points, you might or might not be in violation of someone else's IP or license.

[Atgxtg]

3 hours ago, RosenMcStern said:

You still have a couple of questions to answer:

• What license are you gonna use to make it publicly available?

If he goes down the " game-rules-can’t-be-copyrighted " road why use any license?

The big advantages of using any open licence is the ability to freely use the content and the sales boost (if any) of putting the license on the cover for additional sales.

But if someone is going to go to the trouble not to actually reference a ruleset but instead create their own then they would be better off not referring to anything and keep the final result their own, and not be subject to the whims of the license holder, who can try and ultimately will try to shut down 3rd parties. Its' only happened with every other edition of D&D. 

 

But then I think OGL and ORC are bad things that only really help to keep D&D dominant at the expense of other game systems. 

 

 

 

[g33k]

4 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

...

But then I think OGL and ORC are bad things that only really help to keep D&D dominant at the expense of other game systems. 

That's clearly what the OGL is about.

I don't see it -- at all -- with the ORC license.  It is explicitly de-linked from any RPG rule-set and/or RPG publisher.  Every publisher is equally-able to release their own rules under the ORC; each such release is independent of other releases, so Chaosium's BRP-ORC will have zero relationship with Paizo's PF-ORC, nor will either of those be related Goodmans' DCC-ORC, nor it with them; etc etc etc.

[Atgxtg]

6 hours ago, g33k said:

That's clearly what the OGL is about.

I don't see it -- at all -- with the ORC license.  It is explicitly de-linked from any RPG rule-set and/or RPG publisher.  Every publisher is equally-able to release their own rules under the ORC; each such release is independent of other releases, so Chaosium's BRP-ORC will have zero relationship with Paizo's PF-ORC, nor will either of those be related Goodmans' DCC-ORC, nor it with them; etc etc etc.

Think about it. Why would someone need to use the ORC for their own game system? The reason why a company would have an open licence is specifically so that third parties will create products for said company's RPG rather that make one of their own, thus preventing competition from other RPGs. So the larger RPGs will increase marketshare and become more dominant.  I think ORCs biggest effect will be that Pathfinder might replace D&D as the #1 RPG (by marketshare), and all the third parties will be producing Pathfinder supplements instead of D&D ones. Not that Pathfinder is all that different mechanically. So it's still predominately benefiting one game system. 

 

[g33k]

1 hour ago, Atgxtg said:

Think about it. Why would someone need to use the ORC for their own game system? The reason why a company would have an open licence is specifically so that third parties will create products for said company's RPG rather that make one of their own, thus preventing competition from other RPGs. So the larger RPGs will increase marketshare and become more dominant.  I think ORCs biggest effect will be that Pathfinder might replace D&D as the #1 RPG (by marketshare), and all the third parties will be producing Pathfinder supplements instead of D&D ones. Not that Pathfinder is all that different mechanically. So it's still predominately benefiting one game system. 

It will let individual world-builder creatives -- those who don't want to grind through the mathy labor of designing mechanics -- adopt any of several ORC-licensed RPG's.

They can select a "big" publisher/game (such as Paizo/Pathfinder) in hopes of coat-tailing to extra success.  Or they can pick mechanics they feel are specially suitable to their game (it looks like there will be a *LOT* of ORC-licensed RPGs out there).

I think Chaosium is hoping to get some extra attention and dev-work with their "first mover advantage."

[Mugen]

10 hours ago, g33k said:

That's clearly what the OGL is about.

Yes, definitely, that was one of the goals of the licence. But it was not restricted to one game system, and was used by other game companies for their own systems.

OGL is seen as the D&D licence because it was mainly used to sell D&D-compatible products, because it's what people wanted to buy.

Concerning ORC, I only know about 3 projects or games. Out of the 3, only BRP is not an attempt to let 3rd party publishers to keep selling D&D products.

[lawrence.whitaker]

6 hours ago, Mugen said:

Yes, definitely, that was one of the goals of the licence. But it was not restricted to one game system, and was used by other game companies for their own systems.

OGL is seen as the D&D licence because it was mainly used to sell D&D-compatible products, because it's what people wanted to buy.

Concerning ORC, I only know about 3 projects or games. Out of the 3, only BRP is not an attempt to let 3rd party publishers to keep selling D&D products.

Classic Fantasy Imperative and Mythras Imperative will be be released under ORC. Both can be used as they are, or combined with other ORC licensed systems. There’s obviously high compatibility with BRP.