D&D 5E So, 5e OGL

[prosfilaes]

Yes, we know those words aren't copyrighted. Yes, we know you don't need the OGL. There is no disagreement here.

Yes, you need the OGL. WotC owns the copyright to the D&D setting (and settings), and any time you pull out a bulette or a dragon color-coded for your convenience for non-fair use purposes, you need that OGL to protect you. Worrying about terms like "hit points" makes people ignore the real issues that they should be worrying about.

A formal license removes that question. A guy on the internet saying, "No, really, you'll be perfectly safe, it'll be okay to put your hard-earned money into that production," does not remove the question.

I'm not saying you'll be perfectly safe. I'm saying the opposite, that you'll be in deep if you think that terms like "hit points" are the issue behind the OGL. As I said in this very thread, without any license from WotC, are you sure that your kobolds (for whom the SRD does not say they are related to dragons, nor does it say they lay eggs) aren't derivative from (A)D&D's kobolds (outside what might have been released in the SRD)? Likewise, are your tieflings clearly SRD-tieflings, and not derivative of Second, Fourth or Fifth edition tieflings? Those are the questions you need to be asking, not are the words we are using used in the SRD.

 

[Umbran]

Uh, no. A plaintiff in a civil suit is free to withdraw their suit prior to trial. You cannot force someone to continue with a lawsuit.

That may be accurate, but may not be relevant, as in this case the trial had already occurred - the two sides were urged by the judge to come to a settlement before she came to a judgement, as it may have been that her judgement would please *nobody*.

 

[Mistwell]

That may be accurate, but may not be relevant, as in this case the trial had already occurred

That may be accurate, but may not be relevant to the context I was replying to, which said, "In the US, settlements for an already filed suit.." rather than, "settlements for an already tried suit". You may not care about that distinction, but I do.

 

[jmucchiello]

Yes, you need the OGL. WotC owns the copyright to the D&D setting (and settings), and any time you pull out a bulette or a dragon color-coded for your convenience for non-fair use purposes, you need that OGL to protect you. Worrying about terms like "hit points" makes people ignore the real issues that they should be worrying about.

Yes, but that OGC already exists. I can use the 3e SRD in hypothetical 5e work and say Room 6 contains a Bulette (hp 94). I'm referring to the 3e SRD there. The reader is free to go get a 3e book and convert it or just use the 5e Bulette. His choice. (Amusingly, 3e Bulette's default to 94 hp, just like they do in the 5e MM.)

Likewise I can put all sorts of kobolds in a story. As long as my story doesn't hang on them being reptiles or dogmen or whatever else kobolds once were, the story still works.

 

[Hussar]

Yes, but that OGC already exists. I can use the 3e SRD in hypothetical 5e work and say Room 6 contains a Bulette (hp 94). I'm referring to the 3e SRD there. The reader is free to go get a 3e book and convert it or just use the 5e Bulette. His choice. (Amusingly, 3e Bulette's default to 94 hp, just like they do in the 5e MM.)

Likewise I can put all sorts of kobolds in a story. As long as my story doesn't hang on them being reptiles or dogmen or whatever else kobolds once were, the story still works.

Actually, you could get away with a lot of that kobold stuff:

Kobolds are short, reptilian humanoids with cowardly and sadistic tendencies.

A kobold’s scaly skin ranges from dark rusty brown to a rusty black color. It has glowing red eyes. Its tail is nonprehensile. Kobolds wear ragged clothing, favoring red and orange. A kobold is 2 to 2½ feet tall and weighs 35 to 45 pounds. Kobolds speak Draconic with a voice that sounds like that of a yapping dog.

If you wanted egg laying to be a part of the adventure, why not? They are specifically reptiles and reptiles lay eggs. It speaks Draconic so, adding in a dragon overlord with kobold slaves is hardly violating anything. So, my reptilian, egg laying kobolds serving a black dragon is covered by the SRD already. The SRD is not only stat blocks. There is a significant amount of flavour information there as well.

 

[Mark CMG]

Actually, you could get away with a lot (. . .)

Will that be the opening line of your business plan?

You see the problem here, right?

 

[Umbran]

That may be accurate, but may not be relevant to the context I was replying to, which said, "In the US, settlements for an already filed suit.." rather than, "settlements for an already tried suit". You may not care about that distinction, but I do.

The distinction is not relevant to the case in point, concerning the D&D movie. That bore noting, before someone got confused.

 

[Nylanfs]

Oh look it's the 17th and still no news.

 

[Michael Morris]

I find this limbo situation to be... odd. I would have thought to learn something new by now.

Unlike 4e, which broke sacred cows with the delightful abandon of a 2 year old, 5e is relatively close to its ancestry, allowing adventures to be produced with a reasonable amount of security under the 3e OGL. But it's still no doubt very uncomfortable compared to the license.

Personally, I blame Mongoose and their Pocket PHB for this. Printing the whole SRD out verbatim poisoned the waters and likely soured Hasbro on the OGL long before 4e came around. While it's true Pathfinder is somewhat the same - at least it upgrades the game some and has some originality, that and Paizo was backed into a corner and forced to either make it or close their doors (In other words, WotC made their largest competitor inadvertently). The only thing original about the pocket PHB was the 8 point font size.

 

[prosfilaes]

Personally, I blame Mongoose and their Pocket PHB for this. Printing the whole SRD out verbatim poisoned the waters and likely soured Hasbro on the OGL long before 4e came around.

Is there any reason to think that Hasbro noticed this? Hasbro as Hasbro has been dealing with people making cheap knockoffs of Barbie and GI Joe and everything else for years, and ultimately anything selling 0.1% of Hasbro's product that's not crossing the lines is ignorable. In some ways, in the days of the Internet, why stress about a cheap low-quality knockoff of a book? Anybody cheap enough to buy the Pocket PHB instead of the real PHB could have lived off websites and pirate copies. Most of Mongoose's sales probably went to people who owned a real PHB and wanted a compact copy.