Re: [DF] Holy water seems to have no purpose
 

We aren't talking about inspiration or homages. We are talking about the idea of SJG outright stealing from something that has existing copyright protection. Even if TSR no longer exists, WotC still has the legal right to chase after anybody who tries using TSR content for commercial sale.

DF is already a homage taking inspiration from previous works and yes... that is perfectly fine. There are a LOT of fans who work on making the creatures that have been in D&D and that is pretty much fine too, but as soon as SJG starts trying to publish something for actual money that can be proven to use the AD&D guides as material?

That is when lawyers get involved and after that, no fan gets what they want.

EDIT- People I know involved in game publishing say that creative content needs to be about 80% different than a source in order to be considered different enough. I don't know how a court would decide what 80% means, but that is the number at least some professionals seem to be concerned with.

Re: [DF] Holy water seems to have no purpose
 

There's a conversion around here of White Plume Mountain on which I did a bunch of work. (Wizards put a 3e version of this adventure as a freebie on its web site.) The thing I found is that it really isn't that much work to convert an adventure, which is mostly monster stats, but it's much more work to put that conversion into a format fit for others. (Read: writing out monster stats on a pad of graph paper versus typing them up and proofreading them and formatting them.)

Re: [DF] Holy water seems to have no purpose
 

I wonder why the author Order of the Stick hasn't been lawsuited yet. Didn't he basically make a monster called a Mind Flayer, and made a joke about this very exact same thing?

He sells book versions of his comic, right?

Then again, I guess that falls under parody/satire, and it was made clear how the original "creators" were.

Re: [DF] Holy water seems to have no purpose
 

If you stuck to that level of inspiration you'd be fine. Cthulhu's in public domain in most jurisdictions so the case probably wouldn't go anywhere. Pick a name that isn't much like Mind Flayer (or Illithid), and you're set. Skull Squids?

The more details you add to make it "like a mind flayer" - especially for the important Dungeon Fantasy purpose of combat tactics - the more rope you're stringing up to hang yourself on. Also important is all the non-combat fluff describing their culture and history (TSR published I think three whole supplements on mindflayers IIRC, there almost as lovingly documented as the Drow).

How far down the list of details you need to go before you're in serious legal trouble is a question for a lawyer, but I suspect that "area effect short-duration mental stun" combined with "extracts brains from helpless targets eats them" would be a kiss of death identifying combo. Making them purple or lavender colored would also start getting into dangerously identifiable territory.

This is the problem with trying to rip someone off. The only way to know where to find the boundary is a court case. Or asking the victim which tends to tip them off that you're up to something shady.

It's not like chemistry where you can say with confidence that dropping two grams of reagent X into twenty grams of reagent Y will result in a safe reaction, but dropping 2.001 grams in will cause the reaction to spiral out of control and spray reactive chemicals all over your workstation.

It's a legal case - which means that until it's written down after a judge makes his final decision, there is no exact line. And that exact line is ONLY exact for that exact case involving that exact infringement - for other similar situations you still end up with paying a lawyer 600$ for his opinion that you'd probably win the lawsuit in your particular case based on that precedent... but he probably won't sign a guarantee stating he'd give you your $600 back if you end up loosing.

Re: [DF] Holy water seems to have no purpose
 

Parody laws are indeed different and fall under fair use, along with education and criticism.

The only people who have been able to really stand on the shoulders of AD&D would be Kenzer & Co. producing Hackmaster with the permission of WotC.

The best way to actually make a good, solid version of the AD&D DM's guide is to do what Gygax, Arneson and company did. Take a long look at the real world and its mythology and turn it into a game-able set of rules.

Just don't look over their shoulders to copy down test answers. That is cheating.

Re: [DF] Holy water seems to have no purpose
 

1) I've read the OGL. In fact, I had a copy at arms' length as I wrote the post. (My printout of NPC Essentials happens to be with my printouts of Dungeon Fantasy.) There is not only no such prohibition in there about making non-OGL games, section 8 clearly states that you need to designate which is closed content and which is open in the work in question, thus indicating that you can use OGL content to make closed content, which in fact happens constantly in any number of d20 products, like the one in which the license to which I referred is. My copy of Toolbox, the next such product I grab, has a similar listing at the end. I'm not a lawyer, just the son of one who took press law in journalism school, so I'd appreciate a clarification from one, but I can't find anything resembling the prohibition you cite above.

2) I said nothing about those monsters, deliberately.

Re: [DF] Holy water seems to have no purpose
 

Quoting myself is tacky, but I re-edit my posts too many times. Sticking to that sort of "thumbnail inspiration" is what produced the Mindwarper, from DF3, page 25.

"Mindwarpers are Things from Beyond Time and Space,
with genius-level intellect and devastating psychic powers. No
mortal has survived to describe one, but ancient lore suggests
that they’re humanoids with pebbly skin (similar to that of a
starfish), no nose, and hands and feet that consist of suckers
surrounded by writhing cilia instead of digits. An encounter
with a mindwarper generally ends in madness or death."

Note - No facial tentacles. No actual mention of brain eating. Suggestive starfish comment. Creepy sucker hands and feet instead of creepy sucker-encrusted facial features.

That's ALL FLUFF. And yet it's CRITICALLY IMPORTANT FLUFF.

The Mindwarper (which even has a name suggestive of Mind Flayer) is an excellent drop-in substitution for a Mind Flayer. It's BETTER than writing up a GURPS Mind Flayer because your players won't know exactly what it is and what it does - the mystery and fear of the encounter is restored.

That's also an excellent example of the correct and professional way to produce a commercial product "ripping off" something - you don't rip it off. You do the hard work and come up with a different idea that is your own.

Fan work converting something to GURPS is a different issue - but it's actually not all that different in a strict legal sense as far as copyright law is concerned. Where it does start mattering is trademark law - and potentially patent law if you're stealing game statistics but that's never been tested in court AFAIK. What makes the difference in copyright cases is that Joe On The Internet writing up a D&D Mind Flayer and posting it in the forums here probably isn't damaging WotC's product sales, probably isn't confusing people about who invented the Mind Flayer, and (critically) probably doesn't have enough money to make up for the lawyers fees needed to sue him.

What can get you in trouble is when the company suspects some of those "probably isn'ts" might actually be "probably ises", and then you get the RIAA. It doesn't really matter for Joe On The Internet whether any of those actually ARE Ises, because he's still got a choice between 30 000 $ of lawyer fees to pay to make the company go away, or giving in to whatever concessions they extort out of him.

Re: [DF] Holy water seems to have no purpose
 

My error was using the term "OGL game" when I should have said "game mechanically compatible with the game presented in the source material you're bringing content out of". The problem is twofold:

1) Steve has said outright that he's not using OGL content in GURPS ever even if there was a rational useful way of doing so, and he's never attaching an OGL license to anything GURPS (which is a prerequisite of using the OGL license to make a derivative work anyways). That's not the license preventing it, that's Word Of God About GURPS.

2) The game mechanical descriptions were made Open Content, and varying amounts of the descriptive text were as well - but only on monsters that were generic enough that WotC didn't have any grounds to claim ownership of that description in the first place. There's not much point in binding yourself to a license agreement for the description of something like an Orc when you can just make an orc independently and be happily public domain. And GURPS can't do anything useful with the game mechanics without reinventing them from scratch as the two games are basically apples and .45 caliber pistols. If it could, the supplement would STILL have to be OGL licensed, even if only for declaring the content from the SRD as used under those terms. And Steve has already vetoed that.

Sections 1. (b) and 1. (g). are the definitions most relevant to system conversions of the original statistics, but the license isn't necessary for ripping off orcs, the license doesn't help at all for the actual unique creatures that you'd have to go beyond the SRD to closed content to rip off, and you don't actually need a license to rewrite the stat blocks for dragons or demons or arrowhawks or anything else from the SRD in GURPS - the system is so different that there's nothing left in the mechanics to claim intellectual property was violated any more, and the concepts expressed in the mechanics (of the OGL licensed monsters) are public domain ideas.

They were sort of the request that was being made, however, and therefore are highly relevant to the conversation. It would be helpful if you'd note that you're deliberately ommitting them because the OGL totally doesn't apply, or people draw possibly legally awkward conclusions. It happened a LOT during the early days of the OGL, which is why I tend to jump all over these questions. One of my friends got excited and started working on his Gaming Magnum Opus involving IIRC Illithids in a central role, and of course got burned by not realizing exactly what boundaries he was working in.

Re: [DF] Holy water seems to have no purpose
 

Chibithulu!

Re: [DF] Holy water seems to have no purpose
 

There is also the whole issue of even if you don't violate their intellectual property, but come close enough to make some case about it, can they sue you out of existence if they so choose. Even if they couldn't win the case.