[DF] Holy water seems to have no purpose

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Rasputin

Actually, wholly legal due to the OGL, though not something on which you want SJG to waste resources.

READ the OGL. It's not a blanket "do what you will" license. You can ONLY use it to make OGL games (GURPS is not and will never be distributed under the Open Game License). Also, the Beholder, the Mind Flayer, the Drow, and the other distinctive monsters B-Dog is agitating for are NOT part of the open game content. They're explicitly excluded from OGL licensing, meaning you can't even make OGL game supplements using them.

Why? Because those are monsters that TSR invented*. When WotC bought TSR, they bought those rights. And then after then, Hasburo bought the rights when they bought WotC. These are monsters that they can argue about in court without immediately being laughed at and dismissed (unlike vampires, dragons, orcs, goblins, centaurs, etc).

Ripping them off would invite a lawsuit if Hasburo ever noticed you doing it. And even if SJG and the rest of the RPG industry are small potatos compared to Hasburo, SJG are still one of the biggest "also rans" and would hit the radar at Hasburo pretty quickly if they tried to knock off those races too closely.

Small fry can get away with referring to them with cute names, especially in OGL or D20 supplements that would result in the player going back to the original books from WotC to look up stats. Stealing them for an entirely different game system owned and printed by one of the few vaguely credible compeditors? Who's also producing viable card games and boardgames which compete directly with WotC and Hasburo's main lines of business?

There'd be a lawsuit so fast I could hear the lawyers shrieking with glee from up here in Canada.

* or at least built up enough original material around them that the familiar versions are new unique products. They can't claim "dark elves" as original, because the Norse would have a thing or two to say about that, but the matriarchal, spider obsessed "drow" are. Mind Flayers were sourced from a few different places that most geeks can recognize, but the final D&D product (a race of telepathic brain eating slavers that reproduce via parasitic tadpoles) is unique.
The claims may or may not stand up in court - I don't think they've ever been tested. But they're at least sound enough that it would get to court, instead of being laughed at.