Does anyone even, like, own rules??

[Embassy of Time]

I just got back into RPG industry gossip after, you guessed it, the big Wizards of the Coast OGL 1.1 screw-up. Somewhere in the many articles I caught someone (I think Legal Eagle) say that rules cannot be copyrighted. The texts describing them can, but not the actual rules themselves. Anyone know how this works? Could SJG technically release "GURPS D&D" without WotC being able to punish them??

[L.J.Steele]

Originally Posted by Embassy of Time

I just got back into RPG industry gossip after, you guessed it, the big Wizards of the Coast OGL 1.1 screw-up. Somewhere in the many articles I caught someone (I think Legal Eagle) say that rules cannot be copyrighted. The texts describing them can, but not the actual rules themselves. Anyone know how this works? Could SJG technically release "GURPS D&D" without WotC being able to punish them??

It's more like the difference between an SRD and the full text. The SRD is the recipe for the game, but standing alone is unlikely to be enough to actually run it.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Embassy of Time

I just got back into RPG industry gossip after, you guessed it, the big Wizards of the Coast OGL 1.1 screw-up. Somewhere in the many articles I caught someone (I think Legal Eagle) say that rules cannot be copyrighted. The texts describing them can, but not the actual rules themselves. Anyone know how this works? Could SJG technically release "GURPS D&D" without WotC being able to punish them??

There's a difference between 'rules' and 'expression of rules'; the first cannot be copyrighted, the second can, and the line between those two is not super well defined. Also, D&D is a trademark so SJG absolutely could not publish GURPS D&D.

[Embassy of Time]

Originally Posted by Anthony

There's a difference between 'rules' and 'expression of rules'; the first cannot be copyrighted, the second can, and the line between those two is not super well defined. Also, D&D is a trademark so SJG absolutely could not publish GURPS D&D.

No, not by that name, I understand that completely. But if someone made a GURPS supplement that effectively made it possible to use D&D material in GURPS, I wonder if it would be legal. Not sure how it would work, but...

No plans or even suggestions, the concept just grabbed me!

[Saint]

Originally Posted by Embassy of Time

No, not by that name, I understand that completely. But if someone made a GURPS supplement that effectively made it possible to use D&D material in GURPS, I wonder if it would be legal. Not sure how it would work, but...

No plans or even suggestions, the concept just grabbed me!

From time to time, I'll run across somebody's unofficial conversion guide for D&D to GURPS, and I'm quickly struck by what an exercise in masochism it must be. The two games are so different in both philosophy and mechanics, it's almost like oil and water. In D&D, a fifth-level party is a match for the entire town watch. If you try that nonsense in vanilla GURPS, you can expect a TPK. But I get it - rust monsters are cool, beholders are cool, and gelatinous cubes are cool, and you want them in your GURPS game. I don't think you really need a conversion guide to stat them up, just a copy of Bestiary and some common sense. If it's for your Thursday night game only, you don't even need to change their names. If you're thinking of including them in some sort of published work, DON'T.
Also, I 've never had a close look at Dungeon Fantasy, but I'm sure the advantage there is Kromm and company have suffered all the pain so you don't have to.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Saint

In D&D, a fifth-level party is a match for the entire town watch. If you try that nonsense in vanilla GURPS, you can expect a TPK.

Depends on point levels in vanilla GURPS, and edition and equipment in D&D; D&D is not as high powered as people think, and GURPS is perfectly willing to operate at cinematic scales -- a DFRPG party can kill an awful lot of town watch.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Embassy of Time

I just got back into RPG industry gossip after, you guessed it, the big Wizards of the Coast OGL 1.1 screw-up. Somewhere in the many articles I caught someone (I think Legal Eagle) say that rules cannot be copyrighted. The texts describing them can, but not the actual rules themselves. Anyone know how this works? Could SJG technically release "GURPS D&D" without WotC being able to punish them??

Originally Posted by Embassy of Time

No, not by that name, I understand that completely. But if someone made a GURPS supplement that effectively made it possible to use D&D material in GURPS, I wonder if it would be legal. Not sure how it would work, but...

So by a specific law/legal precedent, rules cannot be copyrighted, though the way the rules are written down can be. So SJgames could release a class-based RPG with attack bonuses by level, spell casting slots, and basically all of the structure of D&D classes.

However, just because something is legal and you should eventually win in court doesn't mean that someone can't sue you over it. Wizards of the Coast could probably sue in that case, finding some small quibble to spend lots of money litigating about (and force the "offender" to spend money defending). Its hard to take away someone's ability to sue.


This is why RPG companies (including both wizards and sjgames) have frequently made requests to their fans in the realm of copyright. It helps clarify those "well I could sue anyway" waters.

[RyanW]

Actual text is subject to copyright, and unique terminology and appearance may be subject to trademark protection. But "roll a twenty sided die, add a number, and see if it exceeds this other number" wouldn't be.

To make a game that was compatible with D&D you'd be in a precarious position between "this is straightforward enough to be easily translatable" and "this is similar enough to be infringement" on things like the names of mechanical elements or the visual layout of stat blocks. Even if you balance that line perfectly, you need to be pretty sure you will make more money selling the book than it costs to protect your right to sell the book (only the most maliciously frivolous cases will ever see the defendant recover any legal expenses).

And don't even think about selling something while openly stating it's compatible with someone else's system unless they approve that statement.

[Anaraxes]

Game mechanics cannot be copyrighted, but they can be (and have been) patented. The rules text itself, the "expression" of those mechanics, can be copyrighted, which protects that expression, but doesn't protect the mechanics. The way the game looks -- trade dress, logos, particular symbols like the card tap symbol in MtG, the funky symbols on FFG's Star Wars/Genesys dice -- can be trademarked.

Compare with a recipe. Recipes themselves cannot be copyrighted. That's one reason you see recipe sites and food bloggers always going on for paragraphs about how they used to feel when their mother made some item. That expressive stuff that's not part of the recipe can be copyrighted. But processes for producing food, just like processes for producing nearly anything, can be patented.

Patents for game mechanics have the same requirements as other patents -- novel and nonobvious to a game designer of ordinary skill in the art.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Compare with a recipe. Recipes themselves cannot be copyrighted. That's one reason you see recipe sites and food bloggers always going on for paragraphs about how they used to feel when their mother made some item. That expressive stuff that's not part of the recipe can be copyrighted. But processes for producing food, just like processes for producing nearly anything, can be patented.

Recipes may fall under trade secrets. That wouldn't keep someone from publishing a recipe that they think tastes just like a company's secret recipe, but it would be grounds for legal action against someone that works for/with that company who shared it with someone who wasn't authorized to know.

That is a subfield of IP law that isn't really relevant to game publication (game rules are, by their nature, available to the general public), other than a few things like unannounced upcoming projects and the details of contracts.