Want to produce official FG products, adventures, rulesets?

[ddavison]

It is usually best for us to contact the publisher directly. We will always need an agreement between SmiteWorks and the publisher of the game material that has been converted and most publishers I've spoken with prefer to deal with another business as opposed to an individual. Once it is near completion, you can email me and I can review it first as well.

[Magnimost]

Thanks, sounds good!

Not sure if my conversion will be good enough for sharing, but we'll see.

[pacio49]

Am I correct in assuming that now that the OGL and SRD are available for 5e that we FG GM's can write and develop modules using the SRD which could theoretically be offered for sale to the community on the FG store as modules, obeying the IP rules in the OGL and sticking to the content which is available via the SRD?

Just making sure I understand correctly before I devote any time to the enterprise. If I'm going to hop down from full 5e to the SRD for campaign development I'd like to be certain it can be distributed later for community availability.

Thanks!

[ddavison]

I believe that is correct. As long as you adhere to the license, which means including the OGL license and denoting what within your creations are Open Game Content, then you should be able to distribute those modules.

[Trenloe]

@Pacio49 - Doug's correct.

One thing you may not be aware of regarding the OGL - distributing products based on the OGL means that certain material you create for that product will also be OGL (system specific statistics - NPC stats, new spells, new abilities, etc.) - Section 1(d) of the OGL. The story and descriptive content remain your product identity (section 1(e) of the OGL), so your own creations: storyline/background/scenario/descriptive text and artwork/maps/tokens is covered by copyright. In theory, this means that some of your own OGL material might appear in another product released under the OGL, but it also means that you can use other people's OGL creations as well - you're not just restricted to the WotC released SRD (as long as you recognise the original product/s in Section 15 of the OGL reproduced in full in your product).

I'd recommend you spend some time reading/researching the OGL and understanding exactly what it means you can use from the SRD and other OGL products, what you can't use and also what it means for your product released under the OGL.

[ddavison]

We added a section in the reference manual for each identifying what parts of our content were Open Gaming Content. For instance, the tokens we used for the NPCs are not OGC.

[LordEntrails]

We added a section in the reference manual for each identifying what parts of our content were Open Gaming Content. For instance, the tokens we used for the NPCs are not OGC.

Not sure quite what you are saying... You added token images to the NPC's inthe SRD modules and you are saying that those images are not OGC? And that means that if we create content using those images we can't distribute it?

[damned]

You have to read the OGL and the SRD to see what they mean and what the requirements are.
The SRD does not contain any images including tokens. As in the Wizards produced the SRD. The FG module is the SRD + some tokens.
If you look in each of the SRD modules you will find an entry called Open Gaming License and another called Open Game Content.
When a publisher/hobbyist releases stuff under the OGL there is almost always stuff in there that belongs to that person/entity and they may release that as OGL or not - usually its not.

We will need to wait for an official SmiteWorks statement on the tokens but letter tokens are very easy to make. You will find several sets on these forums.

[ddavison]

Since the stats are OGC but the tokens are not, you would need to clear the tokens before distributing them. We have a license with Raymond to distribute those within FG, so we may be able to work out something here in the future. It's still all pretty new to us as well.

[pacio49]

Thanks for the input. I scanned the OGL and SRD once through already but haven't 'unpacked' what the license terms mean fully yet. It's on the list of things to do before starting development of any modules for public consumption.

Obviously this is going to be a process and there will be some learnings and best practices developed as we all move forward. Not looking for a quick solution. More thinking that it will take some good time (and play testing) to develop pay-worthy adventure modules in the first place.

With all of the mapping I throw into my modules already, adding in the creation of unique letter tokens isn't that bad of a lift. Maybe someone in the community (or even me if I have the time) will do up a set of "default" letter tokens that they'd be willing to share with a Creative Commons license that allows commercial use with Attribution, or somesuch. Just have to be clear about font ownership for that, I'd imagine, but once worked out it could be shared across the board as part of a 'FG Module Developer's Toolkit'.