Legal Use of 2e Content

[Elohir]

Do not include ANY descriptive text from Copyright materials.

Sorry, but the owners of the material have an official policy that says I can, with certain limitations. I plan on following those limitations, but I also plan on including excerpts of descriptive text as well. If WotC has an issue with what they've permitted, they can either ask me to take it down, or update their policy.

[Elohir]

What started as a legitimate question of WotC's & SmiteWorks policy on using 2e material, has become a debate on what constitutes Fair Use and Intellectual Property.

Might I suggest becoming more familiar with the doctrine of Fair Use and Wizards' own Fan Content Policy before contradicting it any further.

[celestian]

I think the issue is these people aren't lawyers (far as I know) and are being cautious. Past history has shown that to be a wise plan. The choice is obviously yours and you seem to be pretty versed on the documents, I certainly hope for the best with your projects.

[Trenloe]

@Elohir, I agree with what you're saying.

We're very encouraging of community members creating and sharing content, as long as they do so with the guidelines/policies/licenses for that content. But please be aware that we are *very* strict on enforcing copyright on these forums. If the moderators deem you are not following the Fan Content Policy (for example, not following posts #2 and #4), have crossed the boundary of excessive use of IP, etc. then we will take your material down from this site.

What is also interesting about the Fan Content Policy is the following entry in the Frequently Asked Questions Section (red highlight mine):

Can I use all of Wizards’ IP?

Unfortunately, no. You cannot incorporate Wizards patents, game mechanics (unless your Fan Content is created under the D&D Open Game License), logos, or trademarks into your Fan Content without our prior written permission.

In the USA game mechanics are not covered by copyright. But Wizards specifically call this out as something you can't do within the Fan Content Policy. So, based off the US copyright laws, it seems you can either release Wizards material in terms of game mechanics outside of the Fan Content Policy, which will severely restrict the other IP you can include in the same package; or you can release quite a bit of material under the pretty liberal Fan Content Policy, but not include game mechanics which aren't also covered by the D&D OGL.

[Elohir]

Celestian and Trenloe,

Thanks VERY much for the helpful and constructive replies. My whole point of starting this thread was to establish what the real limitations are, and not just accept a blanket mantra of "don't use it."

Elohir

[hawkwind]

I wonder if you could get away with it by using the DM's guild to release stuff as 5e and then add an optional 2e module?

Also I have a 90% completd module i completed that I started before the 2e official ruleset came out. The original material its based on was released under Creative Commons CC and the module it self makes no calls for treasure /NPC's on 2e ruleset. i assume it will be ok to share via these forums?

[Trenloe]

I wonder if you could get away with it by using the DM's guild to release stuff as 5e and then add an optional 2e module?

Nope. See the first section here! https://support.dmsguild.com/hc/en-u...ent-Guidelines

Also I have a 90% completd module i completed that I started before the 2e official ruleset came out. The original material its based on was released under Creative Commons CC and the module it self makes no calls for treasure /NPC's on 2e ruleset. i assume it will be ok to share via these forums?

If you follow the license the material was released under, and that license allows you to reformat (is not a CC ND - no derivatives license) and distribute that material, then you can share on the forums.

[hawkwind]

the license says

LICENSE
This work is licensed under Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA.
You can share it for free, adapt it to your own system, edit it, print it and
leave it in local game stores. You just can’t sell it for money, and you
have to credit me somewhere. Same goes for the art.

so i guess I'm good to go

[celestian]

the license says

LICENSE
This work is licensed under Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA.
You can share it for free, adapt it to your own system, edit it, print it and
leave it in local game stores. You just can’t sell it for money, and you
have to credit me somewhere. Same goes for the art.

so i guess I'm good to go

That sounds like OSRIC? I know they are wide open. I've contacted Stuart Marshall a few times to confirm and from my conversations that system is pretty open and makes it easy to use.

If that's not OSRIC ignore me... I just wanted to mention it because OSRIC is pretty nice

[Trenloe]

This work is licensed under Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/

Yep, that's cool, as long as you include the license, etc. within the FG module - see the "Attribution" section in the link above.

The main thing to look for in a CC license is ND = No Derivative, where you can change the format (e.g make a FG module from a PDF) but you can't adapt - essentially only using a portion of the original (unless it's used purely as an example), or combing data from the original into a larger work.