Copyright Question

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Eldan's picture
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Joined: 2006-12-04
Copyright Question

I'm not sure if this is entirely the right place to ask, but here goes:

Currently, I'm updating an old campaign setting of mine, Etherworld, that is, as the name suggests set entirely in the ethereal plane. Only, this time I'm also writing it up online, over at giantitp.com, the forum where I usually hang out.

My question now is this: I would like to use a few of the things from the Planewalker campaign setting, namely the Control skill and the Nathri race, in my own setting. Would I be allowed to use those, if I credit this site here? Otherwise, I would have to drop those parts, or replace them with other mechanics.

Hyena of Ice's picture
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Joined: 2009-09-25
Re: Copyright Question

I don't know. It may depend on two main factors:

--What the site's policy has with WotC (for instance, it would seem that DnDwiki, a subpar homebrew site with a server that makes a slug crawling in mollasses in 40f degree weather look expedient-- it does have a few funny entries though such as the "Evil Sucky Thing of Doom", "Hobo", "Club of Kobold Golfing", and this one phobia whose name eludes me *the "breaking the 4th wall" one*)

--How much non-OGL material you use (DnDwiki, for instance, appears to be allowed to mention non-OGL stuff by name so long as a disclaimer is provided)
In other words, if you post the full (or even half) of the stats for a non-OGL 3x monster, you'd likely be in trouble. Quoting a single sentence from a sourcebook is likely okay, though (falls under the terms of Fair Use IIRC)

Aik
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Re: Copyright Question

I'm under the impression that WotC only enforce copyright on certain iconic monsters. It would be entirely ridiculous if they did more than that given how many they've lifted from other sources.

You should probably keep in mind also that these sourcebooks are made with the expectation of derivative works ... that's basically the point of them. It would be really, really stupid if they stopped this.

And: why would they even care? Presumably you're not making any money from this. The Nathri are only in 2E as far as I can see, so they're not losing anything...

And *also*, you can only copyright implementations of an idea, not the idea itself. So even given that they probably don't want to enforce any copyright, they probably can't anyway unless you're using their text directly. The iconic monsters are probably covered by trademarks rather than copyright, now that I think of it...

Crediting the Planewalker site doesn't make much sense either - Nathri are described in the monstrous compendium. So, if you're asking about Planewalker's copyrights the answer is just 'no'. ... But Planewalker has even less incentive than WotC to be enforcing that kind of thing.

... I should probably add the 'not a lawyer' disclaimer. I could be taking out of my arse, but I'm reasonably sure you have nothing to worry about.

Planescape, Dungeons & Dragons, their logos, Wizards of the Coast, and the Wizards of the Coast logo are ©2008, Wizards of the Coast, a subsidiary of Hasbro Inc. and used with permission.