| >Again (and you apparently dismissed this from my posts), creating
your own completely original adventure, using nobody's PI or such, you can do whatever you want with it. But if you include pieces for using it with a specific set of rules, then the act of doing so (i.e. deriving material from another source, in order to make your product compatible with that other source) makes your product a derivative work under US Copyright law.< The first paragraph is not something I ignored. In fact I, and a few others I think, agree. The second paragraph is where I think we are stumbling. You assert this to be true and I assert this to be false. If those pieces used are not just lifted text or other specific protected expression of a game system, then your work is not necessarily a derivative. Any adventure has to be compatible with some rules to be playable. The adventure (original of course) must share certain concepts with all RPGs to be an adventure (as opposed to story) but the setting elements could exist apart from any particular rules set. To be compatible with RPGs as most people think of them, an adventure needs to express portions of itself according to rules which by nature will be compatible to some degree with any RPG system in general and maybe a specific system in particular. Just choosing one system to frame the work in does not neccessarily make it derivative of the published game system. It the settings from the game system were used that would be a different story but we are talking about origianl settings here. A derivative is a derivative no doubt, but does compatibility with rules create a chain of derivation? I think many here have said it does not but that this is not a clear area of the law. -Alex Silva |
