--- Justin Bacon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> That is, in short, the reasoning behind it: By
> closing the name, the
> company maintains effective control of the IP.
> Personally, I think
> they're idiots -- plain and simple. By deliberately
> preventing my -- a
> D20 developer -- from referencing their product they
> are crippling the
> network advantages inherent in the entire system.
>
> For example, say that I want to use a moon cat (from
> the CREATURE
> COLLECTION) in one of the adventures I'm writing for
> Fantasy Flight
> Games or Penumbra. Because the names in the CC have
> been closed
> (preventing me from referencing it), the only way
> for me to use the
> creature is to put the stats in my own product and
> give the creature a
> new name. At the same time, I'm referencing a bunch
> of creatures from
> the MONSTER MANUAL without doing anything more than
> saying "hey, go look
> on pg. XX of the MONSTER MANUAL". Instead of having
> my product networked
> to theirs (so that people who pick up my product
> will be encourX-Mozilla-Status: 0009s), they've
> sealed the network off.
I agree. I went to a gaming store last night and took
a look at all the d20 products they had on the
shelves, and every one that I saw had made the
creature names PI. There might be some d20 stuff out
there that doesn't do this, but I haven't seen it yet.
To me, releasing the _stat block_ as Open Content is
meaningless, since it couldn't be protected by
copyright anyway! The layout, yes, under selection,
arrangement, and presentation [a thin copyright, but a
copyright nonetheless] but not the stats themselves.
So, in effect, the thing that wasn't protected anyway
is what's being dumped into Open Content.
I have heard the argument that putting creature names
in PI is necessary in order to protect the author's
campaign setting, but I don't buy that. I can
understand protecting the names of places in the
world, the world itself, and prominent NPCs, because
those are more along the lines of _story_ elements.
New creatures are _game_ elements, and letting someone
else use your custom creatures' names does not, in my
opinion, threaten your ownership of the world. The
only situation in which I can see that it'd be
absolutely necessary to protect creature names is when
you're planning to release a line of plush toys or
something like that.
Also, FWIW, I think it's bogus to attack people like
Kal on the basis that they haven't released a d20
product or haven't released as big a product as
someone else has. People are entitled to their
opinions, and I don't think that a person's point of
view magically becomes correct as soon as he or she
has published a d20 module. <VBG>
Neal
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