[Ogf-l] PI creatures

[Githianki]

Clark-       I understand your position and I am not suggesting you do something you are uncomfortable with as a company.  I just got the impression that you were saying you couldn't do anything about it because of the OGL, which I don't think is the case.       I think that saying "This is no longer PI," is sufficient, since the key to creating PI is simply having the owner clearly identify it as such.   This is one of the hairy issues I think though.  Ryan just indicated that there are no rules for identification because of the myriad ways it can be done, which I wholly understand.  However, while this may work for OGC (because all OGC is accompanied by the OGL which spells out the rules), I have seen nothing that says where PI is to be found.  Do you see the problem?  The OGL gives protections (of reference) to a class of material that is not necessarily part of an OGC distribution.  Anyone who does research for a product can clearly find the rules, provenance, etc. for OGC content they wish to use but may have no idea of what PI lurks out there because the declaration of PI is not tied to the presence of OGC or the OGL.       Therefore, even though a simple declaration might be sufficient there is no way for people to tell what is and is not PI.       One of the issues,I thought I had asked about earlier (in another post) was whether the declaration of PI is tied to the presence of OGC and the OGL.  At one point in the License the phrase "the Product Identity" is used in such a way as to imply that PI might only be valid if declared within a OGL'd body of work.       Anyway, thank god no one is trying to PI the ape deal. I didn't just think of it in terms of the words though, I was worried that someone else was.  I support the PI'ing (assuming there are good reasons for it) of entire concepts (like a Frosted Sugary Ape with ecology, etc.) but not just generic names.  I also liked Brad's explanation that people could use the same or similar names if the creature was a) different and b) not derived from the "original."       Please post the results of your discussions with Steve as regards the issue of designing with PI and OGC in mind (flexibity-wise) because I think that they would be very useful.   -Alex Silva