As I thought; copyright does not lapse, and if you want to use it, you have to write your own from scratch. So, I'm curious as to how much of a difference there would need to be. The deity example used below was a hypothetical, but the use of the substats is not. My game does use them, albeit with different modifiers and so on but effectively the same thing, as it stands. To what sort of extent would they need to differ before I could claim them as Open Game Content?
You'll have to be more specific. I'm not entirely clear on how they are different and the same.
The general rule is that you do not have the right to derive anything from existing D&D rulebooks. So there's no way to make old D&D stuff open -- the copyright holder is the only entity that can do that.
There are obviously situations in RPG gaming where one publisher's rules are highly reminiscent of another's. (Kevin Siembeda, I'm looking at you when I say this.) However, since one of the benefits of OGF/D20 is to create a safe harbor where we can share each other's open work, it would be a shame to give that up by producing work that might be considered derivative of D&D. Why use those substats rather than creating something new on your own that's original or derived solely from the SRD?
Rogers Cadenhead
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