RE: [Ogf-l] Legacy products and non-copyrightable material

[Lewis Stoddart]

Title: Message

See also my response to Rogers, above. I agree that there's certainly a legit way of doing it, it's just a case of how. The trouble is implementing it in such a way as to not disturb the extant system.

Thanks,

Lewis

 

-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Brad Thompson
Sent: Friday, 2 November 2001 07:28
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: [Ogf-l] Legacy products and non-copyrightable material

Such questions are very difficult to answer.  Nobody really knows where the line is, and every case is slightly different.  If you just use the same words with different mechanics behind them then you can make a good case that your work is original.  If your explanation of what the sub-stats mean is obviously parallel to the text in the 2e rules then you are moving into questionable territory. 

 

I don't think there is much question that you CAN do this legally, but HOW you do it will make all the difference.  To render an opinion one would need to see the entire text of exactly how you intended to execute your concept.

 

-Brad

-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Lewis Stoddart
Sent: Thursday, November 01, 2001 11:07 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: [Ogf-l] Legacy products and non-copyrightable material

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?