Sigil PI allows me to call out more copyrighted material without making my book look like crap. I have seen thread upon thread of total lack of understanding of PI and held my tongue. Screw the legal aspects of it...the license tells you exactly what it is, regardless of how it is used so let me describe the reasons why I like it that have nothing to do the legal side of it.
The funny thing is I like PI because it allows me to follow form over function in layout design. I can design a D20 book just like I would any normal book. OGC is bound in a 1 or 2 pt box, everything else is copyrighted material. I can then designate certain words as PI so that I can keep "ownership" of certain properties I would like to maintain as mine or my company's without making the thing look ugly. Thought I would add some comments from and Art Director who is no way, shape, or form, a lawyer. In the end, I actually like to see how everyone releases their products. It is a great experiment and everyone is trying to figure out how to do it right. It is fun I think. Nothing has offended me yet (no matter how "dead" you might think a book) and quite frankly the time you have spent to date on this group of threads could have been spent writing the material that would have filled in the gaps you bitch about. Take the energy you are wasting and do something with it. Richard Stewart Sanguine Productions Ltd. [EMAIL PROTECTED] http:///www.sanguineproductions.com -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of The Sigil Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2001 2:09 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Ogf-l] Why PI? (Long) While I absolutely agree with Faustus that the necessary "game-mechanical" content is Open to make the creature technically useful, it comes back to my having to rename the creature to use it in my own works. I would prefer to use the accepted name - so people can know just where it came from. This is why I dislike removing the names of the monsters from the pool of OGC. I understand pulling a few limited names for PI purposes - as a previous poster pointed out, the Mithril Golem really should be PI, but the Wood Golem probably shouldn't. I again point out that if you make it neither PI nor OGC, it is plain old vanilla Normal Copyrighted Material. If you really don't want to open it up, leave it as Normal Copyrighted Material instead of PI unless it is somehow truly integral to your campaign setting (Mithril Golem is, Wood Golem isn't). Either way, nobody else can touch it without your permission, and it makes the designation of PI actually mean something. This is perhaps a matter of my own personal taste, but in my mind, designating all copyrighted material as PI is pretty much the same as posting a message to a message board in all caps. When you selectively use caps in a message, you get emphasis. But, WHEN ALL YOU DO IS USE CAPS, THE EFFECT OF EMPHASIS IS QUICKLY LOST AND REPLACED BY ANNOYANCE ON THE PART OF THE READER (I will stop now because I think the point is made). In the same way, when you save the PI designation for the truly important and unique parts, it calls attention to them in a positve fashion. When you call ALL of your Normal Copyrighted Material "PI," it loses the effect of calling extra attention to it and ALSO annoys, hence calling attention to your material in a negative fashion. --The Sigil P.S. - Please read through all 6 of my posts before replying. Thanks. _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
