Thanks Ryan as always for the forthright and straightforward answer. Faust
>From: "Ryan S. Dancey" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > From: Faustus von Goethe [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > > Ryan, is this an oversight or is it intentional? > >When preparing the monster sections of the SRD, I tried to remove all >specific physical descriptions of the creatures. I did that because it >would be very hard for a publisher to understand the difference between >creating a derivative work based on WotC's illustration, and creating a >derivative work based on a physical description. The former is a >copyright infringement, the latter would be standard use of the OGL. >The SRD is drafted with an eye towards making it as easy as possible to >tell a publisher "if you use what's in the SRD and ignore D&D, you > >will< comply with the OGL, and the d20 System Trademark License, and >won't infringe WotC's copyrights or trademarks". > >Thus, if you want to create illustrations for creatures in the SRD, you >need to create them from whole cloth, not by starting with the >description in the Monster Manual. For most creatures, that's neither >hard to do, nor very time consuming. For a handful, it's both. For >most of the creatures, the illustrations you're likely to create will be >recognizable to the average gamer, because those monsters are drawn from >myth and legend and have commonly accepted forms and shapes. For the >handful that don't, you are a bit out of luck. (Although, as I said >before, they could be black-boxed. If you started with someone who had >never seen an illustration of a Mind-Flayer, and gave them the SRD >description, and they gave you back an illustration of an octopus-headed >humanoid, you'd be in the clear, since your work was not derivative of >WotC's copyright). > > > Is it the INTENT of WOTC to maintain character copyright over > > the physical descriptions of these creatures? > >Here's the problem. WotC doesn't know what creatures are original to >D&D, what creatures have names from myth or legend that are original D&D >"versions" that are so unique as to consititute a whole new copyright, >and what creatures are public domain. Various people in the company >(and in TSR) have rendered their opinions on the matter in the past, and >they're almost all wrong - the reason is that TSR did not have a system >for tracking the design inspirations for D&D and thus cannot rely on the >memories of the people who are still on staff, or the assumptions prior >staff members may have made about the copyrights. (exmple: "drow" was >claimed by TSR as a copyright for a long time, until someone did the >research to present independent, earlier usages of the term to refer to >"dark elves" that significantly predate D&D. That work done, the public >domain character of "drow" has been firmly established; however, there >are lots of people who work or have worked on the D&D business in some >capacity that don't know it, and still assume that what they were told >(that TSR "owned" "drow") was true. When they state that "fact", >they're not lying or trying to decieve anyone, they're just passing >along a knowledge-base of conventional wisdom that happens to be riddled >with errors.) > >As a part of preparing for 3rd Edition, we took a hard look at some of >the core monsters in the D&D beastiary, and selected several of them to >undergo a substantial visual reconcepting. The effort was made to end >up with illustrations of the creatures that could not easily be >duplicated without referencing WotC's illustrations; so that in turn we >could generate licensing fees from selling the rights to those images to >action figure manufacturers, computer game companies, etc. That list >includes most of the popular and common monsters. Having done that >work, WotC is unwilling to simply give it all away for free. > >My standpoint is that illustrations are not game rules, or material that >uses those rules, and therefore the control of derivative works for the >illustrations of D&D falls outside the scope I perceive to be critical >for the success of the Open Gaming movement. That viewpoint, combined >with the strategy of leveraging the "new look" D&D monsters (that I >helped craft) guided my choices when redacting the Monster Manual into >SRD format. > >Ryan >_______________________________________________ >Ogf-l mailing list >[EMAIL PROTECTED] >http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp. _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
