On Sat, 23 Feb 2002, Doug Meerschaert wrote: > Faustus von Goethe wrote: > > >> From: "Alec A. Burkhardt" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >> In other words the Free20 logo is for people who are basically doing > >> d20 material that either can't use WotC's 'd20 system' logo (probably > >> because they are including character creation/advancement) or don't > >> want to use WotC's logo > >> for some other reason. > > > > > > As I understand it - and I have been following very closely - that is > > not the stated (nor intended) purpose of the free20 effort. It is > > however an obvious (and not unwelcome) side-effect. > > From my POV: > > Free20 was *not* originally intended to be a d20 replacement. I may be > poor, young, and stupid, but even I know that would be an easy way to > upset WotC.
But my statements, which Faust was responding to, said nothing about Free20 as a whole. They specifically addressed the issue of the Free20 logo. What is the purpose for which someone would put the Free20 logo on a product? If it's not because they can't use WotC's d20 logo or because they don't want to use WotC's d20 logo, what is the reason? I sort of see a third, i.e. those group of people who will use both the Free20 logo and the D20 logo - but the only explanation I've seen for doing that is altruism. (and I am a member of the Free20 Yahoo group, so I have read much of the discussion there.) > Rather, Free20 was meant to mean "this is 100% open gaming", as a way to > flag works that were "photocopy & distrubite" level works. It has since > grown to mean more than that, and might have been replaced in the 100% > open gaming idea, but that was the original idea. Right, but the "this is 100% open gaming" or just "this is open gaming" is taken care of by the open d6 logo. I've never questioned this was part of the whole Free20 effort. But it is irrelevant to the purpose of using the Free20 logo. > Free20 (and the various associated and replacement logos) do fill the > niche of OGL material based on d20 that can't or won't use the d20 logo, > but that's more of an unintended side effect brought on by WotC's > clarification that d20 means "extended from D&D" and not just "uses the > same core mechanics as D&D." Ok, I've already e-mail Mike about this, and it probably really belongs on the Free20 list, but here's one of the groups problems. You need to actually define what your trademarks mean before you try to decide what they are. And you probably need to lose quite a few of the ones on the link. I told Mike you could probably get by with three: 1) an open gaming logo (already taken care - the open d6) 2) a compatible with XXX logo (where XXX is whatever you decide to name the system currently refered to as Free20 and the Mammoth document) 3) the name of the organization itself, which I see Mike has incorporated as Free Gaming Association. The possible fourth item to trademark would be the name of the system itself. But that depends on if the name is actually going to be used in products (as oppposed to just the compatibility logo) and could probably be done without registering if the name is something unique and unused previously in rpgs. (i.e. not Free20 - if you stick with that, go get a lawyer before going further.) alec _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
