>>There is no way that this is correct. Despite it being Wizard's doing the lisencing, Ravenloft, Kingdoms of Kalamar, and heck pretty much all of the D&D stuff instantly becomes OGC.<<
No, none of those products make use of SRD or OGC material. They are all done under *separate license*. An ability that WotC has because 3E are *our* rules. We don't need to use the SRD. >>To create an extreme counter-example: I create a world called "Billerica", marking that as PI to me. I then create the major race of the world "Horse" and give them a statblock in D20 terms. I then get sick of D20 and make a house system: "Flip a Coin" which is Copyright to me. I then go out and make the Flip a Coin supplement "FAC: Billerica". Because Billerica is PI I can do this just fine. << That is absolutely correct assuming that you never licensed Billerica under the OGL which you can do merely by declaring it so when you published your d20 Billerica. However, if you declared Billerica OGC then you declared Billerica OGC. It is now OGC. I can publish Billerica. John Smith can publish Billerica. Anyone can publish Billerica as long as they conform to the OGL. ****However, after consulting legal and Ryan I may need to retract some previous statments or inferences. All of the above is true however... >>However, according to what you've just said, if I attempt to put MY race, the "Horse" into "FAC: Billerica" I need to attach the OGL because the "Horse" happened to appear in an OGL document when the line of derivation is a couple of napkins I scribbled on during lunch last year which is the common parent to both.<< It is not the derivation it is the declaration. The SRD is OGC. D&D 3rd Edition is not. However, you are correct in the result. Lets say that you created a world called Billerica. You realize that you could make more money of off "Billerica20". You create Billerica20 and declare it OGC. It is now OGC. It has been "given" to the network and the network can make use of it. However, you could make the argument that the original product 'Billerica' is not a part of the network. Thus you can continue to produce non-OGC products based on Billerica. However, if anything you use is *derived* from the SRD or other OGC then it cannot be used without the OGL. So if you created rules for the Billerica Ballet company and those rules were derived from the SRD or other OGC material then you could not put those *rules* into another product. This is also true of non-game material. Lets say that you created a class in Bellirca that is derived from the SSS "Brothers of the Scarred Hand" (this example is going to suck cause I don't know if the Brother of the Scarred hand is OGC or! not but lets assume it is). Because that class was derived from OGC content you could not be use it (rules name or description) without the OGL (SSS of course, could). >>Not Kosher.<< Completely Kosher because like milk and meat you can keep them separate. If you don't want to open your I/P then you do not have to. Most people don't. In addition as long as you are okay with others having the right to do what they want with the I/P you opened you can still use the *non-OGC* derived I/P in any manner you want. Boy I hope that is clear cause I am too tired to write much more. How did Ryan Dancey do it? AV _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
