On Tue, 3 Sep 2002, Damian wrote: > On Tuesday 03 September 2002 07:38 pm, Justin Bacon wrote: > > But on pg. 286 of the rulebook, that content -- as it appears in SPYCRAFT > > -- is designated as OGC. It is not closed. It is not designated as IP. > > It's not Open or Product Identity. It's simply not governed by the OGL at > all: > "Vitality points, wounds, and other rules from the STAR WARS > roleplaying game not covered by the Open Gaming License used with permission > from Wizards of the Coast." > Like it says, not covered by the OGL. That material follows standard > copyright rules.
It wasn't covered by the OGL prior to release in Spycraft, however once Spycraft was published it quite obviously is now in an OGL product. That means the material must be one of three types - OGC, PI or normal copyright. Vitality point & wounds are part of the character statistics that have been clearly designated as OGC. There is no statement in the book which makes them PI or which clearly keeps them out of the OGC. The statement you refer to simply explains where the material comes from and states that AEG has permission to use copyrighted material they otherwise could not use. And since permission can include permission to make that material OGC, there really isn't a logical reason for a person who purchases the Spycraft book to assume that isn't what AEG has done and had permission to do. So based on the Spycraft book, VP/WP is OGC. Now perhaps WotC would try to stop someone else from using it (and perhaps they've already stopped AEG; I wasn't interested enough by Spycraft to buy any of following products) but that person could then make the argument that AEG designated VP/WP as OGC. Even if they were unsuccessful against WotC, they could then go after AEG if any damages result. All around, as it stands now the VP/WP system is clearly in a messy situation as to OGC. As for Rob's point that perhaps just the VP/WP statistic is OGC and noth the system itself, perhaps but I fail to see how this would be significant for a third party producer. I assume the reason some people want to have VP/WP as OGC is so they can use it as a statistic not so they can tinker with the actual mechanic. If you want to tinker, you really don't need it to be OGC as there are otherwise to go about it without using the copyrighted material (see Brad Thompson's independently designed system that is close to VP/WP). alec (the guy with a law degree who isn't an attorney) _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
