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Then release everything as OGC but PI the name.>
Now that is in my mind useless. If I wished to reuse that monster I
would need to simply give it a new name. So I could still reuse all
their work just not with that name.
How does doing that benefit the original author? >
I consider it a substantial benefit in certain instances. For example. I release a spell body as OGC. You can know not only reprint it verbatim, but use only part of it, and rewrite part of it.
If I come up with a spell called "Baleful Hand of Fate" and you then take the name "Baleful Hand of Fate" but then change 20% of the underlying content of the spell then there are now 2 version of "Baleful Hand of Fate" around for users to stumble upon and confuse as being one spell.
If the spell names are really unique there's a reason to protect them, but otherwise this would be one of the only strong reasons to protect them. Even in this case, it seems to make sense to PI the names and then include a two sentence license to allow their use provided the spell descriptions are reproduced verbatim.
Other than protecting really clever names or trying to avoid having 2 spells with exactly the same name but slightly different functioning, I don't see a lot of point to PI'ing spell names by themselves.
