[od-discuss] Getting the Open Game License accepted under the Open Definition

Tue Oct 8 06:15:34 UTC 2013

There are certainly many examples of unclear OGC/PI declarations in d20
System works (though, to be fair, there are many, many examples of unclear
CC licensing too). But I don't think that the SRDs are an exception.

I chose a pseudo-random bunch of PDFs from my DriveThruRPG.com library. The
results:

*17 Rogue Feats: *

The following is a listing of Open Game Content: All feats, their
descriptions, and
their mechanics.

i.e., no PI declared. The art, the formatting, etc. not OGC, but all the
useful text is.

*Bits of Magicka: Pocket Items*
*
*

*Designation of Open Game Content:  *All text contained in the Properties
section of each entry is Open Game Content. In addition, any material in
[square brackets] is Open Game Content. All designations are subject to the
Product Identity designation below.
*Product Identity:* “Tabletop Adventures,” the Tabletop Adventures logo,
“Bits ofMagicka™”, “Pocket Items,” all proper names (including proper names
of magic items), Shards, Bits, “Buy it Today, Play it Tonight”, and
“Augment your Imagination” are all Product Identity. Any other content
previously designated as Product Identity is hereby designated as Product
Identity and is used with permission and/or pursuant to license.

*
*
Each of these magical items is about half a page long, of which the
majority is not Open Game Content - with the exception of the section
describing the game effects of the magical item. However, I don't see any
ambiguity with what is OGC and what is not.

*Claw/Claw/Bite Issue 9*
*
*
Can't find an OGC/PI declaration anywhere. There is a cryptic comment that:

All text appearing in gray boxes such as this All text appearing in gray
boxes such as this copyright 2007   Unicorn   Rampant Publishing

Is this the exception that proves the rule that the remainder of the
magazine is OGC/public domain? Who knows.

*Department 7: Bar Room Berserker*
*
*

Text released as Open Gaming Content.

*
*
Doesn't get much clearer than that.

*Warriors of the Wild: Juggernaut*

*Designation of Product Identity:* The following items are hereby
designated as Product Identity in accordance with Section 1(e) of the Open
Gaming License, version 1.0a: Any and all Paragon and Warriors of the Wild
logos and identifying marks and trade dress; all artwork, symbols, graphic
design and illustrations. The above Product Identity is not Open Game
Content.
*Designation of Open Game Content: *Subject to the Product Identity
designation above, all class names, texts, rules, character names and
statistic blocks are designated as Open Game Content, as well as all
material appearing in the System Reference Document.

This restricts logos, trade dress, etc., as we've come to expect from the
SRDs. There's a broad (albeit confusing) OGC declaration ... isn't 'texts'
exhaustive?

---

I think there's enough here to say that the OGL is not always applied well,
but it is not true that the general case is that the OGL is misapplied.

That's not quite the same as your question of 'PI-free OGL works'. They are
very rare. Almost all publishers use PI declarations to protect trade
dress, logos, book titles, the name of the publisher, etc. An analogous
situation might be if almost all publishers of OER packaged their CC BY-SA
licensed texts with all rights reserved photos: a lot of content has been
freely licensed under the OGL, but there are not many free cultural works
under the OGL. (They are not FCW because they are packaged with non-free
content and it is not trivial to extract the free from the non-free).
*
*

On 5 October 2013 09:20, Rob Myers <rob at robmyers.org> wrote:

> Do you know how many examples there are of PI-free OGL works there are?
> Or do you have a good list of examples?
>
> I'm worried that the general case is as describer in C.09 here:
>
> http://www.earth1066.com/D20FAQ.htm#_C.08__
>
> and that examples like the SRDs are an exception.
>

*Chris Sakkas
**Admin of the FOSsil Bank wiki <http://fossilbank.wikidot.com/> and the Living
Libre blog <http://www.livinglibre.com> and Twitter
feed<https://twitter.com/#%21/living_libre>
.*
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