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Forever Curious
2010-07-01, 12:34 PM
So a friend and I are currently in the process or writing our own 3rd party campaign setting to be made available for download, either for sale or for donations. We were planning on including material that we ourselves have posted on the forums for review and critique (base classes thus far). However, we were concerned that there might be legal issues concerning this. I was thinking simply acknowledging the Playground as a whole would suffice, but we're uncertain.

Basically I'm hoping someone could share a bit of insight on the legal and creative intricacies of crafting a 3rd party sorcebook. Any and all advice is welcome and appreciated.

Apparently legal advice is not to be discussed. My mistake. :smallredface:

Optimystik
2010-07-01, 01:01 PM
Unfortunately, we're not allowed (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8537563&postcount=30) to give legal advice here.

The most I can say is that whatever is your creation is most likely yours to do with as you will, but in terms of the intricacies of citing and using the OGL, it's well worth getting some legal representation to guide you if you plan on getting money for this project.

Forever Curious
2010-07-01, 01:04 PM
Unfortunately, we're not allowed (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=8537563&postcount=30) to give legal advice here.

The most I can say is that whatever is your creation is most likely yours to do with as you will, but in terms of the intricacies of citing and using the OGL, it's well worth getting some legal representation to guide you if you plan on getting money for this project.

Ah. Sorry about that. Thanks for the advice anyway.

Yora
2010-07-01, 01:28 PM
You are allowed to alter and reproduce everything that is in the SRD, within certain limitations. Which limitations these are is written in the OGL. I think it's not that hard to read, but I won't claim that what I say about it is correct, so you have to read it for yourself at your own risk. :smallwink:

That's what almost all 3rd party publishers for 3rd Edition do.

An important detail is, that you may only reproduce content that is in the SRD, but not content from the books. PHB, MM, XPH, and Unearthed Arcana are almost completely in the SRD, but only almost. Some things are excluded and may not be used. So to be safe, use the SRD as reference and not the books.
When no monney is involved, there's usually no problem at all. But when you make money by using input from other people, even from the internet, things may be not as clear. I've heard there have been lawsuits about such things, so even bigger companies want to have nothing to do with that practice. To solve this question, you'd really need an expert.

For making your own homebrews available for other to read, there's really not that much to say about. You've seen how people presented classes, feats, and spells. Put them into a text file, convert it to pdf, and your golden. :smallbiggrin: