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Condé
2023-08-10, 01:17 AM
Hello everyone,

TL;DR: Making a website/wiki where EVERYTHING 3.5 is accessible and made generic enough for WotC to not delete it in seconds. For convenience of old players and introduction for new ones easier.

Today I am going to ask something we will probable all agree with...
Finding sources for 3.5 is annoying. Not SRD stuff of course but I am talking about the rest. Of course most of us have access to PDFs (obtained more or less legally) or books from the good ol' days.

But recently I had a friend of mine interested in 3.5 and I warned them about how difficult it could be to find informations... And by that I mean good informations.
Between voluntary changes on some shady website, mispelling, having to know if this piece has been updated in another book or errata'ed, it's pretty hard to make a character 100% legal.
And even if you have all that you have to remember the online stuff where you have to use web archive to access and there is a lot of stuff poorly documented or even known by the majority and even by most people here.

Sure you could allow SRD stuff only and call it a day. But, be honest, if I wanted to let des choices for my players I would be playing 5e instead.

No, you want all that sweet content for your players or even yourself to play with... Then you remember you will have to find everything again... Or have a drive where all your PDFs are stored or something like that and share it.
But as a New player it might be a lot to handle and might be a bit much to handle...

Then I thought... How irrealistic or not-Wotc-friendly to regroup everything on the same website but deleting/modifying everything lore-specific.
Renaming faerun, Eberron and whatnot prestige classes, feats etc... And allowing them to be played anywhere. Making everything generic and accessible to everyone.
Listing sources, book name and page and eventual original name.
There is a website doing that for Pathfinder 1e. As far as I know, sure, Paizo IS not WotC but I mean, it might be possible, isn't it ?

It would be much easier for everyone here and to anyone wanting to introduce or be introduced to this edition of the game.

I suppose it already has been thought about but... You never know.

Apologies for spelling mistakes in advance. I am on my phone.

What do you peuple think? Is that unrealistic to think it could fly? Or is ont but too much work that nobody even tried to do so?

Paragon
2023-08-10, 01:29 AM
I'm on board
Can give some time to this project

AvatarVecna
2023-08-10, 09:50 AM
Remember kids, it's not plaigerism or copyright infringement if you use enough synonyms and paraphrasing.

Condé
2023-08-10, 10:39 AM
I'm on board
Can give some time to this project

Ah ah. Thanks but I have no Idea if it is even possible


Remember kids, it's not plaigerism or copyright infringement if you use enough synonyms and paraphrasing.

Ahah. Said like that...
I mean, pfsrd has been online for years and I don't think it is official or anything. Nethys is.
I don't know if it is légal or anything and there is no way Paizo doesn't know about it. So maybe there is hope.

I juste want to make things more practical for everyone to enjoy a 20 years old game that IS no longer on sale since forever.
I know WotC do not care but I wonder if doing something is possible since there is precedence for other systems. But I think I answered my own interrogation. It would be doable... But not legal in anyway. Which is a shame for how convoluted it is to find some sources sometimes...

Gnaeus
2023-08-10, 10:51 AM
Ah ah. Thanks but I have no Idea if it is even possible



Ahah. Said like that...
I mean, pfsrd has been online for years and I don't think it is official or anything. Nethys is.
I don't know if it is légal or anything and there is no way Paizo doesn't know about it. So maybe there is hope.

I juste want to make things more practical for everyone to enjoy a 20 years old game that IS no longer on sale since forever.
I know WotC do not care but I wonder if doing something is possible since there is precedence for other systems. But I think I answered my own interrogation. It would be doable... But not legal in anyway. Which is a shame for how convoluted it is to find some sources sometimes...

I wouldn't say "not legal in anyway". I would say rather that Dungeons and Dragons has a much larger legal team than Paizo. It is often not necessary, for example, to ACTUALLY LEGALLY violate a Disney copyright (for example) for them to launch a lawsuit that you, a person, are not prepared to defend against. Imagine working on it for a year, then you get a request to stop from the owner. You plan to lawyer up?

GreatDane
2023-08-10, 11:15 AM
My group has an internal (non-public) version of this. It's styled after the Hypertext d20 SRD and includes all the sources my group plays with (which is definitely not everything, but the framework is there and easy to expand). Taking it public presents the following challenges:


Web hosting is not free. Someone would have to pay for it (ad infinitum), or we would have to bend over backwards to find a free solution. (Some kind of free blog/wiki, a giant text doc, etc.)
Historically, WotC has been harsh on sites that reproduce their copyrighted content. Most content - feats, character classes, etc. - has no "lore" to remove, and reproducing it would still be copyright infringement.


It's the second item that presents the biggest challenge, and I don't know how to circumvent it.

Slightly off-topic, regarding the presentation of information: I think there's a lot of value in considering the original context of D&D content. We use our site primarily as a reference. The sourcebook is always documented, and the footer explicitly calls out that reading the original source is always a better way to consume the information.

Gnaeus
2023-08-10, 11:54 AM
Historically, WotC has been harsh on sites that reproduce their copyrighted content. Most content - feats, character classes, etc. - has no "lore" to remove, and reproducing it would still be copyright infringement.

.

That would certainly be their interpretation. This is not the place for a detailed argument of fair use and the legality of copyrighting a mechanic. Let us say rather that it would be close enough to copyright infringement that the lawsuit will present a practical barrier.

truemane
2023-08-10, 12:27 PM
Metamagic Mod: this entire forum exists because of the proceeds of copywritten material. This is not the place to solicit assistance in committing massive, pre-meditated copywrite infringement.