Can someone please explain Open Game Content to me?

[Fiery Diamond]

I mean, I get that you can put OGC online for people to view and use in their games, but I don't really understand anything else about it. What exactly can or can't you do with it? What kind of restrictions on its use are there? What about derivative works? That kind of thing.

[Coventry]

I mean, I get that you can put OGC online for people to view and use in their games, but I don't really understand anything else about it. What exactly can or can't you do with it? What kind of restrictions on its use are there? What about derivative works? That kind of thing.

Not without breaking the "Professional Advice" section of the Rules of this Forum. When you ask for "exactly" what you can and cannot do under the OGC license, that makes it part of the Legal Profession, which is specifically barred from the GitP forums.

You can find the text of the OGC in many places - for example, on Paizo's web site, or in many of the hard-cover RPG books.

[Anymage]

The primary intent, at least back when it was introduced with 3.5, was so that third party developers could comfortably publish splatbooks, adventures, and the like while knowing what they could reasonably use. WOTC at that time wanted D&D to be a universal system that outside parties could expand on.

Right now, the reason so much Pathfinder is OGL is because the original legalese put down by WOTC required that any product made using open game content had to allow a certain amount of its content to be used openly too. I'd recommending checking Wikipedia for "open game license" for more detail.

Although as Coventry said, if you want to publish anything instead of just being curious, I strongly recommend contacting a lawyer. You can get a rough overview by reading up yourself, but you don't want to risk any mistakes when there's a risk of real contact with the legal system.

[Beleriphon]

OGC is effectively the D&D 3.5 SRD and any material published using that document as its base that is specifically OGC.

For example Mutants & Masterminds 2E and 3E are both OGC in so far as its rules are open content and require no fees paid to Green Ronin to use in your own product. However their own content about the Freedom City setting and its characters is not OGC, and if you wanted to publish new stuff about Freedom City you would need to contact Green Ronin and deal with them in come capacity.

At its heart the OGC basically means you can take other material that is marked OGC, list in with the OGL in your book following the format the OGL stipulates and go to town. Beyond that you'd want to check with a legal professional in your region to confirm 1) the OGL is actually binding in your region and 2) that your complying with it if it is binding.

[Jay R]

You own all rights to anything you create. You can decide who can use what part of it.

That includes the right to say, "Anybody can use the following parts of it, for the following purposes, under the following conditions."

That means that the original owner has, within certain legally defined limits, control over what their open game content means, what exactly you can or can't do with it, what kind of restrictions there are on its use, what you can do with derivative works, and that kind of thing.

What are the "certain legally defined limits"?
1. I have no idea.
2. The forum rules wouldn't let me tell you if I did.

If I ever need to know, I will hire an Intellectual Property lawyer.

[Calthropstu]

Whatever page you turn to is the open game content. Hope this helps.

[Fiery Diamond]

Thanks, guys, this was actually helpful.

Whatever page you turn to is the open game content. Hope this helps.

Okay, I have to admit I quite literally laughed out loud at this.