From: "Lizard" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> For that matter I could (if I wanted to, and I don't want to) take *any*
> game system (Say, World Of Dimness), rewrite the rules in my own words,
and
> release "Lizards D10 Dice Pool System, Suitable For Modern Dark Fantasy Or
> Other Games" under the OGL. Then anyone wishing to use those rules could
> just use my version verbatim, no need to rewrite yet AGAIN. Heh. You could
> open any game system this way, if you were willing to put in the effort...
Conventional wisdom in the hobby gaming publisher community is that the
closer you get to the "World of Dimness", the closer you'll get to a
trademark and copyright lawsuit. If you cross that invisible threshold,
you'll lose your "authority to contribute", and anyone who relies on your
work and subsequently gets sued by the copyright and trademark holders are
going to come after you for damages. In fact, the copyright and trademark
holders will probably come after you too.
Because of that threat, I suspect that attempts to "black box" existing game
systems will fail, because nobody will want to take the chance of getting
sued by the original publishers. It will be up to those publishers to
create their own System Reference Documents to demonstrate a clear intent to
avoid litigation.
Now, I will also say that just like D&D, there are lots and lots of things
in the Storyteller system that are probably unprotectable, and you could
clone them without fear. In Vampire, for example, the things I would shy
away from would be the material about disciplines, the descriptions of the
clans and the various special clan-linked abilities; and especially all the
material White Wolf has created about the backstory of the Gothic Punk world
including the various character names, the Book of Nod, the Camarilla/Sabbat
split, the various named "generations" of Vampires, etc.
Just like with D&D, I think that if you did strip all the meat off of
Vampire you wouldn't have a very interesting skeleton left.
Ryan
