Sorry, but this is a quite correct interpretation of the situation in the EU. You do not have to ask anyone for permission to create a work nor do you need to ask for permission to publish your work. If the work is a "derivative" work then you may later face legal troubles though.
Well, heck, if you don't care if it's legal or not, there's nothing stopping you in the US, either. You might have trouble finding a publisher that'll take the financial risk, however.
One of the troubles you run into when discussing copyright matters across the Atlantic is that the term "derivative" has different meanings in the EU and the US. Another one is that the EU is divided into two legal traditions, the common law tradition (represented by Ireland and the UK) and the civil code tradition to which the rest of the EU belongs.
A "derivative" work according to most EU legislations is generally speaking a transformation of a work in which the "outer" form is chang ed but the "inner" form remains the same. Adaptations, translations and abridgments are good examples of such works.
The major question is then: when does a new works "inner" form cease to be (too) similar, that is when does the new work cease to be an adaptation, instead becoming an independent work? And on the other side of the scale, when is the inner form of a work so similar that it cannot be considered an adaptation but rather is a plagiarism?
An addition to an existing work for example, need not be a "derivative" work it may very well be an independent work.
Now of course different legislations have different rules for finding out just when a work is an independent work and when it's an adaptation. ;)
The black-letter law in the US agrees with what you're describing as "derivative". Most of the examples of derivative-work suits that Ryan and other's have brought up on this list also start from that point, and are about the question of something's "inner form" changing enough to be original, vice derivative. The laws just aren't that dissimilar (which isn't surprising, given that most of the EU, as well as the US (and others) signed onto international standards a decade or three ago, making copyright law fairly standard across most of the "first world". AFAIK, the only significant difference left is duration, and variance in court interpretations (such as where those lines between "derivative", "plagiarized", and "original" are).)
Anyway, it's precisely because "derivative" in the US seems to be mostly about changes of form, not content, that i've questioned right from the start the use of the term in the WotC OGL, and the claim that supplements for an RPG qualify. IMHO, based on legal precedent (what i've seen of it, of course, and given that IANAL) there is nothing "derivative" in making a work "compatible" with another, but with ohterwise wholly-original content. But there is also precious little directly-on-point caselaw, because in most creative endeavors works are all equally "compatible" or "incompatible". Or the "compatibility" treads on areas clearly eked out by trademark and character copyright--or at least proper nouns. Not the fairly nebulous idea of game rules. Personally, i consider the fact that Parker Brothers can't stop Monopoly clones (same game, different graphics) as evidence that something mechanically compatible with an existing RPG is in the clear. Likewise, the examples of literature infringement suits make me believe that when you start making it compatible with a particular setting (and thus using lots of invented proper nouns) that you're likely to run into trouble.
In summary, from what you've described, and the fact that the EU and the US have agreed to the same international treaty(correct term?) on copyright, i don't think that the differences in the black-letter definition of "derivative" are that great. Rather, i think the WotC OGL is just as much at odds with tradition in this country as in the EU. But only a court case will actually answer the question.
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