Dear Open Game Gurus, I would like to discuss a real-world issue I am wrestling with.
I am a collector and fan of a game system published from 1980-1994 by a publisher that is long since gone. Last year, in an net forum, the copyright holder himself stated that he has no interest in the "games" anymore, but is continuing to develop the "setting" for his own undisclosed purposes. The original publisher has been approached several times since 1994 and asked if they would consider releasing the games as (in order) public domain, GNU open documents, Creative Commons, and Open Game License. Each time, and for each license idea, the answer has been "no" or silence. Meanwhile, every (rare) newcomer to the game asks the same three questions: FAQ#1: "who owns the copyrights?" FAQ#2: "where can I get the books?" And when they find the books are so rare they never even appear on eBay anymore, the famous: FAQ#3: "can someone send me PDFs of the books?" With the publishers own admission of apathy regarding the "games", and being tired of not being able to fully discuss or republish parts of the games at whim, the idea has occurred to me to try to write, publish, and distribute Open Game versions of the copyrighted games. The setting and trademarks are not considered here. The setting is unmistakable anyway, so its a given that a new setting that allowed the same situations would have to be created. Also, its a given that all artwork and trademark terms would have to be avoided like the plague. The name of the company and some of their product names are some of those very terms which is why they are not listed here. For years the Linux software community has excelled at opening "closed" software... by recreating the closed program as a work/play-alike open version and releasing that. The excellent FreeCiv project is one example of many... its a look and play alike version of the copyrighted game "Civilization" by Sid Meier. I am wondering if the same ideas the Linux folks have used would work for opening closed/out-of-print tabletop games? The OSRIC project leads me to believe so. Here's my thinking that I hope you can all provide a sanity check for: According to a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office memo (FL-108), game "rules" cannot be copyright, only the specific "expression" of the rules. My understanding is that the difference is this: The rules to a game like baseball cannot be copyright. Only my specific description of baseball rules can be. Anyone else is still free to write their own description of the same game in their own words. So, if I go line by line through the text, and rewrite the "mechanics" into my own words, and reorganize the whole thing (based on my own prejudice of how it should have been written ;) I should be able to release the result to the web under an open game license and be reasonably sure I haven't actually broken any law? I realize I could still be exposed to a lawsuit for doing so since Americans can sue each other for no reason at all, much less with cause, but if my understandings of things are correct, I should have a fair chance of winning my side of the case should it come to open legal battle. If this whole house of cards still stands up, then there are some specific places that are not very clear that I could use some advice on. One is numeric data in tables. The game I am interested in "opening" is heavily based on numeric tables. I realize I can't copy them verbatim, but the table data is part of what makes the mechanics work. For example, if I want to check to see if someone has scored a hit during an attack, I have to cross-reference the tables to find part of the result. So, are the tables considered *mechanics* or part of the rules then? Also, what are the issues around reducing the tables down to formula through regression or other analysis, and then using the formula to recreate the tables? If you can prove you have the formula, does it help in court? An example of this issue would be the Experience Points table from a popular fantasy game. I have seen several formula published that will exactly re-create the XP table. Prometheus published one of them under the as-yet-untested Prometheus license. Iron Heroes published the same table, but used a constant that was slightly different than the original formula... so the table *works* the same, but the actual numbers vary a little. But its easy to tell its still the exact same method and progression rates. So, what are the legal gotchas around numeric tables and formula that generate them? Many people have done this regression work on the game in question, and PDFs of formula and creation kits for tables based objects have been floating around the net for years without the original publisher challenging them. The publisher I am interested in has long been rumored to have introduced intentional flaws in their tables to prevent regression... so if I find those and create a new "fixed" table from a simplified formula I expect I will be fine. For me, the issue is re-creating the specific tables with the same data, so that the system works the same. I am happy to discuss this on or offlist. -- Robert "Exile In Paradise" Murphey Question: Is it better to abide by the rules until they're changed or help speed the change by breaking them? _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list Ogf-l@mail.opengamingfoundation.org http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
