Things brings up an interesting point, especially since I've got plans in the back of my head for something similar: is whatIf you check out the site, you'll note that every entry DOES have the full OGL included with it. :-)
Sigil's doing okay? Would each entry have to have the full OGL
with it to use his method?"
It's probably best if you go to the website itself and look at what I'm doing to understand it. Here are two sample pages - I'll just put the links here rather than copy/pasting the pages, but go look at the links and then come back and keep reading. You might make it a point to "jump down" to the end of the page (the S15 of the OGL).
Link 1: All undead
http://www.cooleys.org/nbocr/Undead.asp
Link 2: One particular undead, the Agarat.
http://www.cooleys.org/nbocr/online.asp?page=619
Note that at the bottom of link 1, I have included, verbatim, the Copyright notice text appropriate to each monster immediately following the monster name. My understanding is that I must list the copyright notice exactly as it appears in the original - for example,
"System Rules Document Copyright 2000, Wizards of the Coast, Inc.; Authors Jonathan Tweet, Monte Cook, Skip Williams, based on original material by E. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson."
But nothing forbids me (AFAIK) from putting anything before or after that... so it's still okay to say:
Allip: "System Rules Document Copyright 2000, Wizards of the Coast, Inc.; Authors Jonathan Tweet, Monte Cook, Skip Williams, based on original material by E. Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson."
I do this for two reasons: one is that make sure my S15 is airtight for each creature by including the S15 notice - even if it must be done in duplicate - individually for every creature; obviously, generating the S15 sucks for "collections." The second reason is that it lets you know EXACTLY where to go to get any specific critter, so you can go get the original yourself and "cut out" the middle man.
You will note that (above the creature-by-creature designations) I referenced the System Reference Document, meaning that for monsters coming from other sources, I could exclude that (since it will appear in the S15 of every other source anyway).
Now compare this to the Agarat's Section 15. Note the little section right before the OGL, where I note that any creature name ending with an asterisk is PI (since this is a conversion, it gets an asterisk). You'll note that the Agarat's S15 is much shorter - it lists only the SRD, OGL, and then has two "other pieces" - the "advertisement" for the FanCC and the entry for the Agarat individually.
This means that if you re-use the Agarat conversion, your S15 gives the FanCC a plug AND because of the wording, lets people know exactly where to go to find the Agarat in with a S15 in its "smallest form."
Not all too tough to implement, BTW... just include a field in the database with every entry that contains all of the "S15 stuff" pertinent to this entry only (IOW, you always include the OGL and the SRD in your "base HTML page" but not in the field in the backend database itself - then add what's in the appropriate field when dynamically generating the page). Since I am not distributing the database - only the content generated thereby, I think it's okay to not include a copy of the OGL anywhere in the DB itself, though I suppose that could easily be added. ;-b
As an example, say I have a big database full of OGC (for the sake of argument, magic items). Some are original, some reused from other sources. Each has a decent sized Section 15 of its own.If you like, I will happily provide you with all code in the ASP pages I use to generate my webpages if you intend to do something like this. And that's a standing offer to anyone.
I would like to construct a web site where users can search for
specific items they want, and be able to use them independently. That is, if they want the Ring of Reuse, they can pull up a page with only that item, and the Section 15 information particular to it. Obviously, if my collection is large, the combined Section 15 for everything would be very large and cumbersome.
My hope is eventually to get a little more sophisticated in my web "look" and start a gigantic OGC database where S15s can be drawn together with the minimum amount of lines by controlling what lines are "tacked on" to the end of the OGC. I think it's a worthy project.
Which of these options are legitimate?
1. Emulate the Tome of Horrors (probably try to get Clark's permission to reuse his instructions), and construct a Section 15 by reference. This will likely be *much* more complicated than the ToH, because all of the monsters in there were original OGC -- most were conversions of other material, but the d20 content was no, and so there were no existing Section 15 entries.
Given that Clark did it, my guess is that it's legit. :-b
2. Do something like most printed collections: one immense Section 15 in the OGL, linked from each page.I think, technically, you must include the OGL "with every copy [of OGC] you distribute." To me, that means, "on the same webpage" not "as a link on the webpage."
3. Treat each item as its own "work" with its own copy of the OGL, and its own Section 15.That is how I have done it - but again, I use ASP to dynamically generate the S15's.
Is there another (better) way of accomplishing this that I haven't thought of? The idea would be to facilitate reuse, so obviously the easy it is for people to extract *just* the parts they want, the better.Again, you are more than welcome to contact me at [EMAIL PROTECTED] for a copy of all the ASP code I used to put together my pages. It hopefully won't be too hard for you to adapt the code to your own use. That offer extends to anyone, BTW.
Finally, I do not believe I need a copy of the OGL linked from every page. Every page that I display that contains Open Game Content has the OGL "attached" at the bottom. Every other page on my site (i.e., all pages without OGC) has no OGL attached. Perhaps my understanding of the OGL is spotty on this issue, but I believe I am correct in this implementation - every webpage with OGC gets and OGL, every page with no OGC doesn't need one, even if they are under the same "umbrella" domain name.
Also, anyone who cares to comment on the OGL compliance of what I've done, please do so. I am pretty certain it is airtight, but IANAL. Oh, and yes, I know I may have to change lots of this stuff once they release the finalized version of monsters in the SRD - the stuff here from the SRD is still under the Gentlemen's Agreement.
Heck, while I'm thinking about it, I'll put a blanket request on this forum from publishers - may I have your permission to re-post OGC from any work older than 2 years old (e.g., the Creature Catalog) - I figure asking permission is not required, but nice, and sales of 2-year old products shouldn't be substantially affected by including the monsters in our database. Furthermore, (and I'll note that this one is slightly directed specifically at Clark but valid for publishers in general), if the Creature names are not OGC, may I work out a license to re-use your Creature names in the limited context of re-printing the creature's stats on the webpage (they will be demarcated as PI with an Asterisk, in the same way the WotC converted stuff is)? You may contact me off-line about this. They won't be appearing any time soon, as our family has a baby due TODAY (not going to be born today it looks like, but certainly within a weekish) so I won't have time to add them in for a while, just figured I should ask for permission while it's on my mind. If the answer is yes, please CC my hotmail account, [EMAIL PROTECTED] - make sure to remove the spamblock, of course LOL.
Thoughts? Unhappinesses? E-kicks in the E-teeth? ;-)
--The Sigil
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