Basic Fantasy RPG Forums

I stumbled across these while browsing games on Lulu.

https://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?con ... Id=1310816

Are these legal?

Looks like complete rip offs of material that is copyrighted. I understand the ability to utilize OGL material, but these are simple copies repacked for sale. OGL certainly doesn't allow for this sort of usage.

Chris, as the copyright holder, and the one with access to the lulu account that holds the real deal items, you likely need to flag/report this. When I clicked such reporting links, it requests info as if I was the copyright holder, so I stopped.

I've known about these for quite a while. They are technically legal; C.R. Brandon created his Heroes and Other Worlds game rules, and felt the need for adventures, so he used ours. He had to remove all our art, of course, as well as our product identity, which as I understand it he did do. I can't say it makes me happy, but it's the risk you take when you open things up... and it was worth the risk, because we would not have this community if I hadn't.

It seems he recognized the original adventure's authors, that's a good thing, everything else is just a sad move, charging for something you did not write w/out the author's authorization... it's just that for me: sad.

I wish we have a way to protect our writings but I know is not something easy... For the drawing Solo has asked us authorization and we have an agreement, can something like that been done for the material presented?

We're not going that way. We've been "open" this long, with good results; I don't want to change our policy now.

Wow .... when I see something that says it is "By" someone I expect that they wrote it! It says "Based on" your work ... I wonder how much is based on, and how much is straight up as is!

Still as has already been stated that is the risk with it being open. Also hopefully people would google the name and find they can get it for free

I have that under my desk to read as well ... the BF version

Someone did ask permission via email to use Chaotic Caves although the OGL did not require doing so. This sounds familiar and I think I got a complimentary copy of the initial version but it has been long ago.

Which is why it and my other contributions they were OGL projects - to help the hobby, not make money. Depending on usage (i.e open game content versus copyrighted materials) any work can provide a lot of shareware content - the user just has to make sure they do not try to claim open game content as their own property. Someone did that with some other game content out of ignorance or greed (used and even credited other works but then declared the entire document as their own closed work) but I don't remember any outcomes.

This has been discussed a whole lot elsewhere. Generally as long as one does not copy things such as art or word-by-word verbiage or elements distinctly unique to a game such as logos or "Dungeons & Dragons" etc. and claim associations such as stamping "Wizards of the Coast" on covers one need not need use the OGL/an OGL. There is a lot more leeway than some would make it seem. Just write your own game products. (Don't do that without serious research as I have expressed only the most general idea. And I a not a lawyer so don't quote me as if I was.)

WOTC offered the SRD under their own OGL. Which offers a lot of open game content anyone can use for games and materials. See "Pathfinder". Basic Fantasy uses some of that (don't know how much). Likewise many BF products.

Not selling said materials for profit and/or providing free alternatives is entirely a personal choice. My own contributions were made realizing they could be taken and (when properly modified/attributed) sold by others. I have seen little to none of that happening.

If I personally did not want to go the OGL route I would write and publish my own copyrighted materials. Which is simply too tedious for me but others do it. (I did test doing that and found it takes a lot of work. Not worth any payback. Everyone should thank Chris and the helpers of Basic Fantasy projects because creating and editing and publishing are tedious, demanding, sometimes frustrating time-consuming jobs. And the word "job" was not used lightly here.)

Before anyone is turned off by these sorts of threads: My observation (maybe too narrow, who knows) is that Basic Fantasy and similar games are more for the players and not the commercial end of the hobby. Commercial types who really want to make money chase the latest and greatest games where the spending community lives.

and yet, BFRPG is the 17th most played game on Roll20 (16th if you ignore the "other games" grouping).

http://blog.roll20.net/post/15995261941 ... rt-q1-2017