I have read over the OGL and researched copyright laws, but I still am not sure how much of what I want to do is legal. What if someone wanted to write a story about a pre-existing campaign, such as The Temple of Elemental Evil or The Village of Hommlet? If descriptions and specific names were changed enough, would it be legal? How does one go about getting the rights to use material like that, or is it simply infringement?
[RPG] Is it legal to write and publish a novel based on a pre-existing campaign or setting
campaign-settingsintellectual-propertyoglpublishing
Related Solutions
Savage Worlds has an excellent licensing setup that you can check out at: http://www.peginc.com/licensing/
I have written to the email address provided there to ask about licensing, and they gave me a list of several things they were looking for.
- They hold all their officially licensed products to the same standards as their own products. They check that it has good writing, artwork, and layout. There are links on the right side of their licensing page to information about what they look for in their writers and illustrators.
- Once you get past the initial check that your production values are high, they'll look at rules changes like skills, edges, etc. They want things to be balanced and fit in with their other products.
- They want a small sample to verify that what you're making is good, and after they approve you, they let you do your thing. You don't have to keep sending them everything you're working on for approval.
I would look at published adventures like War of the Dead and go with a similar format. I was in the same boat you are of wanting to make and publish my own PDFs, and if I go forward with it, there are several steps I can see taking.
- Write out the campaign and play through it with my group. I need to make sure it's fun and interesting for other people.
- After each game, ask the players what they liked and disliked and modify my notes.
- Write out the first couple adventures in a Word document and get used to how to format things and work with layout.
- Find a friend who can draw or hire a graphic designer to make some artwork and a suitable background for when I create the PDF.
- Send the PDF to their licensing department and work through whatever criticisms they have.
Beyond that, you'll have to think about how to handle the business side of things. You'll probably want to setup a business, and if you're not used to running a business hire an accountant to handle paying for creating your products and receiving payment. But that's something you'll have to research for your own area as it varies from place to place.
Anything you find in the SRD is Open Gaming Licence content and thus free to use so long as you abide by the terms of the OGL. You'll note that it does not contain XP or Wealth-By-Level rules, and you'll also notice that it doesn't really contain fluff; those rules (and the fluff) are still WotC's property and cannot be used. Beyond that, you're perfectly free to use any of the rules in that SRD, edit them, homebrew for them, and add your own fluff to them - in point of fact, that's how Pathfinder, World of Warcraft D20, and many other D20 systems got created and legally sold at profit. However, you are still not permitted to reference D&D in your product at that point (it's a D20 system release, but D&D itself remains the property of WotC, with whom I assume you are not affiliated).
Best Answer
OK, so here's game intellectual property 101. There are niche exceptions to all of it, but at a high level it's going to hold for 99% of use cases in the free world.
If you don't already know all the stuff below you should not enter into any commercial enterprise based on someone else's IP without professional legal advice.
You are never free to use someone's intellectual property "just because." Unless you have permission/a license to the contrary, use of this sort is well covered by IP (copyright, trademark/trade dress, patent, et al.) law and is illegal. Even if you're not charging for it.
In some cases you can use an RPG's rules in your product, if they have a license that says you can. For example, D&D 3e/3.5/PF and original FATE use the Open Gaming License to allow people to use those rules under the conditions of that contract. Some games have "open" licenses like this (you can use them without specifically signing a contract with the company), others have "closed" (you call them up and negotiate). In either case you are bound by the specific terms of the license and/or relevant IP law. (Note that the terms of the license can override rights you'd have under the law. Mayfair was successfully sued by TSR for claiming compatibility with AD&D, not because that claim is illegal per se, but because they'd signed another agreement with TSR that forbade it). Anyway, specific to your case, the OGL is only about the game rules (the things designated as Open Content, e.g. in the SRD), NOT about the fluff and fiction.
In more limited cases you can use game rules without a license, as game mechanics can not be copyrighted. Their exact expression can, and various proper-name terms can be trademarked or copyrighted, so you need a decent degree of IP savvy to do this. Patents could block this but as far as I know no RPG rules have been patented.
Trade dress law can be used to block use of unique iconography and formatting (like say the Star Wars: Edge of the Empire dice sigils). You also can't format your product to "look like" an existing RPG's product for the same reason.
In some cases, more rarely, you can use setting (or adventure, or novel) material, if they offer an open or closed license that says you can. Except for some folks like Eclipse Phase who use a Creative Commons license, an open license is rare and a closed one is expensive and you need to "be someone," not a random fanfic author, to get one. WotC specifically does not have any open licensing for their fluff/fiction under any D&D edition. So ToEE, Greyhawk, etc. are their IP and they're not sharing. You may not use them for your own published works.
Anything created based on a copyrighted work is called a 'derivative work' and is covered by the copyright of the initial work. So you may not create and publish a story set in the Temple of Elemental Evil without a specific license from WotC. Even specific characters have been found to be covered by copyright (in addition to trademark and trade dress, which is why you can't use Mickey Mouse). Using "Drizzle the dark elf with two tulwars and a pet black tiger" is probably protected (based on how much everyone pays their lawyers).
If you are doing so just as a fanfic or something on your Web site, it is certainly possible that you can do it and they won't do anything about it. WotC has done cease and desists to fan sites but that's usually people making spell cards or otherwise doing things Wizards thinks they should get the money for. However, legally, they certainly could order you to take it down via various means (C&D, DMCA takedown to your ISP, lawsuit). They tend to want people to make content on their websites to spread their product, without ever saying people are allowed to so they retain the legal right to stop whoever they want.
If you are trying to profit from a derivative work, however, you can expect to get hammered legally. You won't get that far because publishers etc. won't touch you if you're doing this of course.
As for "if I change it enough so it is not ToEE..." There is no hard and fast answer. Transformations of a copyrighted work fall under copyright and it's not legal to do without license, but if you transform it enough that no one knows where it came from (or at least it couldn't be proven in court) it would work. However, having asked this question in a public forum, too late! You are looking at Exhibit A for the plaintiff. Plus, I assume the reason to set your book in the ToEE is to leverage knowledge/popularity of the ToEE, and filing the serial numbers off too hard leaves you with little of that relationship.
TL;DR - Can I Write A Novel About The ToEE?
Sure, you can if you're doing it for fun on your Web site; no never if you are looking to publish it.