![]() Calling an RPG game "Ultimate D&D" would be a trademark violation even though it isn't an exact match to other Dungeons and Dragons product names. You violate a trademark by using a name associated with another company or product in a way that to a normal person would confuse your product with the product of the company that owns the trademark, and it doesn't even have to be an exact match. They don't always need to be "registered" trademarks either. There are 3 things that a company can use to protect their IP. The following items are designated Product Identity, as defined in Section 1(e) of the Open Game License Version 1.0a, and are subject to the conditions set forth in Section 7 of the OGL, and are not Open Content: Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master, Monster Manual, d20 System, Wizards of the Coast, d20 (when used as a trademark), Forgotten Realms, Faerûn, proper names (including those used in the names of spells or items), places, Underdark, Red Wizard of Thay, the City of Union, Heroic Domains of Ysgard, EverChanging Chaos of Limbo, Windswept Depths of Pandemonium, Infinite Layers of the Abyss, Tarterian Depths of Carceri, Gray Waste of Hades, Bleak Eternity of Gehenna, Nine Hells of Baator, Infernal Battlefield of Acheron, Clockwork Nirvana of Mechanus, Peaceable Kingdoms of Arcadia, Seven Mounting Heavens of Celestia, Twin Paradises of Bytopia, Blessed Fields of Elysium, Wilderness of the Beastlands, Olympian Glades of Arborea, Concordant Domain of the Outlands, Sigil, Lady of Pain, Book of Exalted Deeds, Book of Vile Darkness, beholder, gauth, carrion crawler, tanar’ri, baatezu, displacer beast, githyanki, githzerai, mind flayer, illithid, umber hulk, yuan-ti. It just seems daft to me, because all that's going to happen with these situations is games developers will just get around these restrictions and make the exact same systems and call "Thac0", "bumblefart" or something or as other games developers have done with the red cross problem simply do the exact same shape and colour it green. Might be worthwhile if you have any other examples of what I view as copyright and licensing overreach so that newbies can be aware of this sort of thing so they don't get any nasty cease and desist messages just because of their design choices in a game. ![]() I know I'm getting angsty over this but to me, this is the equivalent of Valve trying to copyright equations used in physics engines because they got their first, that annoys me. Out of curiosity I recently began researching RPG's generally and I checked out D&D, guess what? There's other ridiculous copyright rules regarding all of this as well.Īpparently while they don't directly 'own' all D&D rules the guys who own the D&D brand have blocked people from using certain terms such as 'thac0' which those will be familiar with old school RPGs will know that refers to Armor Class. Just glancing through this article now it's even claiming that the reason you can't use a red cross symbol is because it violates the bloody Geneva Convention -_. I like to make myself legally aware of various things as a games developer should when it comes to issues of who owns what and there have been various things I have been ticked off but fascinated by for instance how apparently you can't use a red cross on a medpack the reason for this is apparently it turns out that a games developer was actually sued by some scumbags from the red cross organisation or people who represented them and they claimed that you can't use it in a game. ![]()
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