Crossing the copyright line….

[srmalloy]

1 minute ago, Player2 said:

And given the outrage that WotC's OGL 1.1 sparked, I can believe that a lot of people will be moving away from D&D as a recognizable brand and either doing their own thing or jumping on board Paizo's ship.

What's funny about all of this is that I remember the really old days of D&D, when it was three saddle-stapled books in the white cardboard box, and when TSR released the first AD&D books, Gary Gygax tried to claim that if you didn't adhere strictly to the rules in the books, that what you were playing wasn't D&D, and you couldn't call it that. And it seems that WotC didn't learn from that failed attempt to grab it all to keep control over it...

[Player2]

10 minutes ago, Krimson said:

Freaking Paizo giving me a reason to be interested in them. Heh. I want to see how this plays out. While I do like 5e, and was in the NEXT playtest, my love for the engine was based on how easy it was for me to convert my BECMI/RC/1e/2e material, which was a LOT easier to convert to 5e than 3.Xe. 

 

I haven't really looked at it, but I've heard that Pathfinder 2e falls more in line with D&D5e.

 

True story:  Pathfinder 2e maintained the OGL in their books, but in their recent announcement of their own Open RPG license they stated that they did not need it and only kept it there to maintain it for people publishing OGL content for Pathfinder... and in the absence of WotC addressing the fan backlash for days, they jumped on the opportunity to say "We will always be here for you" to the fans of the hobby.  WotC quickly came back with their backpedal shortly after, but too little too late.

[Player2]

21 minutes ago, Krimson said:

I'm really weird though and my all-time favorite D&D iteration was probably 2.5e, the black books with the Player's and GM's Options. I liked Skills and Powers, and expanded on the Psionic system. I liked how they revised the Druid to make it more in line with 1e. I completely reverse-engineered with 1e Monk by converting the powers to 1e Psionic Abilities (Quivering Palm costs like 90 power points) and then rebuilding it using the 2.5e Psionic rules. So I had Monks with customizable powers. Want to swap out Quivering Palm with Ultra Blast, I had it covered. Also, I had an insane combat system where everything was measured in Segments. There were no rounds. Each second of action was a second of action. My brain at 25 could handle that. At 51, group initiative looks pretty spiffy. I still have all my old handwritten notes and charts. I could make this into a game if I wanted WITH the right license. 

I liked the Player's Option stuff, but my group at the time couldn't get on board with it.

[Player2]

6 hours ago, Krimson said:

Waiting for verification, but it sure looks like Hasbro is willing to do the heavy lifting when it comes to driving players away.

 

LINK

 

If this is confirmed and WoTC is indeed planning to RAISE subscription prices for DNDBeyond, then I will be convinced that the company itself is trying to tank D&D all on it's own, without help from anyone else. 

I'm convinced that they're trying to dominate the D&D brand by forcing people to play a certain way, unless they're willing to pay more, and cut back on as much competition as possible because they've gotten an over-inflated sense of importance of the brand name.  As a side effect, they're driving people away and also building up their competition because most fans of the hobby couldn't give a rat's ass about the game system since WotC has changed it up five times since they've had it... how can you have brand loyalty when you change the product every so often just because they felt they couldn't sell enough books of the previous versions to justify maintaining it?  So people will move to D&D clones like Pathfinder or who knows what else, especially with others now looking to develop their own original system to avoid the pitfalls of relying on another company's core product again.

[Go0gleplex]

Running a mission in KR this afternoon and literally ran into a Firestorm clone. Didn't catch the name...but the look and colors were pretty much spot on, including the flaming hair. May not be exact...so skirting the line...really close. 🍍

[Ghost]

Was standing around in PD around a week ago, when I noticed someone “Ororo Monroe” who looked just like Storm asking for a farm in LFG.

After a few seconds, the name changed to generic and the costume disappeared.

First time I had actually seen the change as it happened.

[d4verman]

On 2/25/2023 at 12:03 AM, Ghost said:

Was standing around in PD around a week ago, when I noticed someone “Ororo Monroe” who looked just like Storm asking for a farm in LFG.

After a few seconds, the name changed to generic and the costume disappeared.

First time I had actually seen the change as it happened.

I have to laugh at that because I saw someone with that name and fairly accurate costume in Talos back when the game was live. They flew away so I never saw them generic'd though. 

 

I did see a Ben Grimm clone get generic'd once though. It was pretty funny. 

[Snarky]

6 hours ago, d4verman said:

II did see a Ben Grimm clone get generic'd once though. It was pretty funny. 

a Grimm fate.

[tidge]

On 2/24/2023 at 8:01 PM, Go0gleplex said:

Running a mission in KR this afternoon and literally ran into a Firestorm clone. Didn't catch the name...but the look and colors were pretty much spot on, including the flaming hair. May not be exact...so skirting the line...really close. 🍍

 

Writing only for myself, and my personal feelings:

 

I am not bothered, nor do I personally believe a line is crossed by applying the artistic tools to make a costume that looks like a well-known comic book character(*1), I definitely think that copying the names (even tangentially) is firmly in the realm of violation, combining the names and costumes is bad behavior. I also feel that copying costumes and powersets pushes the character over the line. I wouldn't be surprised if those get genericized when caught in public.

 

(*1) For players that simply want to experiment with costumes, the facemaker(s) can let you have alternate body types, so with that done (AFAIK, only available in public zones) and all the extra costume slots you can be free to redesign costumes in the privacy of a SG base. I doubt anyone is digging through the many costume slots to discover that Dark/Dark Tanker "Freddy Whipperwill" has a Wonder Woman cosplay costume that he sometimes wears in his SG base.

 

If your non-obvious infringing name gets caught in public (including standing outside of AE), don't be surprised when the hammer falls.

 

[High_Beam]

10 hours ago, Snarky said:

a Grimm fate.

Brought to you by low hanging fruit.

[Snarky]

46 minutes ago, High_Beam said:

Brought to you by low hanging fruit.

Hey i’m a lazy vampire.  Never go running after the college track and field athletes when there are perfectly good bums lying in doorways 

[d4verman]

12 hours ago, Snarky said:

a Grimm fate.

lol...it was pretty funny (to me at least) because it happened right in Atlas Park. The guy must have just finished the tutorial. I barely registered his presence when boom! he was Generic'd. 

 

Personally I don't see the appeal in cloning a known character. 

[Snarky]

1 hour ago, d4verman said:

lol...it was pretty funny (to me at least) because it happened right in Atlas Park. The guy must have just finished the tutorial. I barely registered his presence when boom! he was Generic'd. 

 

Personally I don't see the appeal in cloning a known character. 

Well, that I see.   In art one of the beginning stages is copying works or styles.  You need to understand what was before in order to build on that.  It is a little less defendable in our situation.  Still my main is a Nosferatu tribute.  That I am writing a short story about.   As a completely different character and time with a strange reason to resemble Max Schrek Nosferatu 

[Captain Fabulous]

3 hours ago, Snarky said:

Hey i’m a lazy vampire.  Never go running after the college track and field athletes when there are perfectly good bums lying in doorways 

Can confirm. Did a TF with him last night and all he did was try and drain the blood from already-dead critters. 😜

[tidge]

22 minutes ago, Captain Fabulous said:

Can confirm. Did a TF with him last night and all he did was try and drain the blood from already-dead critters. 😜

[d4verman]

1 hour ago, Snarky said:

Well, that I see.   In art one of the beginning stages is copying works or styles.  You need to understand what was before in order to build on that.  It is a little less defendable in our situation.  Still my main is a Nosferatu tribute.  That I am writing a short story about.   As a completely different character and time with a strange reason to resemble Max Schrek Nosferatu 

Yeah, I understand that and you're right about it not being defendable. If you're into drawing comics you might start to copy the style of artists you like, but thats different in game. Making a rock like tank character and calling him "Rocky Ben" is different from making the same character and naming "Ben Grimm" or "Thing" with some alternate spelling (Benn Grimmm, or the Th1ng) is just plain cloning and copying. especially when the character bio reads exactly like the real comics character. It always amazed me that people would do that even though they had to know they weren't supposed to. 

 

Thankfully I haven't really seen any of that now on Homecoming. 

[Ulysses Dare]

1 hour ago, Captain Fabulous said:

Can confirm. Did a TF with him last night and all he did was try and drain the blood from already-dead critters. 😜

Well, it's not like they're using it anymore.

[Marshal_General]

How about this one? I think I am skirting about three lines here, but crossing none of them.

 

[biostem]

10 minutes ago, Marshal_General said:

How about this one?

While I appreciate the mash-up, the bigger issue may be that there's a real supermodel with that name, (though the different spelling of "Electra" may be different enough).  Why not Electra Sandiego?

[biostem]

On 2/27/2023 at 12:35 PM, Captain Fabulous said:

all he did was try and drain the blood from already-dead critters.

@Snarky knows better than to drink dead blood, (at least I'd hope so)...

[Marshal_General]

7 minutes ago, biostem said:

While I appreciate the mash-up, the bigger issue may be that there's a real supermodel with that name, (though the different spelling of "Electra" may be different enough).  Why not Electra Sandiego?

She was born Tara Leigh Patrick. I am not sure if you can copyright your name even if it is made up. I am pretty sure porn stars use variant spellings of real people's names.

 

So I have heard.

No personal experience of course!

[Captain Fabulous]

19 minutes ago, biostem said:

While I appreciate the mash-up, the bigger issue may be that there's a real supermodel with that name, (though the different spelling of "Electra" may be different enough).  Why not Electra Sandiego?

I think he's OK since he's not trying to make her look like the actress/model/has been.

 

17 minutes ago, biostem said:

@Snarky knows better than to drink dead blood, (at least I'd hope so)...

Well they were freshly deceased, so it was still probably good.

[Snarky]

33 minutes ago, Captain Fabulous said:

I think he's OK since he's not trying to make her look like the actress/model/has been.

 

Well they were freshly deceased, so it was still probably good.

only slightly past the expiration date....so to speak

[Glacier Peak]

1 hour ago, Marshal_General said:

How about this one? I think I am skirting about three lines here, but crossing none of them.

 

Oh no, don't tell me that awful movie impressed someone enough to make a homage! 😆

[biostem]

7 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

Oh no, don't tell me that awful movie impressed someone enough to make a homage!

Pretty sure Elektra existed in comics long before the movie(s)...