Thunderfoot
Hero
Not to steal a thread, but I concur. Okay, back to the antics...<SNIP> (The film, btw, is not that great.)
Not to steal a thread, but I concur. Okay, back to the antics...<SNIP> (The film, btw, is not that great.)
I don't understand why everyone is dissing their editing and spelling... I mean, they are 'Nu'TSR.Ummm…are they even publishers?
Well, and I honestly never thought I'd say this, they technically are publishers now. This is their first product to see the light of day.Ummm…are they even publishers?
Ah, but they didn't publish it. It had to be self-published by the author.Well, and I honestly never thought I'd say this, they technically are publishers now. This is their first product to see the light of day.
Aren't most OSR game made without an OGL license though, as they'reyes. This exact dance of trying to declare compatibility with D&D without mentioning D&D to avoid a TSR legal team coming to beat down your door is exactly the kind of dancing that the OGL and the d20 license ended back in the day.
Amusingly If they aren't actually using the OGL then the I don't think the word is forbidden. The OGL is a license that works both ways - Wizards agrees to let you use the D&D rules, and in exchange you agree to not use selected terms that they consider unique identity that they want to preserve for themselves. If you go off and try to do the old-fashioned lawyer avoidance dance, then you haven't agreed to anything and are setting up some kind of claim that game rules can't be copyrighted, only expressions of game rules, so your usage is perfectly cromulent.
I must admit that I am a bit surprised at the thought of an editor being the person to salvage a badly written text. Shouldn't the text be sort of okay at the get go? Sure some cuts here, some suggestions for rewrites there, some grammar fixes. But the responsibilty for the text being of sound structure and passable grammar and spelling must surely rest on the writer?
Or is it normal for writers to turn in bad text to be fixed by editors? Is that industry standard?
Definitely the weirdest performance of Anthony Hopkins' career, to be sure
OSRIC has an OGL at the back. Personally, I think it's a good idea to use it even for OSR products, because while not 3e or 5e specific, there are a lot of terms and rules in the OGL that also existed in earlier editions.Aren't most OSR game made without an OGL license though, as they're
So, yeah, there's a little bit of that dance still going on in the OSR community today, as some publishers are making product that should be playable with earlier D&D editions. (Many others are creating completely new games and systems, along with accompanying adventures, to capture the feel of 70's and 80's D&D, but I don't think Cults of Abaddon falls into that category, as it's an adventure, not a new game system.)
- not claiming to be compatible with any D&D edition that has an OGL
- not using any material from a WotC OGL
That said, Underdark is probably copyrighted by WotC (or TSR before them, and the rights passed onto WotC). So, it doesn't necessarily matter if it's explicitly called out in an OGL as being a verboten term for third party publishers.