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1.) Yes (you need both).
2.) Yes.
I put together an unofficial checklist and explanation of the licenses in these documents for a PaizoCon workshop last year. If you have additional questions, please post them, as many third-party publishers also visit these boards can help you out. (This is not a substitute for consulting a lawyer, though!)
1.) Yes.
2.) New content is generally categorized in one of two ways: Open Game Content (usable by others) or Product Identity (not usable by others). You will need a declaration of what is Product Identity and Open Game Content in your product to comply with the OGL (and by extension, the PCL).
Pardon me, Liz. Can an original base class and its mechanics be considered product identity?
I put together an unofficial checklist and explanation of the licenses in these documents for a PaizoCon workshop last year.
Is The Very Wrong Guidebook going to be released in hardcopy?
Pardon me, Liz. Can an original base class and its mechanics be considered product identity?
From my understanding this differs from product to product and Publisher to Publisher.
Many Publishers categorise proper names, Trademarks, trade dress, locations, artwork, characters, plots and storylines etc as Product Identity
AND
then add something like:
Except for material designated as Product Identity the game mechanics of this game product are Open Game Content, as defined in the Open Gaming License version 1.0 Section 1 (d). ....
So if the base class and its mechanics are from a published product, the product should tell you.
Pardon me, Liz. Can an original base class and its mechanics be considered product identity?From my understanding this differs from product to product and Publisher to Publisher.
Many Publishers categorise proper names, Trademarks, trade dress, locations, artwork, characters, plots and storylines etc as Product Identity
AND
then add something like:
Except for material designated as Product Identity the game mechanics of this game product are Open Game Content, as defined in the Open Gaming License version 1.0 Section 1 (d). ....
So if the base class and its mechanics are from a published product, the product should tell you.
Thank you, Oceanshieldwolf!
Pardon me, Liz. Can an original base class and its mechanics be considered product identity?
Here's the quick and dirty test to see if something can be declared product identity: did you come up with it?
Now your first thought is, yes, it is an original class with original mechanics so it can be declared product identity. But here's the question: did you really come up with it? It uses Base Attack Bonus, a concept you did not come up with. That part cannot be declared PI. And skills, armor, weapons. You are referencing a difference source with all of them. Those parts cannot be declared PI. Did you take any abilities and reskin them for your new class? Those abilities are not PI.
So even an original class will still have considerable parts that are open content.
In cases like this, it is safest to simply declare the name of the class product identity and the mechanics open content. This prevents anyone from referencing your class while making the open everything that legally needs to be open.
In cases like this, it is safest to simply declare the name of the class product identity and the mechanics open content. This prevents anyone from referencing your class while making the open everything that legally needs to be open.
I think the nomenclature of those types of things are referred to as "broken content" in that you can use the mechanics, but not the name, which makes it difficult to reference. (There was a lot of things like this in 3.0/3.5.)
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Declaring the name of a class (or whatever) product identity and the mechanics open content does prevent anyone from referencing your class (or whatever) while making open everything else, but it can also lead to multiple, identical classes (or whatever) that are different in name only, which is kind of against the original spirit of the OGL ...
I think it's better to either declare the entire thing (class, item, etc) Product Identity (ie closed content) if appropriate OR make it entirely open, especially if you'd like others to refer back to your product whenever someone else uses what you created in their product.
I think it's better to either declare the entire thing (class, item, etc) Product Identity (ie closed content) if appropriate OR make it entirely open, especially if you'd like others to refer back to your product whenever someone else uses what you created in their product.
I agree, but the question was about making it PI.
Thank you all for your replies. Here is my situation. I am a self-published fantasy author writing a series of novels. I want to make a compendium of the world I've created for these novels to dump all the expository facts and history that I can't find a place for in the overall story itself.
I would like this compendium to also function as a Pathfinder compatible game supplement for the "Philocreed Theurge" base class I've created that are based on the magic users of my book world. This class has mechanics that I developed have not seen anywhere else. I would, if possible and ethical, like to protect these mechanics to keep them exclusive to my brand.
I know I'll eventually have to hire a legal adviser. But any and all info/help I can get on these boards is most appreciated.
If you want to use them exclusively, declare them as Product Identity.
I would, if possible and ethical, like to protect these mechanics to keep them exclusive to my brand.
Well, here's the thing, you can't really protect mechanics. 2+2=4 can't be protected. All you can do is protect the phrasing of the instructions of how to add 2+2 to get 4. In the same way, you can't stop someone from making a 3rd level spell that does fire damage at a rate of 1d6 points/level to a maximum of 10d6. All you can do is stop them from calling it fireball and from plagiarizing the way you described it. My best recommendation is to declare "everything that is not already open content" as product identity.
And honestly, unless someone is bound and determined to use your mechanics (who will find a way around anyways), this is going to be good enough to keep other publishers from doing anything with it. When I see something like that, I just remove it from my mind as something to potentially reference in the future. I'll look at it again as a player, but otherwise I treat it as any other non-OGL book and don't even consider it.
Thank you both very much :)
May I hijack this thread for my own question? I'm releasing my own free splat book of Pathfinder prestige classes. I am planning to release it under both the OGL and a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Creative Commons license.
Does that make sense? Is there anything in those two that is mutually exclusive? My only "product identity" -- as I note -- is my name, "Cayzle."
Also, once I've playtested my book and I want to promote it more widely (say later this summer), what's my best option for wider distribution? Is there a Paizo 3rd party registration service? Are there publishers/sites, like maybe Paizo or maybe RPGNow, etc, who will distribute free ebooks for free?
Many thanks!
(And I'm looking for play-by-post, forum game playtesters, if anyone wants to help me playtest! Playtesters get a shout out in the credits!)
If it is going to be presented as Pathfinder Compatible, you'll need to use the The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Compatibility License as well as the OGL. Part of using that is to apply to register your product on the registry of Pathfinder Compatible products.
That doesn't really answer your questions, but it's something else to bear in mind - you can't indicate PF Compatibility just using the OGL, you have to also use the PFRPG Compatibility license (or the community use license, if you're not a publisher and the product is free).
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May I hijack this thread for my own question? I'm releasing my own free splat book of Pathfinder prestige classes. I am planning to release it under both the OGL and a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Creative Commons license.
You might want to talk to your lawyer about that. The way OGL is worded it is not entirely clear how it sits with other licenses which deal with modifying/transferring rights contained therein.
Thanks very much for those points!
Hey Everyone. I know it's been awhile since anyone has posted here but I have learned so much from this thread. That's why I would like to ask the one question I have left that I cannot seem to find any direct reference to. Can you use the Pathfinder OGL but make changes to the rule mechanics. EG: I want to develop a setting with modern rules but the classes don't lend themselves to the setting well. Thus I wanted to develop a new list of classes that would lend themselves to any setting. These classes would replace the current ones. Is that at all possible? I mean the classes still use the rule mechanics the same way. Can I take liberty and change rules like that or is the material I create limited to additional work that adds to the rules? Any info about this at all would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advanced.
Non-lawyerly answer: The Pathfinder license requires your material to be compatible. It can be additive, variant, or anything else, as long as you can and must use it with the Pathfinder rules-set.