A question for those in the know, involving the word OSRIC

[demiurgent]

Hey gang -- a quick question to the RPG developers in the crowd. And you know who you are.

Does anyone know if OSRIC's been juried or otherwise 'acknowledged' to be legitimate? I know they believe that they're in the clear, but their contention that the underlying algorithms of First Edition AD&D are reverse-engineerable without trouble sounds... I dunno. I'm not sure about it, and I don't want to get too far in the project I'm working on without knowing more.

Thanks!

Comments

[sben.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, my non-professional understanding has always been that mechanics are not copyrightable, but their presentation (i.e. text) is. (Even if true, this does not mean that the IP holder wouldn't go after these guys anyway.)

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

You copyright a specific work and a halo of "derivative works" around it.

You trademark terms.

You patent a process.

Absent a patent (and the chance to do that lapsed ages ago), the main argument that Hasbro's lawyers can make is one of copyright and derivative copyright, since OSRIC isn't actually using any specific TSR terms (I presume...doing so would be so stupid that we wouldn't need to have this discussion).

So, using any actual to-hit charts is out. Any presentation that's too close to a to-hit chart or to the THAC0 system is also out. Being a fairly simple concept, that doesn't leave a lot of ways to present the unpatented mechanic without infringing on a copyrighted presentation, especially since the derivative works halo has no set size...the more money you're willing to pour into lawyers, the bigger the halo gets, in general.