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

Reverse-enginer AD&D 1st Edition?

[ubersoft.livejournal.com]

This sounds like one of my comics.

I think it would be difficult to prove in court how someone could duplicate THAC-0 independently of AD&D. I'm not sure how reverse engineering would work in a game, but for it to be legal in computers the safest thing to do (from a legal perspective) is to black-box it:

1. One person examines and documents how an application works (i.e., when I press "a", "b" happens, only in much more detail than that).

2. Another person, who was not involved with the examination part of the project in any way, programs a new application based on the first person's documentation.

It would be hard to do that for a printed game that has been one of the foundations of RPGs. It would be really hard to prove it in court. That said, not a lawyer, and I might be more paranoid than the situation warrants.

It'd be cool if they could do it, though.

[mishamish.livejournal.com]

I think this is one of those unfortunate instances that falls smack-dab in the middle of the current IP debacle and -as such - won't be definitively answered until there's a suit decided ABOUT OSRIC ITSELF.

Damn gub'mint.

[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.)

thank you

[(Anonymous)]

well done, guy