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I'm partway through an effort to remove any OGL-derived content from M20 Fifth, so I can relicense it under a Creative Commons License, but I'd be interested in any suggestions or advice people could offer me to make sure I dot all my i's and cross all my t's in this regard.

My current efforts can be found here.

Please let me know if you spot terminology or content that might be violating WotC's or anyone else's IP, so I can remove it or find a suitable replacement.

Hey @Babilfrenzo, first off, nice work on this!

I left some comments in the Google Doc on things that might be troublesome. Of course I'm not a lawyer or expert in any sense of the word, so feel free to keep what you like that pitch what you don't... hey, that sounds familiar!

Babilfrenzo wrote: ↑

Tue Jan 10, 2023 10:32 pm

I'm partway through an effort to remove any OGL-derived content from M20 Fifth, so I can relicense it under a Creative Commons License, but I'd be interested in any suggestions or advice people could offer me to make sure I dot all my i's and cross all my t's in this regard.

My current efforts can be found here.

Please let me know if you spot terminology or content that might be violating WotC's or anyone else's IP, so I can remove it or find a suitable replacement.

Hello. I am doing everything I can to scrub OGL Open Game Content from my games. It is not just the SRDs you have to worry about but potentially the derivative work which you relied upon as well. For us that means Microlite.

As a reminder, copyright only includes words and phrases, images, and music. Not processes, structure, rules, formulas, etc.

So....

1. I have decided to replace the d20 roll with 2d10s -- almost the same except that you get a bell curve. Much fewer low and high numbers and much more in the middle. I really don't think this is necessary but this is something I wanted to do anyway...
2. I have replaced all the well known D&D ad Microlite phrases with: Competency Stat; Competency Bonus, Defense Modifier (DM), Armor Modifier, Health Points (HP), Character History, Brawn (BRAWN), Agility (AGL), Brain (BRAIN), Difficulty Checks, Difficulty Target (DT), Advancement Point (AP), Monster Modifier Dice (MMD)

Also, if you want to retain an open source license use the Creative Commons. It is much better and does not carry the risk of using something derived from WotC.

squirewaldo wrote: ↑

Wed Jan 11, 2023 8:38 am

1. I have replaced all the well known D&D ad Microlite phrases with: Competency Stat; Competency Bonus, Defense Modifier (DM), Armor Modifier, Health Points (HP), Character History, Brawn (BRAWN), Agility (AGL), Brain (BRAIN), Difficulty Checks, Difficulty Target (DT), Advancement Point (AP), Monster Modifier Dice (MMD)

Cool, I was mostly on the right track then. I've gone with different equivalents, but I had replaced most of the terminology you did in my own game.

I do like some of your replacements better though - I might end up using some of them.

Babilfrenzo wrote: ↑

Wed Jan 11, 2023 9:34 am

squirewaldo wrote: ↑

Wed Jan 11, 2023 8:38 am

1. I have replaced all the well known D&D ad Microlite phrases with: Competency Stat; Competency Bonus, Defense Modifier (DM), Armor Modifier, Health Points (HP), Character History, Brawn (BRAWN), Agility (AGL), Brain (BRAIN), Difficulty Checks, Difficulty Target (DT), Advancement Point (AP), Monster Modifier Dice (MMD)

Cool, I was mostly on the right track then. I've gone with different equivalents, but I had replaced most of the terminology you did in my own game.

I do like some of your replacements better though - I might end up using some of them.

Let me know. I think it might be nice to come up with an extremely stripped down version and then publishing under the Creative Commons. What makes using the D&D wording so compelling is that EVERYONE knows what it is and what it means. If we replace those words and phrases an set that might be accepted then we are helping ourselves and others. Otherwise we could end up with thousands of different systems that become rather confusing.

squirewaldo wrote: ↑

Wed Jan 11, 2023 10:16 am

I think it might be nice to come up with an extremely stripped down version and then publishing under the Creative Commons. What makes using the D&D wording so compelling is that EVERYONE knows what it is and what it means.

Given that WOTC released the SRD 5.1 in two versions last year -- an old OGL version and a new Creative Commons (CC-BY-4.0) version (download link for the pdf of CC version: https://media.wizards.com/2023/download ... C_v5.1.pdf) many (if not most) D&D terms are available for use in CC-licensed games. All you have to do is give an attribution to the SRD-5.1 in your work as the Creative Commons license requires.

I will eventually release a version of Microlite74 under CC-BY-SA using the CC versions of the SRD 5.1 and Basic Fantasy 4th Edition as the basis. This will be the "simple" versions of M74 only (conversions of Microlite74 Basic and Standard). I lack the time (and frankly the interest) to do this for all the longer, more complete versions. Very few changes will really be legally required for these simple versions, however, some changes will be made to "improve" things a bit (like replacing the term "race" with something like "ancestry" or "culture") for this 4th edition of M74. I'm also going to write my own intro paragraph giving that many of the people downloading M74 these days have little or no idea what Microlite20 is -- so the current intro paragraph carries little meaning to them.