Many years ago, Games Workshop copyrighted "Space Marines." I'm not sure how copy righted that makes it. It seemed a bit mean to me at the time - and still does - and massively hypocritical as at the time Games Workshop didn't seem to have an original idea in the entire company. I mean, Space Marines are just Starship Troopers, right?
Do you wanna know more...?
More seriously though, unless you plan on publishing the home brew material, who cares? WoTC are quite happy for you to use the entire FR settings for your campaigns, modifying it to suit your own vision and stories. (They are assuming you are buying sourcebooks off them...) If all you are using is the name, switch a couple of letters - you look semi-original, and you can claim coincidence or ignorance of original source if WoTC ever decide to sue. (No, Your Honour, I've never heard of Radiohead....")
More seriously still...why do Disney still have copyright on Mickey Mouse, a character that should have entered the public domain years ago?
Many years ago, Games Workshop copyrighted "Space Marines." I'm not sure how copy righted that makes it. It seemed a bit mean to me at the time - and still does - and massively hypocritical as at the time Games Workshop didn't seem to have an original idea in the entire company. I mean, Space Marines are just Starship Troopers, right?
Just swinging by to say that I believe Games Workshop to be one of the worst companies on the planet when it comes to community and community-related content.
Some years ago I found info and trailers on a fan-made movie on Warhammer 40k, a very "Dark Heresy" movie, if you know a bit of the source material. It was beautifully done for being a basically 0-budget thing (we are talking some 6/7 years ago I think). What did Games Workshop did when they got wind of it? Cease and Desist order "Free" copies of the movie still found their way into the net, and I got hold of one, to my delight and pleasure (should still have it somewhere). It was good, it was faithful and it would have given anyone watching it the urge to know more. But GW being the horrible and jealous people they are decided no one can ever use their "ideas" as an inspiration for anything that could even remotely give the creator a few dollars and give them (GW) free publicity...
Oh well... we still have WotC and FFG. The former could do better, but their policy in the DM's Guild is certainly very fair, as they state that while they do not like people copy-pasting sections of published materials, they allow a certain modicum of content from the books, the minimum necessary for the rest of the original stuff to make sense or work the way intended. Then you have AL, which, albeit I haven't tried it ever, is one of the best ideas an RPG community might be offered. FFG is letting since years a website that allows you to create decks and play online their excellent and well known living card game Android Netrunner. The website has literally every single card ever released available, for free, and an online play platform that helps a lot with many of the complicated rules of this asymmetric beauty of a game. What does FFG do? "Guys, good job, keep it up". Why? because they realise the return for them in terms of participation in conventions and tournaments.
Ok, rant done, I'll go back into my hole of weird and obscure subclasses now.
EDIT: to be clear, I LOVE the Warhammer lore, I have been playing and DMing Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay for years, so my beef is with the PR/Marketing and Community Management/Legal team of GW, not their content (albeit Age of Sigmar is total BS).
I would hate GW for everything they do and everything they stand for except for 2 things.:
1) Talisman 2) Yeah, I really like a lot of their stuff; I hate myself for it, but I can live with my own hypocrisy.
Apparently Bugman's Bar is awesome! (I think that is what it is called.)
oh, 3 things..
3) A couple of years ago I took my lad (he was about 8 or 10, who keeps track?) into a GW store (even if you can't afford to buy stuff, those painted minis are awesome and worth a mooch*), and the assistant proceeded to ambush me and explain why wargaming would be a great hobby for my boy....I kept a straight face and listened politely. :)
*Mooch - to wander aimlessly with no intention of reaching for your wallet...
We seem to have veered off topic, but Stormknight seems to have answered the question as fully as we are likely to get. More fully than GW would have.....gripe, moan, wanders off to a different obscure hole.
On a side note - Bugman's Bar is fairly cool, yeah. Years back, I had friends working at GW head office, who got us permission to run a "Tavern night" LARP event in that bar, including combat. That was pretty cool. :)
Just swinging by to say that I believe Games Workshop to be one of the worst companies on the planet when it comes to community and community-related content.
Some years ago I found info and trailers on a fan-made movie on Warhammer 40k, a very "Dark Heresy" movie, if you know a bit of the source material. It was beautifully done for being a basically 0-budget thing (we are talking some 6/7 years ago I think). What did Games Workshop did when they got wind of it? Cease and Desist order "Free" copies of the movie still found their way into the net, and I got hold of one, to my delight and pleasure (should still have it somewhere). It was good, it was faithful and it would have given anyone watching it the urge to know more. But GW being the horrible and jealous people they are decided no one can ever use their "ideas" as an inspiration for anything that could even remotely give the creator a few dollars and give them (GW) free publicity...
To play the devil's advocate here: you can lose your IP rights if not enforced!
Quote from natlawreview:
If you don't take adequate or sufficient, reasonable means to protect and enforce your IP, then you run the risk of losing your IP rights. What is sufficient and reasonable action is not always clear; it depends on the situation. But, suffice it to say, if you know someone is using your IP without your authorization, you should promptly look into it to determine what, if anything, should and needs to be done so that you don't lose one of your most important business assets – your valuable intellectual property.
Second source: that one Intellectual Property course I took at my university. This was in Belgium, but there the following can happen: If someone makes money of your IP without you leasing said IP to them and you know of this, then you can actually lose your rights to that IP. So if you make a 40K movie without GW's consent and then sell it/put it on youtube (monetized)/have a patreon for it/make money off it in any way, then you leave GW no choice but to send you a cease & desist. Though GW could handle those kind of situations a lot better.
Just swinging by to say that I believe Games Workshop to be one of the worst companies on the planet when it comes to community and community-related content.
Some years ago I found info and trailers on a fan-made movie on Warhammer 40k, a very "Dark Heresy" movie, if you know a bit of the source material. It was beautifully done for being a basically 0-budget thing (we are talking some 6/7 years ago I think). What did Games Workshop did when they got wind of it? Cease and Desist order "Free" copies of the movie still found their way into the net, and I got hold of one, to my delight and pleasure (should still have it somewhere). It was good, it was faithful and it would have given anyone watching it the urge to know more. But GW being the horrible and jealous people they are decided no one can ever use their "ideas" as an inspiration for anything that could even remotely give the creator a few dollars and give them (GW) free publicity...
To play the devil's advocate here: you can lose your IP rights if not enforced!
Quote from natlawreview:
If you don't take adequate or sufficient, reasonable means to protect and enforce your IP, then you run the risk of losing your IP rights. What is sufficient and reasonable action is not always clear; it depends on the situation. But, suffice it to say, if you know someone is using your IP without your authorization, you should promptly look into it to determine what, if anything, should and needs to be done so that you don't lose one of your most important business assets – your valuable intellectual property.
Second source: that one Intellectual Property course I took at my university. This was in Belgium, but there the following can happen: If someone makes money of your IP without you leasing said IP to them and you know of this, then you can actually lose your rights to that IP. So if you make a 40K movie without GW's consent and then sell it/put it on youtube (monetized)/have a patreon for it/make money off it in any way, then you leave GW no choice but to send you a cease & desist. Though GW could handle those kind of situations a lot better.
I agree with all the above, I am the first to say Intellectual Property should be protected, but it should also be allowed to be empowered and propagated by mediums other than the original one, especially if it's a community/fan driven project. A "Cease and Desist" order should be the last option, not the go-to one. There are several examples of GW enforcing the shutdown of a project without even sitting down with the creators of said project to see if something can be done that would satisfy both sides.
EDIT: This risks to go REALLY off topic though, and I apologise to Sovelis for the highjacking. Better either close the "debate" (read it jokingly) on this here or move it somewhere else :P
Chandler: You're right. I have no excuses. I was totally over the line.
Joey: Over the line? You... you... you're so far past the line that you can't even see the line! The line is a dot to you!
Much funnier in context. But you either know the episode or you don't, in which case you really ought to get back in the box and do some hard thinking. The box here is possibly the other thread about D&D and FR and elven stuff.
I am much impressed by Dr. Strangeknights' mystic powers...opening new dimensional windows* and splitting threads through them.
Re: Your question on IP and Mickey Mouse... IP rights are renewable. As an example, DC Comics has been doing this for years with The Watchmen. By spending a relatively small amount of money to do reprints of the collected edition for that series, they maintain rights that, if otherwise left alone, would eventually revert back to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (the writer & artist, respectfully). All Disney has to do is periodically commit Mickey to something, and they're gold.
I posted a question in the Arts and Crafts section but have since realised that's probably not the right place for it. I then saw this thread and thought maybe it's more appropriate in here, so here goes:
I've been writing an adventure and using a lot of artwork that I find on pinterest and google image searches for maps and content. I'm in no way intending to sell the adventure but I was wondering what the general opinion is with regard to sharing an adventure built like this online? I've only used artwork that I've found through basic pinterest and google searches (and heavily altered) but obviously there may be examples of paid artwork being wrongfully posted on there, and I would hate to share an adventure that contains someone else's artwork that they expect to get paid for, for this exact purpose. I'm interested to hear what other people think, whether it's not a problem as I'm simply sharing what other people could make themselves, or if by sharing it I'm preventing income for the creators of the artwork.
I genuinely don't know what the legal perspective on this is and I suspect that it changes depending on country (a minefield for putting things on the internet).
It's something that a lot of people have done though.
At the very least, I would expect the original artists to be credited for their work (if you are able to find out who they are) and make reasonable effort to contact them to ask them if they're ok with their art being used.
The pitfall that many fall into when they start using art they find off google/pinterest is to later start making money off their work, by selling it on D<s Guild or donations/patreon. That's then a problem as you're now profiting from someone else's work.
Again, I am not a legal professional though, so this is just opinion.
I personally try to avoid publishing stuff with potentially copyrighted images into it, but again if you are not trying to make a profit out of it, there could technically be no claim made against you. If the images are already available on the internet without the need to maliciously go search for convoluted ways to download them, there is no fault from your part that I could see. If anything the hosting website/original poster is to blame.
A way to protect you further is to credit the authors/artists in your adventure. Just a note with the names at the end or beginning of the module should suffice, I think.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
In the US, even if you aren't getting paid for it, even if you give credit for their work, it's illegal to publish artwork that you don't have a license to.
There is the concept of 'fair use', but it doesn't apply to things like adventures or campaign guides or any of that - fair use is for things like reviews, and generally doesn't apply to whole works.
Many people do use a relatively-permissive license that will allow you to use the work, but the vast majority of images you find in a google search are *not* licensed in that way.
That said, it's incredibly rare for people to be charged or sued for that sort of copyright infringement.
Thanks for the replies. I think what I'll do is hang onto my adventure and play it using the current artwork, but make it a longer term personal project to work through all the content and replace the artwork with my own. I suppose I could really have answered it myself in that I'd probably be a little upset if I saw someone else using my work, so it seems only fair I don't take advantage of the effort of others. I guess it also opens up more potential for me in the future in the event that my adventure's actually any good and I decide to try and sell it. :)
I love great artwork - don't we all? But for an adventure it only has to give a flavour, a gentle nudge/hook for the imagination - it's not something you are necessarily going to sit and admire for hours. For this, line art is normally more than sufficient. If a D&D player is not willing to fill in blanks with their imagination, then maybe they should be playing MMOs (Nothing wrong with that, I'm sure many of us supplement our thirst for adventure with PC games.) Big companies, producing rule books and sourcebooks and $30 adventures can justify using professional artists. I'm glad they do.
I'd bet you have a friend or two who would be more than happy to supply some artwork for your adventure in exchange for a credit at the back. There is a thread on the DnDBeyond forum with character portraits, most are easily of a high enough quality for your needs; some were probably the work of ten minutes while playing the game!
Put your efforts into good writing; nothing puts me off running an adventure quicker than sloppy English. Judging from your posts above, you won't suffer with that.
All that said - most of us still judge books by their covers. Rightly so, I think.
Thanks for the advice. I think you're absolutely right that the artwork should only be to further flavour the writing of the adventure. I'm an animator by profession so don't really have any excuse not to illustrate my own adventures, but I've done it this time mostly in the interest of saving time. With the exception of magic items, most of the artwork i'm concerned about is all DM side anyway (dungeon maps and details to describe if necessary), so line drawings will more than suffice. I prefer to run theatre of the mind adventures as much as possible and leave it up to the players to draw out their own maps. In the event that they try and find a cartographer and buy a map of the surrounding area, it would be nice to have a well illustrated print out to hand them I suppose.
I think what to you should probably do is check where it’s from and leave an area at the end of the book leaving links and mentions of art you took from the internet
Public Mod Note
(Stormknight):
post merged from other thread
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Marvarax andSora (Dragonborn) The retired fighter and WIP scholar - Glory
Brythel(Dwarf), The dwarf with a gun - survival at sea
Jaylin(Human), Paladin of Lathander's Ancient ways - The Seven Saints (Azura Claw)
Urselles(Goblin), Cleric of Eldath- The Wizard's challenge
Viclas Tyrin(Half Elf), Student of the Elven arts- Indrafatmoko's Defiance in Phlan
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Many years ago, Games Workshop copyrighted "Space Marines." I'm not sure how copy righted that makes it. It seemed a bit mean to me at the time - and still does - and massively hypocritical as at the time Games Workshop didn't seem to have an original idea in the entire company. I mean, Space Marines are just Starship Troopers, right?
Do you wanna know more...?
More seriously though, unless you plan on publishing the home brew material, who cares? WoTC are quite happy for you to use the entire FR settings for your campaigns, modifying it to suit your own vision and stories. (They are assuming you are buying sourcebooks off them...)
If all you are using is the name, switch a couple of letters - you look semi-original, and you can claim coincidence or ignorance of original source if WoTC ever decide to sue. (No, Your Honour, I've never heard of Radiohead....")
More seriously still...why do Disney still have copyright on Mickey Mouse, a character that should have entered the public domain years ago?
"I'm just asking questions." - Eric Cartman.
Roleplaying since Runequest.
What did Games Workshop did when they got wind of it?
Cease and Desist order
"Free" copies of the movie still found their way into the net, and I got hold of one, to my delight and pleasure (should still have it somewhere). It was good, it was faithful and it would have given anyone watching it the urge to know more. But GW being the horrible and jealous people they are decided no one can ever use their "ideas" as an inspiration for anything that could even remotely give the creator a few dollars and give them (GW) free publicity...
FFG is letting since years a website that allows you to create decks and play online their excellent and well known living card game Android Netrunner. The website has literally every single card ever released available, for free, and an online play platform that helps a lot with many of the complicated rules of this asymmetric beauty of a game. What does FFG do? "Guys, good job, keep it up". Why? because they realise the return for them in terms of participation in conventions and tournaments.
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
I would hate GW for everything they do and everything they stand for except for 2 things.:
1) Talisman
2) Yeah, I really like a lot of their stuff; I hate myself for it, but I can live with my own hypocrisy.
Apparently Bugman's Bar is awesome! (I think that is what it is called.)
oh, 3 things..
3) A couple of years ago I took my lad (he was about 8 or 10, who keeps track?) into a GW store (even if you can't afford to buy stuff, those painted minis are awesome and worth a mooch*), and the assistant proceeded to ambush me and explain why wargaming would be a great hobby for my boy....I kept a straight face and listened politely. :)
*Mooch - to wander aimlessly with no intention of reaching for your wallet...
We seem to have veered off topic, but Stormknight seems to have answered the question as fully as we are likely to get. More fully than GW would have.....gripe, moan, wanders off to a different obscure hole.
Roleplaying since Runequest.
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
D&D Beyond FoundersPun-loving nerd | Faith Elisabeth Lilley | She/Her/Hers | Profile art by Becca Golins
If you need help with homebrew, please post on the homebrew forums, where multiple staff and moderators can read your post and help you!
"We got this, no problem! I'll take the twenty on the left - you guys handle the one on the right!"🔊
If someone makes money of your IP without you leasing said IP to them and you know of this, then you can actually lose your rights to that IP. So if you make a 40K movie without GW's consent and then sell it/put it on youtube (monetized)/have a patreon for it/make money off it in any way, then you leave GW no choice but to send you a cease & desist. Though GW could handle those kind of situations a lot better.
A "Cease and Desist" order should be the last option, not the go-to one. There are several examples of GW enforcing the shutdown of a project without even sitting down with the creators of said project to see if something can be done that would satisfy both sides.
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
D&D Beyond FoundersThis discussion had gone SO far off that I have moved it to it's own thread. Please feel free to carry on as you like. :)
Please note for context that all posts above this one were originally in reply to this thread.
Pun-loving nerd | Faith Elisabeth Lilley | She/Her/Hers | Profile art by Becca Golins
If you need help with homebrew, please post on the homebrew forums, where multiple staff and moderators can read your post and help you!
"We got this, no problem! I'll take the twenty on the left - you guys handle the one on the right!"🔊
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
Chandler: You're right. I have no excuses. I was totally over the line.
Joey: Over the line? You... you... you're so far past the line that you can't even see the line! The line is a dot to you!
Much funnier in context. But you either know the episode or you don't, in which case you really ought to get back in the box and do some hard thinking. The box here is possibly the other thread about D&D and FR and elven stuff.
I am much impressed by Dr. Strangeknights' mystic powers...opening new dimensional windows* and splitting threads through them.
*yeah, I know some Latin!
Roleplaying since Runequest.
Re: Your question on IP and Mickey Mouse... IP rights are renewable. As an example, DC Comics has been doing this for years with The Watchmen. By spending a relatively small amount of money to do reprints of the collected edition for that series, they maintain rights that, if otherwise left alone, would eventually revert back to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (the writer & artist, respectfully). All Disney has to do is periodically commit Mickey to something, and they're gold.
Ah, that makes sense.
Roleplaying since Runequest.
I posted a question in the Arts and Crafts section but have since realised that's probably not the right place for it. I then saw this thread and thought maybe it's more appropriate in here, so here goes:
I've been writing an adventure and using a lot of artwork that I find on pinterest and google image searches for maps and content. I'm in no way intending to sell the adventure but I was wondering what the general opinion is with regard to sharing an adventure built like this online? I've only used artwork that I've found through basic pinterest and google searches (and heavily altered) but obviously there may be examples of paid artwork being wrongfully posted on there, and I would hate to share an adventure that contains someone else's artwork that they expect to get paid for, for this exact purpose. I'm interested to hear what other people think, whether it's not a problem as I'm simply sharing what other people could make themselves, or if by sharing it I'm preventing income for the creators of the artwork.
thanks
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
D&D Beyond FoundersI genuinely don't know what the legal perspective on this is and I suspect that it changes depending on country (a minefield for putting things on the internet).
It's something that a lot of people have done though.
At the very least, I would expect the original artists to be credited for their work (if you are able to find out who they are) and make reasonable effort to contact them to ask them if they're ok with their art being used.
The pitfall that many fall into when they start using art they find off google/pinterest is to later start making money off their work, by selling it on D<s Guild or donations/patreon. That's then a problem as you're now profiting from someone else's work.
Again, I am not a legal professional though, so this is just opinion.
Pun-loving nerd | Faith Elisabeth Lilley | She/Her/Hers | Profile art by Becca Golins
If you need help with homebrew, please post on the homebrew forums, where multiple staff and moderators can read your post and help you!
"We got this, no problem! I'll take the twenty on the left - you guys handle the one on the right!"🔊
Hi Smashed_Pumpkin o/
I personally try to avoid publishing stuff with potentially copyrighted images into it, but again if you are not trying to make a profit out of it, there could technically be no claim made against you. If the images are already available on the internet without the need to maliciously go search for convoluted ways to download them, there is no fault from your part that I could see. If anything the hosting website/original poster is to blame.
A way to protect you further is to credit the authors/artists in your adventure. Just a note with the names at the end or beginning of the module should suffice, I think.
Born in Italy, moved a bunch, living in Spain, my heart always belonged to Roleplaying Games
In the US, even if you aren't getting paid for it, even if you give credit for their work, it's illegal to publish artwork that you don't have a license to.
There is the concept of 'fair use', but it doesn't apply to things like adventures or campaign guides or any of that - fair use is for things like reviews, and generally doesn't apply to whole works.
Many people do use a relatively-permissive license that will allow you to use the work, but the vast majority of images you find in a google search are *not* licensed in that way.
That said, it's incredibly rare for people to be charged or sued for that sort of copyright infringement.
Thanks for the replies. I think what I'll do is hang onto my adventure and play it using the current artwork, but make it a longer term personal project to work through all the content and replace the artwork with my own. I suppose I could really have answered it myself in that I'd probably be a little upset if I saw someone else using my work, so it seems only fair I don't take advantage of the effort of others. I guess it also opens up more potential for me in the future in the event that my adventure's actually any good and I decide to try and sell it. :)
I love great artwork - don't we all?
But for an adventure it only has to give a flavour, a gentle nudge/hook for the imagination - it's not something you are necessarily going to sit and admire for hours. For this, line art is normally more than sufficient. If a D&D player is not willing to fill in blanks with their imagination, then maybe they should be playing MMOs (Nothing wrong with that, I'm sure many of us supplement our thirst for adventure with PC games.)
Big companies, producing rule books and sourcebooks and $30 adventures can justify using professional artists. I'm glad they do.
I'd bet you have a friend or two who would be more than happy to supply some artwork for your adventure in exchange for a credit at the back. There is a thread on the DnDBeyond forum with character portraits, most are easily of a high enough quality for your needs; some were probably the work of ten minutes while playing the game!
Put your efforts into good writing; nothing puts me off running an adventure quicker than sloppy English. Judging from your posts above, you won't suffer with that.
All that said - most of us still judge books by their covers. Rightly so, I think.
Good luck.
Roleplaying since Runequest.
Thanks for the advice. I think you're absolutely right that the artwork should only be to further flavour the writing of the adventure. I'm an animator by profession so don't really have any excuse not to illustrate my own adventures, but I've done it this time mostly in the interest of saving time. With the exception of magic items, most of the artwork i'm concerned about is all DM side anyway (dungeon maps and details to describe if necessary), so line drawings will more than suffice. I prefer to run theatre of the mind adventures as much as possible and leave it up to the players to draw out their own maps. In the event that they try and find a cartographer and buy a map of the surrounding area, it would be nice to have a well illustrated print out to hand them I suppose.
I think what to you should probably do is check where it’s from and leave an area at the end of the book leaving links and mentions of art you took from the internet
Marvarax and Sora (Dragonborn) The retired fighter and WIP scholar - Glory
Brythel(Dwarf), The dwarf with a gun - survival at sea
Jaylin(Human), Paladin of Lathander's Ancient ways - The Seven Saints (Azura Claw)
Urselles(Goblin), Cleric of Eldath- The Wizard's challenge
Viclas Tyrin(Half Elf), Student of the Elven arts- Indrafatmoko's Defiance in Phlan