I’m hoping somebody can help me. I’ve gone over the 5e SRD very thoroughly a couple of times and there’s one thing I don’t understand. I can make perfects sense of the last 401 pages of the document, but it’s the first two pages I’m not entirely sure about. I’m hoping someone can help out and maybe answer me a few basic questions. Thank you in advance.

What are your questions?

You're asking about the pages issuing the actual license, what the SRD grants a creative in that creative's development of a product for distribution and/or sale.  I'm not a lawyer, but the document is written for non lawyers and isn't too hard, especially supported by some of the support the license gets on DMsGuild and DriveThru.  What you askin?

Thank you both. I was hoping I could count on some friendly faces before I went and paid an actual lawyer to tell me.

I’ve been through it a few times and I can’t figure out stuff like these:

• Artificer is not included in the SRD. Can I publish Artificer subclasses with the permission in that Doc?
• If I publish a subclass for, say, Paladin, can I include a spell not in the SRD on the list of subclass specific Always Prepared spells? Something like hex for example? (Just as a name of a spell on a list, not including the text of the spell itself.)
• Goblins are not included in the SRD as a playable race. Can I publish a “Variant Goblin?”
  •  If so, could it include the names of traits like Fury of the Small?

It may be written for non-lawyers, but for the life of me I can’t determine if I’m allowed to do that👆stuff or not.

So the first thing is to recognize that DMsGuild has much more generous terms than the SRD.  Artificers and producing creative content for it has come up recently on here on the forum, can't remember where though.  Anyway, the Artificer isn't in the SRD, so can't be used under SRD terms for a creative project.  However, Artificer content is published regularly over at DMsGuild.

That's the only one I'm clear on.  Using a non SRD spell on a prepared spell list is again fine for DMsGuild, but I don't believe it's allowed technically outside of DMsGuild.  

If you want to use the 5e goblin PC features in creative work, again great for DMs Guild.  I believe for an SRD based product you could get away with "Spostaworld Goblin" and provide a PC race, though if you start outlining features that are clear echoes to the point that you're using WotC's phrasing you've crosse a line there.

Basically, keep in mind DMsGuild gives you much more liberty to play around with official 5e resources in your own creative work.  There's a handful of specific characters (Arkham the Cruel, Acquistions Incorporated, and a few others) that are red lines not for DMsGuild use, but otherwise think of it as Dragon and Dungeon magazine back in the day when they were cool.  Personally I don't know why someone creating D&D content wouldn't make use of DMsGuild work unless they were being "serious business" about it and had their own plans for physical publishing and distribution and the like.  Everything you're outlining here is a non issue under the DMsGuild banner.  SRD license use is more for truly indy presses who want to, I'd argue, have more creative control of their content (homebrew worlds and the like).  That entails start up costs a DMsGuild producer doesn't have to worry about, and doens't haven't the sweat the SRD.

It'd be cool if someone who's worked both sides of the DMsGuild/SRD line would chime in but I can't think of any forum regulars who do that.  Only forumite I can think of who regularly produces DMsGuild content is Heathsmith but their stuff, from what I've read, doesn't really touch on the issues you're posing, but maybe they can help out.

Thanks, gotcha. See, I’m in the unfortunate position of trying to figure out how best to publish a fairly substantial body of work… but it’s all tied into its own campaign setting, and at least “some” of it is stuff like Artificers or variant Goblinoids, etc.

It feels like I’ma hafta either edit the collection or publish our homebrewed setting on DM’sGuild. Is that latter option going to be an issue?

This here on DMs Guild may help: https://support.dmsguild.com/hc/en-us/articles/360024677993-Getting-Started-on-Dungeon-Masters-Guild

The simple side of it is: you can use WotC IP in your own works. There's some limits - so you can't go reprinting all the stuff from a book and claim its yours and make money off it. But reprinting some things seems to be A-OK if it is pertinent. The link has guides and stuff.

If goblins appear in your adventure, then you can reprint Goblin stats.

If certain magical items appear in your adventure, you can print their details.

The SRD legal wambojumbo is if you were wanting to use D&D stuff anywhere else, like on your own website or something. DMs Guild (DriveThruRPG) has a special licensing agreement with WotC. The SRD limitations do not apply on their website so it's the best place to publish your own D&D stuff. I believe MellieDM the mod has also released stuff on there, so you could consider PMing her for more direct experience?

Yeah, sorry, complete settings are specifically not welcome on DMsGuild.  It's gotta be either set in a currently 5e supported setting or agnostic enough that one could see it functioning in one of those settings (and Forgotten Realms is a pretty big bucket there where you can drop in whole continents if you want as SCAG opens up that possibility).

So you would be going the third party route which is bound to the SRD.  My reading of the SRD rules out Artificers.  A quick google of the question seems to support that interpretation, but you might want to check out some 5e forums outside of DDB (reddit, substackexchange, etc) specifically discussing third party product development.  That said, I do a lot of browsing in third party space and I can't think of anyone working with Artificers.  

Related question would be whether a 3rd party developer would have ability to use subclasses outside of the SRD.  I'm thinking that's a no too.  

Thanks Cyb3r, I’ma hafta check that out more thoroughly.

Thanks Midnight, I appreciate all your attention too.

A follow-up question: If I took my “world” and converted it to a “continent” and dropped it in the FR but kept the lore the same do you think that might be okay? It’s a fairly unique concept, but fits in with the greater planar cosmology, etc. but it is also less of a stretch to believe it as a continental thing than planetary. It’s kinda in that “tween space.”

Quote from IamSposta >>

 

A follow-up question: If I took my “world” and converted it to a “continent” and dropped it in the FR but kept the lore the same do you think that might be okay? It’s a fairly unique concept, but fits in with the greater planar cosmology, etc. but it is also less of a stretch to believe it as a continental thing than planetary. It’s kinda in that “tween space.”

I've seen that done a couple of times on GMsGuild actually, don't have anything on hand, but if you browse through it you'll see lots of setting stuff graphed onto FR.  A lot of it is folks updating prior canon locations like Maztica, but you see original lands added too.  I even saw one once that was a world on a comet that happens to pass by Toreil on the regular.

Thank you again, both of you. I owe ya each a favor if I’m ever in a position to grant it.

Quote from IamSposta >>

Thanks Cyb3r, I’ma hafta check that out more thoroughly.

Thanks Midnight, I appreciate all your attention too.

A follow-up question: If I took my “world” and converted it to a “continent” and dropped it in the FR but kept the lore the same do you think that might be okay? It’s a fairly unique concept, but fits in with the greater planar cosmology, etc. but it is also less of a stretch to believe it as a continental thing than planetary. It’s kinda in that “tween space.”

If you're dropping something into FR and publishing it on DMSGuild, then the SRD doesn't mean anything as their license applies.  Keep in mind, whatever you publish on DMSGuild is locked there for the rest of your life +70 years (so effectively forever as far as you're concerned). You can not distribute it through any other channel (for free or otherwise), other than some carveouts for short-term marketing and stuff like that.

If you publish it on their sister sites (or anywhere else), the SRD applies - but then you can't use any FR terms/names/or any other copyright WotC IP material not in the SRD.

Quote from HeathSmith>>

Quote from IamSposta>>

Thanks Cyb3r, I’ma hafta check that out more thoroughly.

Thanks Midnight, I appreciate all your attention too.

A follow-up question: If I took my “world” and converted it to a “continent” and dropped it in the FR but kept the lore the same do you think that might be okay? It’s a fairly unique concept, but fits in with the greater planar cosmology, etc. but it is also less of a stretch to believe it as a continental thing than planetary. It’s kinda in that “tween space.”

If you're dropping something into FR and publishing it on DMSGuild, then the SRD doesn't mean anything as their license applies.  Keep in mind, whatever you publish on DMSGuild is locked there for the rest of your life +70 years (so effectively forever as far as you're concerned). You can not distribute it through any other channel (for free or otherwise), other than some carveouts for short-term marketing and stuff like that.

Thanks Heathsmith.  I want to add that while those ramifications sound harsh (especially if you think of your stuff sort of as "your baby") it ain't that different from the terms professional creatives are largely left with when they work with the big creative IPs out there (Star Wars, Marvel, etc).  I'd say the sales residuals is probably a better arrangement than the work for hire standard TSR used to put creatives under.  The industry seems to be pretty quiet about what the professional creative make, but MT Black has a good blog post a while back when they ran some numbers and found the situation improving, but a lot of industry rates were hovering around a per word pay that came to about $15/hr.

If you publish it on their sister sites (or anywhere else), the SRD applies - but then you can't use any FR terms/names/or any other copyright WotC IP material not in the SRD.

Yeah, so the question comes down to is how integral non SRD content is to the idea you're putting out there.  Would there be a way to incorporate homebrewed technomancy independent from the Artificer, for example.

If worse came to worse I would just omit the 2 Artificer subclasses and think up stuff to replace them. 🤷‍♂️ It’s all the other stuff I wrote that has non-SRD spells in their Always Prepared lists, the races that reference non-SRD racial traits…. Even if I rejiggered the spell lists losing some of the most compelling races I wrote from the “not a setting” would be a hit. I mean, I could go SRD compliant, but it would mean editing or chopping about half of the content just to place the location outside of the FR. Seeing as how the meat & potatoes content is further along than the  fluffier stuff, I’d rather write the fluff to comply with DM’sG if possible. The “setting” was primarily meant to give context to the stuff in the first place.

Besides, I don’t wanna self publish & distribute hardcopy books or anything, at least not yet anyway. And I’ll never stop writing content for any game I play, I once wrote a whole private expansion set for M:tG. (A set, not a whole block, I’m not that obsessive.) Besides, if I go DM’sG and it’s a smash then WotC might take notice. Pie in the sky, I know, but it would be advantageous when I put out the other big project I’ve been working on, Psionics.