My friend and I are compiling a catalog of common-rarity magic items that are purely utilitarian. Some have mechanical effects (e.g. Glasses of Intellect give you advantage on Intelligence saving throws), some nonmechanical (e.g. Pick-eating lock... well, you can imagine), but most are geared towards regular people, not necessarily adventurers (No Pink Powder, which lets you wash reds and whites together). We've found some really, really cool ideas here on the public homebrew pages that we'd like to include in our catalog, but we want to know if we reach out to the creator and they don't respond, what are the guidelines on whether we can use that content or create a very similar item inspired by it in our catalog? Oh, and yes, we'd be publishing it on DMsGuild.
The law on this matter tends to depend on which countries you look at, but, if you absolutely must include the content, this is the absolutely minimum you MUST do:
1- cite the creator of the content immediately alongside the content
2- NOT MAKE MONEY ON OTHERS CONTENT WITHOUT EXPLICIT PERMISSION!
If you are planning to list the catalog for any price, even if it is 'pay what you want', you have to separate it into 2-plus parts, one for content of your own making, to price how you want; another for content of others you have explicit permission to possibly earn money from (this might be able to be merged with the first, but that could become murky); and at least a third for content that you do not have explicit permission to share, which ABSOLUTELY MUST BE FREE!
However, that being said, if you share content made by others for which you do not have explicit permission to share, and they were intending to profit from said content, they would have grounds to bring a lawsuit against you for the estimated earnings(that could have been) generated, and odds are, they would win.
So I would say to only share others content without permission if you are willing to risk great financial loss.
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My friend and I are compiling a catalog of common-rarity magic items that are purely utilitarian. Some have mechanical effects (e.g. Glasses of Intellect give you advantage on Intelligence saving throws), some nonmechanical (e.g. Pick-eating lock... well, you can imagine), but most are geared towards regular people, not necessarily adventurers (No Pink Powder, which lets you wash reds and whites together). We've found some really, really cool ideas here on the public homebrew pages that we'd like to include in our catalog, but we want to know if we reach out to the creator and they don't respond, what are the guidelines on whether we can use that content or create a very similar item inspired by it in our catalog? Oh, and yes, we'd be publishing it on DMsGuild.
The law on this matter tends to depend on which countries you look at, but, if you absolutely must include the content, this is the absolutely minimum you MUST do:
1- cite the creator of the content immediately alongside the content
2- NOT MAKE MONEY ON OTHERS CONTENT WITHOUT EXPLICIT PERMISSION!
If you are planning to list the catalog for any price, even if it is 'pay what you want', you have to separate it into 2-plus parts, one for content of your own making, to price how you want; another for content of others you have explicit permission to possibly earn money from (this might be able to be merged with the first, but that could become murky); and at least a third for content that you do not have explicit permission to share, which ABSOLUTELY MUST BE FREE!
However, that being said, if you share content made by others for which you do not have explicit permission to share, and they were intending to profit from said content, they would have grounds to bring a lawsuit against you for the estimated earnings(that could have been) generated, and odds are, they would win.
So I would say to only share others content without permission if you are willing to risk great financial loss.