MCA Archetypes and OGL ?


Homebrew and House Rules


Hello,
One of my player used to play a shadow fury from MCA Archetypes ( link ) until his PC died at level 6.

I liked the concept and the class was nice but I wanted to revise it to make it more "fun". The silent rage is the main point of the class but not very useable.
So I made my version (maybe it's worse or overpowered, I'm not saying I'm better than the good people that worked hard on MCA Archetypes !), and wanted to release it to playtest and maybe include it in a project I have.

But on the MCA Archetypes website there is no OGL, and due to the pages hosted on wikispace, it's said to be Creative Commons License 3.0

There's a disclaimer saying :
"This should be under open Gaming license rather than cc 3.0, the reason being that it uses material from pathfinder and it's only legal to do so under ogl. Both creative commons 3.0 and ogl, both forbid the addition of terms, so anyone who remixes in the current state of this must either break cc 3.0, ogl or both. here is a copy of d20pfsrds ogl http://www.d20pfsrd.com/extras/community-use . I do not mean to in any way wreck your day or your project, I would just prefer it to be legal to use."

How do we have to understand it ?
Are MCA Archetypes illegal due to the CC3.0 not respecting OGL ?

For my variation of the shadow fury class, in fact, except the names "shadow fury" and "silent rage", "shadow jump" and also the "shadow skin" and "shadow jump" abilities that are a direct copy-paste, there's nothing more from the MCA archetype, I build all my text based on Unchained rogue and unchained barbarian abilities descriptions.

So, if I want to release my class as OGL, is it ok this way (silent rage, shadow jump, and so on... are rather generic terms...), do I need to rephrase the 2 abilities that are directly taken from the MCA class, do I need to change all the names (example : "dark jump" instead of "shadow jump", I dont like it but..) ?


You should probably contact the hosts of the MCA site and ask them directly.


I am one of the MCA crew. Our stuff is essentially OGL. Its all free and open to anyone, as it is based on many already OGL classes/concepts. So, if you want to make adjustments/changes of your own, that's fine. Just make sure you note the source, and that it remains OGL and is not for profit, as all of our MCAs were.

Now, the wiki will actually be ending in the next few days. We're slowly moving to the Community site at http://www.pathfindercommunity.net/

We have dumped the Wiki onto the site, and the managers of the Community (an MCA crew member himself) will be putting that info on individual pages as time permits.

I'll see if we can add a link to the Wiki dump page on the community site.


It's complicated.
From what I understand (please note that I have no legal training, other than listening to 2 friends studying law, and ranting about many issues about it) :

WotC's OGL is a license that is used by the original d20 SRD. It is similar to CC3.0 in that it is a share-alike license (basically new content using content under OGL must also be OGL).

It is however distinct from CC3.0, both contain clauses forbidding the addition or alteration of terms, as well as other clauses incompatible with each-other.

Thus, content under OGL cannot also be under CC3.0 (and vice versa).

That said, MCA's disclaimer page indicates that the website is under CC3.0, not the website's content. It is possible to have the website (it's source code, and other technical stuff) under one license (CC3.0), and it's content under another (OGL?).

After a quick search, I found no reference in the website to the OGL, meaning that technically, the website propably shouldn't legally display any content linked to OGL (including any of the MCA).

However, MCA's website also offers the download of two pdfs with both of them including the OGL.
This means that the content within thoses PDF is legal, as long as you references the PDFs.

Final personal verdict : Are the MCA classes legal ? If they are in one of the two downloadable PDFs, yes. Otherwise, unsure (sadly, the shadow fury is not in the pdfs).

If you want to be sure, you should contact MCA and/or Paizo. As a company making heavy use of OGL, Paizo would be able to reply with little doubt (and, in the process, possibly prove that I am an idiot).

Edit : Well, what do you now. In the time required to research and write that, MCA replied. I now feel totally irrelevant.


Aralicia wrote:

It's complicated.

From what I understand (please note that I have no legal training, other than listening to 2 friends studying law, and ranting about many issues about it) :

WotC's OGL is a license that is used by the original d20 SRD. It is similar to CC3.0 in that it is a share-alike license (basically new content using content under OGL must also be OGL).

It is however distinct from CC3.0, both contain clauses forbidding the addition or alteration of terms, as well as other clauses incompatible with each-other.

Thus, content under OGL cannot also be under CC3.0 (and vice versa).

That said, MCA's disclaimer page indicates that the website is under CC3.0, not the website's content. It is possible to have the website (it's source code, and other technical stuff) under one license (CC3.0), and it's content under another (OGL?).

After a quick search, I found no reference in the website to the OGL, meaning that technically, the website propably shouldn't legally display any content linked to OGL (including any of the MCA).

However, MCA's website also offers the download of two pdfs with both of them including the OGL.
This means that the content within thoses PDF is legal, as long as you references the PDFs.

Final personal verdict : Are the MCA classes legal ? If they are in one of the two downloadable PDFs, yes. Otherwise, unsure (sadly, the shadow fury is not in the pdfs).

If you want to be sure, you should contact MCA and/or Paizo. As a company making heavy use of OGL, Paizo would be able to reply with little doubt (and, in the process, possibly prove that I am an idiot).

Edit : Well, what do you now. In the time required to research and write that, MCA replied. I now feel totally irrelevant.

Not irrelevant. I'm no lawyer myself, but our work has always been OGL, and for nonprofit, so we expect anything we've done to be the same. Its there to use, and to be changed to fit individual ideas, etc. We are just facilitators, you guys do with our work as you wish.


Thanks for your replies :)
I fixed my problem using the simplest way possible, I changed the name of my class, the name of similar abilities and changed the writing of the abilities enough for it being an original class inspired by ideas from the shadow fury class.

Nothing is left from the MCA class except the general concept of a barbarian rogue raging in silence and able to teleport a few feet far when he is in shadows.
It plays nothing like the shadow fury (basically you can rage and sneak attack only in dim light or darker and so, you need to make the dark around you via spell-like abilities, and you have a pool of points to spend on actions related to darkness).

I don't even think the shadow fury needs to be credited in the OGL, but if I distribute the class I'll credit it for inspiration and ideas, for sure.

I think it's also better for it to be an original class based on the same concepts than a "fix" for something that didn't needed it (even more when I know I'm not the king of balance ! :p )

I love the MCA archetypes, my campaign is running since 2013 and my first players were a shadow fury and a beast hunter (helped by a witchblade DMPC) :)


Elghinn Lightbringer wrote:
Not irrelevant. I'm no lawyer myself, but our work has always been OGL, and for nonprofit, so we expect anything we've done to be the same. Its there to use, and to be changed to fit individual ideas, etc. We are just facilitators, you guys do with our work as you wish.

I have no doubt about your willingness to see it your content used as anyone wishes to.

I was mostly taking it on a purely legal persepctive, noting mostly that the wikispace website had no reference to the OGL, making it possibly subject to legal action.

We'll note, for example, that the d20pfsrd does contains a page referencing the OGL, in the same manner as it is at the end of PF/PF Compatible books.

Maybe you should do the same on your new website, just in case ?


Not a problem for me as I don't plan to release it for money if it's not broken, but not sure if restrictions like "for non-profit only" are compatible with OGL...


My understanding is that OGL material cannot be made non-profit only, because the terms of the license permit the material to be used and sold. This is why, for example, Paizo can use creatures from the Tome of Horrors in its own Bestiaries, which are sold for profit. To do otherwise would be a violation of the OGL's ban on additional terms and conditions.

RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16

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The MCA website must have OGL. Nearly all of the site's content uses some copy/pasted text from the source books. And if it doesn't have the license somewhere on the site, then it's in violation of the OGL.

Silver Crusade

Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Also, you guys are using Paizo's trade dress in the product, which is explicitly verboten under both OGL and PCL. But hey, what do I know, all I did was snooze for total of 12 years of M.A. and PhD in the law school... ;)

But also, what Cyrad said. There's no OGL anywhere on the website.


I think the problem with OGL/CC3.0 will be solved once all the classes are migrated to the new site and the wikispace (with CC3.0) will disappear.
There'll be no trace of the CC3.0 anywhere and everything will be ok :)


*Looks over the site*

Um... the Arcane Masters I PDF has the logo for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, not the logo for Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Compatible products. I am not a lawyer, but I think that might be a violation of the Compatibility License, and should probably be fixed pronto.

Silver Crusade

Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
GM Rednal wrote:

*Looks over the site*

Um... the Arcane Masters I PDF has the logo for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, not the logo for Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Compatible products. I am not a lawyer, but I think that might be a violation of the Compatibility License, and should probably be fixed pronto.

Pretty much.


GM Rednal wrote:

*Looks over the site*

Um... the Arcane Masters I PDF has the logo for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, not the logo for Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Compatible products. I am not a lawyer, but I think that might be a violation of the Compatibility License, and should probably be fixed pronto.

But doesn't the compatibility license apply for commercial use of Pathfinder, which Arcane Master I isn't ?

Since it's non-commercial, wouldn't the Community Use Policy enough ?
The Community Use Policy allows the use of the Pathfinder Logo (the image is in the Community Use Package: Logos)


Quote:
The Pathfinder Compatibility License gives professional and non-commercial publishers the ability to market products created for use with the upcoming Pathfinder Roleplaying Game with a specially designed logo.

Emphasis mine.

Silver Crusade RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16

Gorbacz wrote:

Also, you guys are using Paizo's trade dress in the product, which is explicitly verboten under both OGL and PCL. But hey, what do I know, all I did was snooze for total of 12 years of M.A. and PhD in the law school... ;)

But also, what Cyrad said. There's no OGL anywhere on the website.

Our MCAs and my pathfindercommunity.net site do NOT use the Pathfinder Compatibility License. We created them under the Pathfinder Community Use Policy, which does allow us to use the Pathfinder RPG logo, many of the images from the Paizo blog, and many other Paizo intellectual property freely. This project is a FREE community use project, NOT a commercial enterprise.

Paizo Community Use Policy

Silver Crusade

Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
cartmanbeck wrote:
Gorbacz wrote:

Also, you guys are using Paizo's trade dress in the product, which is explicitly verboten under both OGL and PCL. But hey, what do I know, all I did was snooze for total of 12 years of M.A. and PhD in the law school... ;)

But also, what Cyrad said. There's no OGL anywhere on the website.

Our MCAs and my pathfindercommunity.net site do NOT use the Pathfinder Compatibility License. We created them under the Pathfinder Community Use Policy, which does allow us to use the Pathfinder RPG logo, many of the images from the Paizo blog, and many other Paizo intellectual property freely. This project is a FREE community use project, NOT a commercial enterprise.

Paizo Community Use Policy

OK, few things here.

First thing, if you use the OGL, you must reproduce it on your site. And you are using OGL, because well, there's no other way you can put all the things you have there without it. And said OGL must have section 15 done just the way you do in your PDFs.

Now what you did was link to the D20PFSRD page with the license. Cool beans, what if d20pfsrd changes the link? Goes down? Legally, displaying the license is on you, and if say D20PFSRD goes offline for a week and WotC shoots you a "excusez-moi, where is the OGL on your website" e-mail, you might be in trouble.

Second thing, free =/= not-commercial. It's up to Paizo to call the shots here, but having something that has credits, a logo of the entity that produced it (MCP), and pretty much looks like a commercial product might be considered as one by the licensor. I know, you're guys are fans for fans, etc. etc. BUT if, say, at some point your purely fan-driven collaboration becomes a business of any sort...

Well, that's exactly what happened with d20PFSRD - initially, they were "just" a fan-made site, but at some point they went commercial and Paizo put a kibosh on their use of stuff covered by the Community License. And they've had to excise quite a lot of content in order to comply. The fun thing is, they did not exactly sell any CUP-cowered material, but they started making profit off a store that was attached to D20PFSRD. Paizo decided that this goes into commercial territory and took action.

Third thing is, I'm pretty sure the Community Use Policy does not cover Paizo's trade dress. Those swirly things in the background of the PDF pages? The whole color scheme? Even if they are not carbon copies of Paizo's trade dress, if I were to call the shots I'd say they're way too close for comfort.

Fourth thing. Your PDFs have a collage of all iconics on one page. Tricky legal question, is that a bunch of legally separate images covered by the CUP in one place, or is that a new fixed representation on a tangible medium? I'm not sure. But all my education and experience tells me to steer on the "sure" side when it comes to Intellectual Property laws. Of course, it's not like the boundary between "sure" and "not sure" there are murky, blurred and fuzzy.. ;-)

Take a look at how Archives of Nethys handles it. They have the OGL (and a MASSIVE section 15 of it, poor Blake must have nightmares from editing it), they have the CUP, but they only feature stuff that's covered by the CUP.

If you need help in getting this sorted out, shoot me an e-mail. Yes, I am a lawyer. No, none of my blurbings should be taken as legal advice, used in court and you hereby relinquish any rights to sue me over anything. But I might be able to lend a hand.

Silver Crusade RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16

Hi Gorbacz,
I appreciate your trying to keep us kosher. I will definitely copy the OGL over onto my site as soon as I have time to do so. I was part of the d20pfsrd.com group when they had to switch over from using the Community Use Policy, which was actually the main reason that I created pathfindercommunity.net in the first place... to get some of that content that couldn't be on d20pfsrd.com anymore off that site and still available to others. I have lots of links over to their site on my site, and I don't plan to change that.
The collage of iconics on the front of the PDFs... you might be right, it could be a slightly gray area, but I seriously doubt that Paizo is going to bother with it, even if it isn't strictly allowed according to the CUP. I hope I'm right on this one.
As far as the trade dress, I'm not familiar with that part, and didn't create the PDFs myself, so one of the other MCP guys will have to pop on and address that one. Again, I wouldn't expect that Paizo would bother with it, even if it's not strictly allowed. But I'm definitely NOT a lawyer, so I could definitely be wrong.
Tyler


Gorbacz wrote:


Second thing, free =/= not-commercial. It's up to Paizo to call the shots here, but having something that has credits, a logo of the entity that produced it (MCP), and pretty much looks like a commercial product might be considered as one by the licensor. I know, you're guys are fans for fans, etc. etc. BUT if, say, at some point your purely fan-driven collaboration becomes a business of any sort...

Third thing is, I'm pretty sure the Community Use Policy does not cover Paizo's trade dress. Those swirly things in the background of the PDF pages? The whole color scheme? Even if they are not carbon copies of Paizo's trade dress, if I were to call the shots I'd say they're way too close for comfort.

Fourth thing. Your PDFs have a collage of all iconics on one page. Tricky legal question, is that a bunch of legally separate images covered by the CUP in one place, or is that a new fixed representation on a tangible medium? I'm not sure. But all my education and experience tells me to steer on the "sure" side when it comes to Intellectual Property laws. Of course, it's not like the boundary between "sure" and "not sure" there are murky, blurred and fuzzy.. ;-)

1) It's just our group icon to identify us from others. And no, we won't ever become a business, because we've pretty much gone our separate ways.

2) I built all the page templates from scratch. The Pathfinder core books obviously had some influence in the design, as I wanted them to appear compatible with those books. I only have a swirl in two corners, not along the whole edge of the page. I've never seen or heard anything as to complaints about the interior design. The covers are completely different from the Pathfinder books, again built from scratch. If we're worried about all this, then pull the PDFs down, 'cause I'm not inclined to go and redo the pdf pages. With the wiki dump available (hopefully) on the Community Site, then the pdfs don't necessarily need to be there. Though they are a nice addition to anyone's pdf collection.

3) I don't know about your issue here. All the iconics are individual pngs, added to the front page. And the Pathfinder RPG icon in the top corner, we asked one of the big wigs at the Paizo site (don't remember who?), and she said that we're OK to use the PFRPG symbol as a Community Use project. She also saw the pdfs I believe, and had no issues with it. I think Oceanshieldwolf was the one who was posing questions to her.

As I'm not much interested in doing/redoing anything else with MCAs, if we're worried about this stuff, we can just take the PDFs off the community site. We don't need people getting into trouble over free fan-based content.

Suppose we could pose some of these concerns with the Paizo guys?


If somebody at Paizo explicitly said it was fine, I have no further concerns. I actually LIKE the Multiclass Archetypes, and just wanted to be sure you're not accidentally doing something that would cause trouble for you later on. XD


GM Rednal wrote:
If somebody at Paizo explicitly said it was fine, I have no further concerns. I actually LIKE the Multiclass Archetypes, and just wanted to be sure you're not accidentally doing something that would cause trouble for you later on. XD

Glad people are looking our for us, and you like our work.


My only concern was that not too long after Liz Courts said our PDFs were fine.....alakazam: Pathfinder Advanced Class Guide. ;P


Herald of Multiclass Archetypes wrote:
My only concern was that not too long after Liz Courts said our PDFs were fine.....alakazam: Pathfinder Advanced Class Guide. ;P

You mean, because we did years of work perfecting the MCa system, and then they come out with a number of hybrid classes (not unlike our MCAs), and a system in which you can build additional one? Hmmm indeed, but nothing we can do about it.


Didn't say nuthin. :)

I don't think they presented a "system" in the ACG. More like....guidelines.

Silver Crusade RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16

Yeah, I'm personally flattered that they either used our general idea or came up with the same one on their own. It's awesome. :)


It could very easily be convergent design to be fair.


cartmanbeck wrote:
Yeah, I'm personally flattered that they either used our general idea or came up with the same one on their own. It's awesome. :)

I agree. We did the MCAs for a reason, primarily to come up with a way to multiclass via the archetype mechanics. If we did influence them, then great, we did our job better than we thought. Still hard to believe it was so long ago that we started on all that. Yay us!

MCA Retro! Here's where it all started!

Multiclass Archetypes

EDIT: Wow, forgot how much Flak, Cartmanbeck, (even Bardess) and I did before RaiderRPG and Oceanshieldwolf came on board. Took 2 months before the MCP Crew was finally together, though not officially.

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