chomin's page

Anguish: Hello, I am not seeking a legal advice here. Just sourcing some experiences and opinions from other sides. And sorry that I did not mention 5e explicitly (I thought it was clear).

David knott: hello, as i am explaining in the starting post: I am not planning to use any of copyrighted images (from wotc or PF). My artworks would be my original & unique creations just based/inspired by images of monsters found on the internet.

Hello Anguish, thank you for joining me and the opinion. :)
The thing is (as I am mentioning above) that in 5e SRD there is no written description of the monsters (nor an image), so I am not sure if it is that simple as you stated.

Maybe someone directly from Paizo can bring some light to this matter as they have direct experience with this?

Hello fellow companions,
in a light of current OGL 1.1 situation I would like to start a discussion concerning (visual) artworks of OGL monsters for commercial purposes.

To make it simple let´s forget about the planning OGL 1.1 (2.0) and start with the good “old” 1.0:
The license gives you the right to use / copy / modify everything inside the license. If we speak only about the monsters: in SRD there are just the monster stat blocks (in 3e SRD there is also a brief written description), but no visual reference of the monster. Of course there are tons of images over the internet, but no visual inside the SRD document.

So here is the thing: does the OGL license cover also the visual of the monster (its “design”) despite lack of visual reference in the SRD? ((Note.: The written description in 3e SRD can be a bit different story as from the written description you can “imagine” the monster visual)).

Example: Owlbear is in the SRD (OGL), and therefore is free to use. So I will google how it looks and create an original, but derivative artwork out of it (keeping the main owlbear design characteristics) and want to sell it. Everybody looking at my work can immediately recognize an owlbear.

There are tons of merchandise and miniatures using the visual of the OGL monsters (your Bestiary for instance), so I would be surprised if it is not allowed or bypassed in some way.

Let me know your thoughts and experience with that matter.
Thank you!