Curiosity question: I'm working up some material with the intent to reference material found in the Bestiary 2; not actually using, quoting, etc any of the raw text, just saying "See X in Bestiary 2".
I always like to keep my legal up to speed and I want to see if I'd have to actually include the Bestiary 2 Copyright Notice (Which is monstrous! *cue rimshot*) or if the Pathfinder compatibility clauses allowed me to simply make the reference without including the text.
Curiosity question: I'm working up some material with the intent to reference material found in the Bestiary 2; not actually using, quoting, etc any of the raw text, just saying "See X in Bestiary 2".
I always like to keep my legal up to speed and I want to see if I'd have to actually include the Bestiary 2 Copyright Notice (Which is monstrous! *cue rimshot*) or if the Pathfinder compatibility clauses allowed me to simply make the reference without including the text.
I'm not a lawyer, but I think that since you already plan on using the Open Gaming License (after all, you're doing Pathfinder material) and apparently want to do something more or less "official" with your material, you'll have to include the Open Gaming License with your document, anyway. Look at page 319 of your Bestiary 2. You'll have to do something like that.
And from there, it's not really that much more effort to have one line like "Jabberwock from Bestiary 2 C 2010, Paizo Publishing, LLC; Authors........."
I already know my way around the OGL, so while I'm not a lawyer I'm mostly comfortable with that. Already have that included, updated for myself and the material used up to this point (which is pretty much the core Pathfinder stuff).
What I'm questioning is the Paizo agreement for the Pathfinder Compatibility; I had intended on using some material, I was working up scarecrows for my setting frex, and Bestiary 2 includes them so no need to reinvent the wheel. The OGL requires that, for any title I use OGL material from, I include the *complete* Copyright Notice of those works (see #6 on the OGL). Bestiary 2, due to how Necromancer Games worded their copyright notices for the Tome of Horrors Revised, has a column and a half almost of citations. What I'm thinking about then, to avoid having to pull all of that, is referencing the Bestiary 2 ala the Pathfinder Compatibility Agreement, which allows us to say "See Section A in Pathfinder Book X" as opposed to importing the stat block and making the changes.
One possibility is I was told the Scarecrows came from a Kingmaker adventure, I could always mine that in place of the Bestiary tag (I imagine that isn't listed because Paizo owns that material as well, so its a matter of their own text from another book).
Director of Brand Strategy
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Many of the creature names in the Bestiary 2 are copyrighted material of other companies, so even mentioning them requires a citation of the original source (or the Bestiary 2 if that's where you got them) in your document. Monsters originating in the Tome of Horrors require even more specific notation than a single line for the whole book.
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Creative Director
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Further... as part of the agreement between WotC and Necromancer Games, the way the OGL is formatted in the Tome of Horrors is the way it had to be. It's an unusual and, in many ways, unique example among d20 products, since it's an unusual case where WotC allowed another company to take a large number of creatures they COULD have kept to themselves but instead allowed into the open game environment.
Clark would not have been able to do this if he hadn't received permission to do so from WotC's D&D Brand Manager, essentially. It's a special case, in other words, which is why the OGL in the Tome of Horrors (and thus, in our Bestiaries), works a little differently than the typical OGL statement.
At least, that's my understanding of the situation.
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Chief Technical Officer
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Curiosity question: I'm working up some material with the intent to reference material found in the Bestiary 2; not actually using, quoting, etc any of the raw text, just saying "See X in Bestiary 2".
I always like to keep my legal up to speed and I want to see if I'd have to actually include the Bestiary 2 Copyright Notice (Which is monstrous! *cue rimshot*) or if the Pathfinder compatibility clauses allowed me to simply make the reference without including the text.
The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Compatibility License doesn't have that kind of power. It's really just a license to use the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Compatibility Logo and to fulfill the OGL Section 7 requirement to have "another, independent Agreement with the owner of such Trademark or Registered Trademark" to allow you to indicate that your product is compatible with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. To that end, the Compatibility License may only be used in conjunction with the OGL:
The Compatibility Logo may only be used under this License in connection with materials you publish under the Open Gaming License 1.0a ("OGL"), a copy of which can be viewed here. You may not use the Compatibility Logo in any way that the OGL prohibits. (Note that you are solely responsible for assuring you use the OGL correctly.)
And frankly, even if we wanted to let you bypass any part of the OGL, OGL Section 2 would prohibit us from doing so.
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Creative Director
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Interesting. It sounds as though the OGL used in Tome of Horrors is actually its own unique version of the license, as opposed to the Open Gaming License, Version 1.0, that gets used everywhere else. (Though I still think the Tome of Horrors version should have been reworded to avoid contradicting itself.)
This is more or less correct. Because there was a unique agreement between Necromancer Games and WotC that allowed Necromancer to even print things like aurumvoraxes, Fraz-Urb'luu, and slithering trackers—that's not something that the normal OGL allows at all.
Thanks Paizo staff for weighing in! Its pretty much what I figured~ I was hoping to avoid columns of text when referencing one, unrelated, item but it makes sense how it all falls out. I'll have to borrow that Kingmaker booklet and use that for my scarecrow block & reference then, much shorter and to the point!