I've been playing and DMing for some years with some friends. Many characters came and go, many villains and alike. At some point we planned to start making a comic telling our game sessions' tales but we got stuck with the "can we legally depict some creatures, spells and other things avoiding copyright issues?"
We were analyzing the whole issue this way:
1. Home rules, home creations: No problem here; their intellectual property belong to us.
2. Public Domain, Creative Commons, open source, open content and similar licenses: No problem there; those licenses allow us to do what we want as long as we abide to them... well we must be very aware of the "share-alike" licenses or viral things like the GPL.
3. The PI: We know we have just two options: 1) to "rewrite the story" and place something else instead of "what really happened" in game, something legal of course; or 2) to ask the creator of that PI for permission to use it on the comic.
4. The OGC: we ignore if we can go further... or not. Our project is not a game, but game related material; people reading the comic will get an idea of how the things work in the game. What can we do here? Does adding the OGL to the comic work? We can explicitly say in a part of the published comic what in the comic is under the OGL. Is it enough? If we increase the comic with a section talking about RPG, explaining, in game rules terms, what happened in the comic, like why someone seemed to have additional moves or there were no surprise round, the stats of the foes, etc, how the character gained a new ability, etc. would it fit for a fair usage of the OGL?
I've heard that putting in the OGL license would be a must if you're planning on using OGL names. That's why the Pathfinder minis have their "unique" naming nomenclature
Well... i never thought on miniatures. But it is ok for me to put the license on the last page of the comic. What i still wonder is, is the OGL valid for a content that is not a game?
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I have seen many comics and comic strips (largely webcomics) that use game mechanics, spells, magic items, races, classes, etc. in their comic. Including a reference to the OGL would probably be safest, but MAY not be necessary. A lot of those terms are generic enough, you might be able to make an argument you're not using them as game terms.
As for the PI, and assuming you're using the Pathfinder world: If the comic you're making is just for fun - i.e., you're not planning to sell comic books or anything along those lines, but just put it up online - you might be able to use Paizo's Community Use Policy. Make sure you read through it thoroughly so you understand the terms, and know if it applies to your case.
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I have seen many comics and comic strips (largely webcomics) that use game mechanics, spells, magic items, races, classes, etc. in their comic. Including a reference to the OGL would probably be safest, but MAY not be necessary. A lot of those terms are generic enough, you might be able to make an argument you're not using them as game terms.
As for the PI, and assuming you're using the Pathfinder world: If the comic you're making is just for fun - i.e., you're not planning to sell comic books or anything along those lines, but just put it up online - you might be able to use Paizo's Community Use Policy. Make sure you read through it thoroughly so you understand the terms, and know if it applies to your case.
Thanks for the answer. Ok, i'll look into it; it seems it's another legal stuff that could work for my purpose.
Chief Technical Officer
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The OGL doesn't care what kind of media you use it with.
And if you want to use something that has been released as Open Game Content under the OGL, using the OGL is legally the easiest and safest way to do that.
The other two ways to do that are getting a specific license from the owner of that content (which is usually not very easy), and using the fair use provisions of copyright law (which is usually not very safe, as Fair Use covers a *lot* fewer cases than the general public tends to assume).