Licensing Question

[atlascott]

Ok, so let's say I put together a HERO-mod in a particular genre and campaign world. I put all my stuff--the rules mods, the campaing setting, statted-out equipment, package deals, modified character sheets, everything on the web, but the whole thing runs on HERO. Do I get sued or do I get kudos (nothing is for-pay--all free downloads).

[MitchellS]

Re: Licensing Question

 

Check out the policy section of the website, particularly dealing with free pdfs and such.

[atlascott]

Re: Licensing Question

 

Seems like a rather restrictive licensing policy to me. I would just submit everything to HERO before I published a web site anyway.

[MitchellS]

Re: Licensing Question

 

It works for them. Hero is not OGL, it's proprietary. They can be as open or restrictive as they wish to be with their IP/PI.

[atlascott]

Re: Licensing Question

 

Of course they can. That's the joy of private property! Whether it is wise or not is certainly open to debate, but I agree that they can put whatever use restrictions on their products they choose. Don't mean I have to like it, tho. One might argue that opening up 'fair use' a bit might encourage more use of the core rules, which in turn would mena more people buying Sidekick, if not the whole shebang.

[MitchellS]

Re: Licensing Question

 

Or it could mean declining sales due to so much free material already in the marketplace.

 

The DoJ partners are the ones who invested the money, not you and I, so they get to make all decisions, no matter how much we might agree or disagree with them [and I disagree with them a lot].

 

Perhaps it's just easier to produce something and submit it to DoJ for inspection and then go from there. Speculation is futile if you're never going to do the proposed project anyway.

[atlascott]

Re: Licensing Question

 

That's what I said 2 posts ago--I would submit it to them first, because I respect their IP rights, especially in this day and age of electronic downloads, scanners, and fast internet.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Licensing Question

 

Actually, looking at Hero Games's Online and Licensing Policies, there doesn't seem to be anything that would prevent you from doing what you describe. IMO the policies make it very clear that if you only provide your own builds, house rules (within the word limits), package deals and so on without reproducing any of HG's copyrighted material (rules descriptions, published characters, gadgets etc.) you would have no problem. In fact I'm aware of a host of HERO-related websites that do exactly that, many of them linked to from here on the company website.

[Markdoc]

Re: Licensing Question

 

Yep. My experience has been that Hero (and now DoJ) are very supportive of fan sites. That means no posting anything lifted directly out of DoJ publications (which is kind of a no-brainer) but all the stuff you generate *using* the rules is fair game.

 

I've had my own "game site" with NPCs, setting info, the woiks, as they say up for years now, including pdf downloads for GMs to use offline. The feedback has been very positive - literally hundreds of emails and tens of thousands of hits. It's a way of giving something back to the community.

 

cheers, Mark