Sure, you can make a game based on the system, as long as it doesn't use any part of WotC's IP (class names are probably included here, as are any parts of the world, basically the whole Monster Manual, because while orcs and so forth are pretty much public domain, the WotC/TSR implementations are copyrighted, and most of the stuff in the MM is copyrighted in its own right). Claiming that your game has anything to do with D&D/D20 will get you sued for trademark infringment. (I will agree that anyone is less litigious than TSR was, but litigiousness doesn't equal being right check out the frontispiece in the first "Phil and Dixie" book for a good joke along these lines.) trademark fair use is NOT the same thing at all as copyright fair use) permits comparisons between actual branded products, as opposed to with a thinly disguised 'Brand X.'
but so what? You can do that for free, as fair use (n.b. The only thing in it that is in the least bit worthwhile is the ability to _say_ that it's a d20 system and use that mark.
PCGEN ADD CUSTOM FEAT LICENSE
This is why the d20 license thing has been absolutely mystifying me. Certain terms may be trademarked, but they're easy enough to discover and work around. Rewrite the book yourself, using different wording but preserving the same meaning, and you'd be ok. Any copyright that exists is only on the specific way the rules were written. They can be patented, but as far as D&D goes, the time for that passed long ago. Imagine if they are going to be distributing stuff that is in the 3rd edition rules they had to make some sort of deal with WotC to do so. however it's not, and it's very existance is seen as a benifit by a number of other d20 publishers. Now, if PCgen was released by WotC, as an official product, I can see them quite rightly having a cost associated with it. The -only- way PCGen costs WotC any money (seeing it's done by the community) is the fact that WotC can't make decent sales with thier own character creator (and other tools bundled with it), due to the low quality, and the fact that it was greatly delayed in release. Utterly useless without the book, no? There was a huge discussion at one point on the PCgen list about actually putting in a decription for the feats/spells/skills, but the creator chose not to, to prevent copyright issues from cropping up. the authors of the program went out of their way to create the data files so you need the books to understand what you're doing, because they want to support the companies as well.
it's a program that can be used to organise character data. I doubt my mentality is going to put WotC out of business, considering the fact that I own books for at least 3 of their current lines (D&D, Star Wars and WoT), and fully intend to purchase more in the future, including the revised D&D books.
PCGEN ADD CUSTOM FEAT PROFESSIONAL
As you say, the commercial effort is a lot more professional than PcGen, but PcGen has a lot more features.
PCGEN ADD CUSTOM FEAT FOR FREE
You can download the demo version for free from their website.
This compromise wasn't good enough, it seems.Īs another point of interest, Wizards already created and sells their own version of a Character Creator for the d20 system which basically competes directly with the open source PcGen. To try and counter this threat, much of the write ups in the fan created content contained notes such as "As defined on page 231 of the Players Handbook". Wizards is afraid that by allowing the guys at PcGen to distribute their IP for free, people would lose interesting in buying the dead tree versions. Fans were already filling this gap for free. They were then hosting it on a system which WotC had nothing to do with, and didn't have to pay for. This means fans of the d20 system already did the work to write up the data files using the dead tree books they already paid for. These closed source data files were already typed up and hosted on sourceforge before WotC stepped in and put a halt to their distribution. They're probably just trying to make ends meet. Hosting files on any popular website is expensive in bandwidth.