Role-playing Games Stack Exchange
Role-playing Games Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [intellectual-property]

For questions related to copyright, trademark, and/or patent law as it applies to the publication and distribution of tabletop RPGs.

This is not a legal site, and nothing posted herein constitutes or contains legal advice. If you require legal advice, you should contact an attorney.

This tag applies to:

  • Questions pertaining to the creation of derived materials, the usage of published mechanics, reference to existing settings;
  • Questions about publishing, licensing, and distributing completely original materials;
  • Questions about copyright, patent, trademark, "trade dress," and other legal terms of art as applied to TTRPGs.
96 questions
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Would there be legal repercussions for using words like 'kindred', 'embrace', 'disciplines', terms defined in dictionaries, in my RPG?

I'm currently in the process (soon™) of releasing my first RPG. And I have a legal question about using some terms of another IP, that seem in my layperson view of the law fair use. The setting of the game I'm developing is one of vampires and urban…
UndeadMonk
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15
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4 answers

Is it legal to adapt a video game franchise into tabletop RPG for private use?

If a video game franchise like Warcraft, Dota, Diablo, StarCraft gets converted to tabletop RPG, will this require a license from owners if this RPG is private only?
user76793
14
votes
1 answer

Are classes from a tabletop RPG copyrightable?

E.g. Dungeons & Dragons has a SRD licensed under OGL (Open Game License), for the 3rd and 5th editions, but not all classes are in the SRD. Are the overall characteristics (not just the description texts) of the classes not part of the SRD protected…
user76793
7
votes
1 answer

Who owns content posted at Paizo.com forums?

I am working on a guide containing many Pathfinder tactics and rules commonly overlooked by new players, such as delaying until you get buffed. I am using this thread as one of the important sources. Because it's a forum, the best I can get from…
R.I.P.30.12.21Baskakov_Dmitriy
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2
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1 answer

Can the abilities of a character be used in a tabletop RPG with just a few changes?

For instance the hero Warlock in DoTA 2 has various abilities, a full list of them (including names and stats) can be seen at https://liquipedia.net/dota2/Warlock#Abilities. It is legal to create a tabletop RPG (or a campaign for it) with an…
user79767
1
vote
1 answer

Is there any prior art for Dota 2 monsters/heroes?

I want to know if there is any prior art for many of the heroes/monsters from the video game Dota 2, to ensure that I can use (a few of) them in my tabletop RPG. Some of them appear to be original inventions (e.g. Morphling) while others are not…
user76793