Blank Realms with Game Mechanics
 

Has anyone made a realm that just has all the freely-available information already filled in? I'm thinking the Mechanics Reference section in particular, but this would also include any settings that have part of their info in the public domain.

I'd like to have the ability to just download a blank realm that has all the open content for a particular ruleset (like D&D5E or Pathfinder), so that I have at least the rules ready to go. (Admittedly, the Pathfinder one would be difficult because 90% of its rules are open-source.)

I actually have no idea if any of the game settings have any open-source content amongst their fluff. It would be nice if they did.

i asked that in another thread about pathfinder srd.... i have a partial verson done of pathfinder. but haven't worked on it lately. but was going to try to avoid re inventing the wheel if at all possible

So here's the issue.. that's not TOTALLY free to distribute/share.

The mechanics published under the Open Game License (OGL), for example, come with the restrictions of the OGL.. including a requirement that anyone re-using the content has to do so while abiding by the terms of the OGL.. including the requirement to include a copy of the license with an updated Section 15 (Copyrights).

So.. the long and short of it is that when you share a Realm you are now a publisher, with all the benefits and liabilities that go with being a publisher.

Since Import/Export is still new, I doubt many users are prepared to suddenly become publishers in that way... at least not without first making sure they're not about to do something illegal.

The Content Market will (likely) have Realms with just the rules content for purchase eventually.

When creating a RW export, there is a section in the export file where the copyright license can be included. It doesn't clog up the main realm after the import either.

@Farling

Didn't Eightbitz and you start doing something like this and were called to the "principal's office" by rob?!

Did you already have the opportunity to talk to rob? If so, what came of that? And is this even the same thing as what the OP wants?

Right... I know that's there.. but I don't get the impression that everyone realizes what the legal issues are... and I am only passingly familiar with the ones involving the Open Gaming License. I have no idea what the license requires for the D&D 5e SRD, for example.

And, to further make my point, games published without a similar license are completely different. Releasing someone's "home made copy" of the rules mechanics is much more likely to be an issue.

I'm not even talking about intentional piracy, I'm talking about the issues where an eager user could easily get themselves into trouble through ignorance of the issues.

that is kind of why i was thinking about organizing or something to get srd's done so that it would be available and legal to everyone needing them and not have to deal with legal issues since it would have been already covered. and a note in the section for the copy rights area about needing to include the licensess ect and point out what everyone should know before distribution thier own content that utilizes the srd materials.

That's different for each license.. there is no one set of instructions that would be correct for every case. And, really, there are only a few licenses that allow you to re-distribute the content. Quite a few game systems are not published under any open license.. meaning any user-created copy is inherently illegal from the start.

We were mostly just working from a database of topics. EightBitz got access to a different database, but both are indirectly derived from the paizo PRD.

I found that adding 1000's of topics for spells, monsters, feats, etc. mostly just caused realm-bloat.

This is exactly why I posted my original question. I was specifically referring to the rulesets that have publicly-available content (which, among the big names, really means just D&D5 and Pathfinder), and having a premade realm that covers all the free stuff.

OGL legalese would be mandatory with such a release, of course.

My point is that, since there is some information available for everyone in those systems, maybe we should put some attention into making blank realm templates that have this information already loaded. That way someone making a new realm could simply take one of these, rename it, and have a chunk of work already done for them.