Recreating Eberron in RealmWorks

[kbs666]

No, the wikia is not what you are doing. And if the wikia is not officially approved and uses extensive quotes it is on shaky ground. Also note that the wikia makes a point of trying to sell the user the WotC setting products right on the front page.

You OTOH say you intend to distribute your end product in a format meant to be imported into a program advertised as a GM's aid. That would be in direct competition with any future sales of Eberron products by WotC. That is well across the line. They could sue you for infringement.

[Silveras]

kbs666 is correct ... this is a theme I have mentioned repeatedly on these forums. RealmWorks is a new publishing medium ... by sharing your Realms, you are a "publisher", and the rules and restrictions on Intellectual Property (which can be much more than just copyrights) apply you and your "publication".

Whether you are making money on it or not does not matter. If they perceive that they are losing sales because of your efforts, that's enough for them to sue. Even if they don't feel like you are costing them enough money to be worth the lawsuit, the way some intellectual property law works, they would HAVE to take some action to stop you or they could lose right to sue later if someone else does something more damaging.

[Dr_Automaton]

There would probably not even be a need to WotC or any other similarly affected company to file an actual suit. The company could just send a Cease and Desist letter to the alleged offender and Lone Wolf Development. LDW, whose interest is to sell RW as a viable new medium, might choose to revoke the user's license -- especially if the violation is blatant -- which could either brick his copy of RW or at least prevent him from using the server (even to just create a new empty realm) in the future.

[Silveras]

That may be correct, but I am not a lawyer, so I phrased it as "take some action". A "Cease and Desist" letter is, if I understand correctly, one of the most basic actions that would put the holder of the rights on record as defending their rights. If the offender ignored that, then a lawsuit and/or potential criminal complaint would be next.

The main point, though, is that unless you are posting only material you created yourself, you should be consulting a lawyer for real advice on what you can and cannot do. ("You" in this case being "someone" or "anyone".)

Different publishers have different policies regarding derivative works ("fan fiction", for one example), so what applies to one may not apply to another.

[kbs666]

Actually LWD could be in a much trickier situation. Since they host the cloud storage we all use, and will control the CM even if they won't directly be able to keep us from being able to swap XML files amongst ourselves, they could be subject to receiving DMCA take down notices.

As a hosting site, much like youtube or the like, once they are made aware that infringing material is on their server they are obligated to determine whether it is actually infringing and if so to take it down. If they don't they lose their protections under the DMCA and become just as liable for the infringement as the person who posted it.

[mazzy]

Originally Posted by artimaeus

I've played around with 5th Edition. It's fun, but I've enjoyed pathfinder much more. It has seemingly endless character customization, and 5th edition didn't seem to be quite as flexible.

One note about this realm I'm building. I, of course, do plan on uploading it when I've gotten to a presentable state. It will be using a lot of HeroLabs Plugins with the Pathfinder mechanics. If you do use it for 5th edition, 90% of it transfers with no difficulty.

I've done a few campaigns in Eberron before. I wasn't really proud of any of them though, partially because of being newish to DMing, but mostly because it's hard to keep track of everything that goes on in Eberron. There is quite a lot of kife-and-dagger elements that help keep the party on their toes, full-on warlike battles, and really technology-like magic. Once I discovered RealmWorks, I finally found a way to do this Realm justice.

I've not had the opportunity to play a Pathfinder campaign unfortunately. It'd be interesting to see how things are handled in a different system

The knife-and-dagger, warlike battles, and technology-based magic is exactly why I want to play or run a game in that setting!! Once the holidays are over and things settle down I'm definitely going to read up on Eberron and get a feel for that world