Wondering about an Abandoned TTRPG
I have a TTRPG that I love to bits and am going to get a commission to bring it to Foundry. However there is some weird legal greyness on it. The company that published it is defunct and gone and I cant find any rights holders for it. So I have to ask how do can i determine what i can use and that?
3 Replies
IANAL but my general understanding is that for personal use, you're free to do what you want. If you want to distribute it to others, however, you'll quickly run into roadblocks - without a license, you won't be able to distribute any content from the system (think anything you would put in Compendium).
You may be able to distribute a system that is just the core mechanics, but it would depend on the license terms included in the book / pdf.
I have been trying to find anyone to talk to but it's like the owners just vanished
Yeah dnd5e and other common systems explicitly state you can use their core mechanics.
Though while I'm also not a lawyer but my understanding is that legally specifically TTRPG mechanics can't be copyrighted. Like for example the rules to monopoly can't be copyrighted. However if you gesture even vaguely to Owlbears or copy their text (writing can be copyrighted, the mechanics in writing generally can't) dnd5e could come after you in theory.
but getting into a legal fight is expensive and you really want to be very clearly in bounds. Like since the text is copyrightable you probably wouldn't be able to reference basically any of their text
Yeah, if you're distributing this the key part is really going to be being really persistent about trying to find them. Maybe look up workers at the company and find some people's LinkedIns to contact them that way.