dmccoy1693 said:
me said:
Stick to the legal verbage exactly as written in the license. If Mongoose wants to change the license to include something about Merc and HG, they can. They do not have to though. But no matter what, just stick to exactly what is written in the license.
kristof65 said:
I'm aware of that, and the required legal statements wouldn't be changed, and would be in their required locations, as per the license(s). What I'm asking is if it's ok to do something like at the begining my starship section, make a statement like "To get the most use out of this chapter, you will require Traveller Book 2: High Guard, by Mongoose Publishing."
Since HG as a book is not OGC (although some things within it may become OGC), this is somewhat unclear. I realize that I can't use terms or reference things in HG that aren't also OGC, but that doesn't necessarily limit me from encouraging people to buy it.
The safest approach when you're dealing with non-OGC book is to pretend they do not exist.
Understood. But there are certain types of books that are allowed under the OGL and TLL that would benefit both themselves, and Mongoose by not pretending the non-OGC book doesn't exist.
Hypothetical example - say I write a Traveller Star Ship combat game for playing out the combats with minis. Let's also assume it doesn't use anything from the game that isn't OGC - which is the way it should be. Let's also say that because lots of Traveller starships are out there already, the book doesn't contain any ship designs, knowing that a Traveller fan can pick up one of several books and use the ships from there.
Under the TLL, all I can mention is the TMB. But ships in three other known supplements - Traders & Gunboats and High Guard, plus the forth coming Fighting Ships are all useable with the game. A statement like
"For additional ship designs, see Mongoose's books High Guard, etc, etc" would be beneficial to both the sale of the starship game, and to Mongoose.
So, without using content from a book, can one refer to it?
kristof65 said:
A similar situation with the d20 license would be someone writing up a book of templates for creatures. While the book could be useful with just the SRD critters, to really get the most use out of the book, the Monster Manual is a far more useful book than the required players handbook.
Well, considering that all of the monsters in the SRD comprise 95% of the Monster Manual and that the d20 license allowed for a way to refer to the Monster Manual, a closer example would be if you referred to something in MM 2. See how that turned out for Fast Forward Entertainment (
link 1) (
link 2).
The FFE situation is different - they actually used non-OGC content, which is not what I'm asking about. I'm simply asking about refering to a non-OGC book as a helpful reference.
Here's what it comes down to - from my background, experiences with licenses, the law, etc, I beleive I can do this under their license. If I have to pay a lawyer to give me an interpretation of it, I'm fairly confident I'll get a yes. However, I can't pay a lawyer to look at it until/if a) the HG material becomes OGC* and b) I'm finished and showing him exactly what I want to do. Whereas a simple yes/no answer here clears up a lot of things.
*This is part of the crux of things - my setting currently needs ships larger than 2000 tons, and as I read things right now, the design sequences for ships over 2000 tons are not currently OGC. So all of this is moot if that never changes. I'm assuming in the spirit of Traveller, that Mongoose will rectify that little issue as soon as they can.