Not to rain on your parade or anything but Basic Fantasy is done with the first review of their book stripping all WotC content from it, the second pass is underway, there'll be a third and fourth passes and then it will be out, probably in 2-3 weeks, that's what? A little over a month since the fiasco started?
Why would that rain on my parade? I’m just bringing up logistics and potential places where the SRD (and in Basic Fantasy’s case the old B/X material which is also copyright WotC) has likely been taken for granted and should be looked at… because I’m sure WotC won’t be vindictive towards the third parties who wouldn’t step into their trap
at all. <sarcasm>
Basic Fantasy’s method of crowdsourcing a dozen plus volunteers to go over a 170 page book is honestly a good strategy. I’m glad they’ll have something out sooner rather than later. The fact they’ve also always released as free content also helps insulate them from potential problems with a vindictive WotC (no money to be had) so it’s a good move for them.
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As to my point about the arcane/divine magic divide… angels and demons are of a kind in most religions and the distinction is whether you are relying upon good or evil powers of basically the same type (God could drop a pillar of fire and the Devil could cure your illness… neither happened often, but that was due to a difference in the grantor’s intent not “this magic is fundamentally different and can’t do that”).
WotC’s arcane/divine divide makes no such moral judgments and the good/evil divide is entirely on the divine side with its pantheon of good and evil gods while arcane is more akin to a poorly understood science that has almost no moral component to it at all.
I brought it up because that is a specific expression of a magic system that could be a problem depending again on how ugly WotC wants to be because those third parties they wanted to rope in for content for their walled garden exploitationfest escaped their clutches.
Particularly when that divide is included alongside Vancian slot-based spell prep, eight schools of magic and nine levels of spells and a selection of spells at each level that matches very closely the standard setup of D&D.
I think a lot of people are really glossing over matters that fall under the category of protected expression and how it could bite various parties if they don’t account for it. One aspect of that expression is a particular collection of elements into a larger whole.
Mechanics are protected, but mechanics presented in the exact same way are not. The example from a while back about the western and samurai themed card games with identical mechanics is apt. The notes in that case indicated that the entire decision was founded on the difference in presentation of western vs. samurai… but that if it had been another western-themes card game with the same mechanics, even with minor name changes (ex. calling the deputies, the posse), it would have been infringement.
Basic Fantasy’s swap from chromatic to environmental dragons is an example of such a necessary swap; even when the body text of the new material does indicate colors very much like the classic D&D depictions it isn’t making it nearly so prominent and is expressed in their own words not copied and pasted from the SRD and non-profit protects them more than it would Paizo, but the fact it’s still a very D&D like setting with the dragons filling the same niches and just reading their descriptions indicating which color they’re actually supposed to be could still be a weak point that an unreasonable litigant could go after.
Life is risk so I’m not saying don’t go there. I’m just saying to be aware of what wildlife and potential pitfalls are in the forest as you go traveling through it and the more you relied on the SRD directly the more you’ve got your work cut out for you.
