Does anyone know where I can get ahold of the living greyhawk adventures now that the campaign is done. Some of the content in there was absolutely incredible and I'd love to use it in 4.0
Officially speaking - the modules (to the best ofmy knowledge) are no longer available and no longer distributable.
In the 3.x campaigns (mind, I played the "D&D Campaigns" and not so much the Living Greyhawk - so I may be off a bit), the rule was that the RPGA has distribution rights for a set period of time, and at the end of that "windows" the rights for the module revert back to the module's author.
The "catch" being that once the RPGA is done with the mod, the rights to use WotC-licensed names are lost to the author.
So, in short, your best bet to obtain the modules (strictly speaking) would be to contact the module author(s), ask them to strip any and all Greyhawk references (cities, NPCs, Oerth, etc), and to then pretty-please send you a copy.
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Generally speaking (at least, pre-4E), once any RPGA module retires from official play, the RPGA doesn't have the right to further distribute the module. And, the boilerplate stuff, generally on the front page of the module, usually indicates that usage of the module is only authorized for official play -- this means that it's against RPGA rules for someone who has a retired module to re-distribute it to other people.
In the case of LG, at least in the latter years of the campaign, the contracts that authors signed were, as I understand it, as WolfStar described. The rights to the module reverted to the author upon the retirement of that module, which, in theory, means that the author is free to do with it as he wishes.
However, the author does not have the right to use any WotC-owned intellectual property if he chooses to redistribute his module...that'd include pretty much all proper names (NPCs, place names, etc.), as well as any non-OGC rules material (in other words, pretty much everything from all of the books other than the 3 Core Ruelbooks). In most cases, I would imagine that this would render many of the LG modules unusable, or at least only vaguely recognizeable, once the author re-wrote it to take out all that non-OGC material.
Despite the fact that LG modules "reverted" to their authors for years, I don't think that I ever heard of an author going through those hoops to re-publish a module. I suspect that most of them would figure it was just way too much work.
(I don't know how the 4E / LFR contracts work; as RPGA / WotC are now paying "fair rates" for modules, I would imagine that they're hanging onto the rights for them, but I don't know if the contracts allow for the RPGA to re-publish 4E modules once they retire from official RPGA play.)
"Of course [Richard] has a knife. He always has a knife. We all have knives. It's 1183, and we're barbarians!" - Eleanor of Aquitaine, "The Lion in Winter"
Yeah... there's no question that it was a very short-sighted contractual paradigm. Essentially, there's more than 2,000 perfectly good adventures that people put a lot of effort and fun into that will forever rot unusable and undistributable.
Considering that the whole point method of making money with Dungeons and Dragons is selling source books and add-ons I don't really think any author is going to get in trouble if they just give out their mods. Charge money for them with Greyhawk in place and yeah you'd be in trouble, but they should be just fine distributing them.
Otherwise we'd be in threat of litigation for any D&D game we ran that used WotC licensed material that we didn't specifically pay to use. I doubt Wizard's has any problem with people playing these mods after the campaign is over, but I do think they'd be upset if people tried to make money off of their copyrights.
Considering that the whole point method of making money with Dungeons and Dragons is selling source books and add-ons I don't really think any author is going to get in trouble if they just give out their mods. Charge money for them with Greyhawk in place and yeah you'd be in trouble, but they should be just fine distributing them.
Otherwise we'd be in threat of litigation for any D&D game we ran that used WotC licensed material that we didn't specifically pay to use. I doubt Wizard's has any problem with people playing these mods after the campaign is over, but I do think they'd be upset if people tried to make money off of their copyrights.
IANAL, but, from what I've been told, the issue with "distribution" has nothing to do with charging money or not.
My understanding is that you, as a DM, are perfectly free to use WotC's copyrighted material in the games that you write and run. That falls under "fair use" of the books that you've purchased.
It's when you write something using that material, and give it to someone else to run without WotC's permission to do so, that you get into trouble. And, from what I understand, if WotC learns of such activities, and does not act to stop them from occurring, then they run the risk of losing their ownership of that material, because they're guilty of not defending their copyright.
(This is why WotC has stopped two non-RPGA Living-style campaigns, Legends of the Shining Jewel and Living Sarbreenar, from using the Forgotten Realms and other non-OGC WotC-owned materials.)
"Of course [Richard] has a knife. He always has a knife. We all have knives. It's 1183, and we're barbarians!" - Eleanor of Aquitaine, "The Lion in Winter"
IANAL, but, from what I've been told, the issue with "distribution" has nothing to do with charging money or not.
My understanding is that you, as a DM, are perfectly free to use WotC's copyrighted material in the games that you write and run. That falls under "fair use" of the books that you've purchased.
It's when you write something using that material, and give it to someone else to run without WotC's permission to do so, that you get into trouble. And, from what I understand, if WotC learns of such activities, and does not act to stop them from occurring, then they run the risk of losing their ownership of that material, because they're guilty of not defending their copyright.
(This is why WotC has stopped two non-RPGA Living-style campaigns, Legends of the Shining Jewel and Living Sarbreenar, from using the Forgotten Realms and other non-OGC WotC-owned materials.)
IANAL either, but:
Indeed, copyright/trademark violation is not dependent on profit. Profit affects the damages that can be recovered, both what the violator makes and what the owner loses, but showing profit or loss is not required for a violation to exist.
Conversely, absolute defense is not required. In some areas it is, such as a trademark becoming generic. It is highly unlikely that "Greyhawk" or "Forgotten Realms" will become generic terms. Conversely "D&D" and "Dungeons & Dragons" very easily can, hence the existence of the phrase "Compatible with the 3.5 edition of the world's most popular role-playing game." That is an adverstising claim, and could not be trademarked. Thus there are a huge number of fan sites that create and distribute obviously derivative material, both background/sourcebook and adventures, that WotC leaves in complete peace when as relatively cheap letter from their legal department to the ISP provider of the site could get it shut down.
As I understand the LSJ and LS issue, it was more to do with WotC revising the Forgotten Realms for 4E, and both needing and desiring greater control over all of the IP associated with it. The concern was mostly a potential loss due to consumer confusion over what was official material for the setting, which is trademark confusion, and thus why they have standing to step in and shut it down.
As I understand the LSJ and LS issue, it was more to do with WotC revising the Forgotten Realms for 4E, and both needing and desiring greater control over all of the IP associated with it.
For LS, I can certainly believe that (they shut down LS not too long before 4E was announced, IIRC).
But, LSJ was forced to remove their FR content in 2004, IIRC, and I'm not sure how far down the path they were with 4E development at that point.
"Of course [Richard] has a knife. He always has a knife. We all have knives. It's 1183, and we're barbarians!" - Eleanor of Aquitaine, "The Lion in Winter"
