Talk:Orcus

Copyright

Err... I don't think we can have this on D&D wiki; it uses WotC stuff that is not SRD or OGL, and the rest is not the kind of thing we do here- we do Homebrew, not official stuff. --Sam Kay 06:11, 10 November 2007 (MST)

It has been deleted. --Green Dragon 11:32, 10 November 2007 (MST)

So long as this didn't use stats from a WotC product, it should have been fine. "Orcus" was the Roman name for the Greek god Hades. So the name "Orcus" is public domain. —Sledged (talk) 12:10, 10 November 2007 (MST)

I think it did --Sam Kay 03:55, 11 November 2007 (MST)

It might be good to make sure. I'd hate to think we deleted someone's work when there was no need to. —Sledged (talk) 19:59, 11 November 2007 (MST)

It has been restored... Does it have have copyrighted material present? --Green Dragon 20:27, 11 November 2007 (MST)

wha?, I'm confused, the stats of all the monster Manuel monsters are on this, i just used the stats out of the book of vile darkness, if people can add monster Manuel things then why can't i add a BOVD thing in? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Zombiecow (talk • contribs) 2007-11-12 03:07. Please sign your posts.

Because BoVD is not OGC, so it is illegal to have it on the wiki, due to copyrights. --Sam Kay 02:22, 12 November 2007 (MST)

It must also be noted that not everything in the MM is OGC. The beholder, gauth, carrion crawler, displacer beast, githyanki, githzerai, kuo-toa, mind flayer, slaad, umber hulk, and yuan-ti are all Product Identity. So you'll not find their stats anywhere on this site. There's more detailed info (the hows and whys) about the Open Gaming License (or OGL) here. —Sledged (talk) 11:47, 12 November 2007 (MST)

okay... whats OGC mean then?, lol —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Zombiecow (talk • contribs) 2007-11-12 23:25. Please sign your posts.

Open Game Content which is defined in the Open Gaming License. Essentially, anything published under the OGL is OGC. I should have provided this link when we started talking about it. —Sledged (talk) 08:37, 13 November 2007 (MST)

WotC has trademarks and copyrights over the rules that it produces. It has gamers that want to write for that system. Copyright and trademark law are really bad at this sort of stuff. As they did not want to sue their customers for copyright or trademark infringement, they wrote a license for the use of their intellectual property. That is the Open Gaming License, or OGL. They released some of their books under this license. However, they did not release everything under this license. They held back some things as their own trademarks, such as Mind Flayers, Beholders, and such.

Unfortunately, most books since Deities and Demigods have not been released under the OGL. We do not have access to those works.

The OGL has a section describing what happens if you fail to follow their license. In this case, if you use their trademarked material, they can ask you to remove it. If you fail to comply, they have the right to yank your license. In other words, we would lose the legal right to host the SRD on this site, and possibly more. That would be bad.

We could push the envelope. We prefer to play in good faith with our license. --Dmilewski 04:52, 13 November 2007 (MST)

And for that reason it has been deleted... --Green Dragon 16:17, 14 November 2007 (MST)

i seriously don't get this, once i do a new article, it never shows up where its supposed to, for example i made a new race called Carvers right, and it doesn't show up under homebrew races, i clicked make a new dnd race... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Zombiecow (talk • contribs) 2007-11-12 22:39. Please sign your posts.

In order for your race Carvers, to show up in the lists, it has to be manually added to each page in which it would be listed, except the homebrew races and all races pages. In order for it to show up there, you must go to the Carvers page click "edit" and delete the lines that read "REMOVE THIS ENTIRE LINE (and only this line) BEFORE YOU SAVE!!!" —Sledged (talk) 08:37, 13 November 2007 (MST)

Was the DnD Races preload confusing for you? What do you think could be improved to make it better? --Green Dragon 16:17, 14 November 2007 (MST)

jus' make it easier for me to do an article and have it show up in the category its s'posed to, like when i click on the link, "make your own dnd diety" then i do it, it dosent show up under homebrew dietys, wtf!?! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Zombiecow (talk • contribs) 2007-11-18 06:45. Please sign your posts.

There in lies the problem. In order for the article to show up in the appropriate category, the category tags (e.g. [[Category:Deity]] and [[Category:User]]) have to be inserted in the article itself. The current approach to this is that they are put in the preload. However, we don't want the preload itself showing up in the categories, and so the category tags are surrounded by <nowiki> tags with explicit instructions for users to remove the lines with the <nowiki> tags when they create their articles. The biggest flaw with this approach is that it relies on users reading and following the instructions given, which can be overlook or misread. Given this limitation, the process is, at best, a work-in-progress, and so we rely on valuable input like yours in order to find ways to make it better. —Sledged (talk) 13:11, 18 November 2007 (MST)