(OT) Rules "inspiration"

> At 10:08 AM 9/24/98 +0100, you wrote:
SNIP
> At the end of the day, I guess the real question is at what point does
in
> an ethical if not a legal sense. I don't think I've got an answer to

Last year, at GenCon (US), I was at a seminar put on by Dave Arneson (of
Dungeons and Dragons fame, the other desinger with Gary Gygax, that is)
about writing/creating games.  One of the points he brought up is that
according to US Copyright law, a games system is not copyright-able,
only the presentation (the way it appears and feels). He used the specific
example of how D&Ds Armor Class rules are a direct copy of the armor rules for
a civil war ironclads game. It is my understanding that this is why there are
so many "roll a 6 sided die and move" boardgames, and so many barely covered
copies of D&D floating around (also how many universal roleplaying games end
up looking very similar).

I'm not a lawyer, and to my knowledge, neither is Dave Arneson, but this one
very much surprised me and helped me understand why there were so many clones
out there. On the other hand, the recent US patent that Wizards of the Coast
received for "collectable card games" seems to be an indication of some ways
around copyright law.

My personal feeling is that it is certainly ethically wrong to fully copy one
system and just change it to a new setting. This may still be a violation of
US copyright law since it may be imposible to completely copy a system of
rules without copying most of the feel, but it certainly seems to allow a mix
and match of ideas from different games and new ideas.

However, just because some thing is legal doesn't keep you from defending your
right to do so in court. This keeps many people honest(ethically at least)
here in the states, since we can't afford to go to court even if we won.

I don't know how much of this applies to International Copyright Law, but I
figured it was relevant to the topic. I can look for my list of links
regarding US copyright laws, if there is any interest.

Later,

> On Thu, 24 Sep 1998, Shrike wrote:

> I'm not a lawyer, and to my knowledge, neither is Dave Arneson,

IMHO, that patent is patently (pun intended) absurd. Should Nolan Bushnell
have had a patent for the concept of video games? (Or Ralph Baer, or
Atari, or... doesn't matter who exactly) Where would the video/computer
game industry be if he had?

It's overbroad, and collectibles, cards included, have been around for ages. I
played a simple game as a kid with "collectible" cards that had pictures and
technical stats of cars and such.

> My personal feeling is that it is certainly ethically wrong to

The copyrightability of "look&feel" is still suspect, cases have gone either
way, and US Supreme Court drew up a stalemate in the
Lotus-Borland
case. An important snippet from the Apple-Micro$oft ruling:

"In his August 7th opinion Judge Walker carefully parsed the remaining 10
features of the Macintosh interface and held almost none of them to be
protectible by copyright law. Almost every element was found to be an idea, to
flow naturally from an idea, to be unoriginal to Apple (copyright protection
is limited to original expression), or to be the only, or one of very few,
ways to express an idea."

> However, just because some thing is legal doesn't keep you from

Unfortunately, I think it more often works the other way. A big company with
plenty of cash threatens to sue and a smaller company yields simply because
they couldn't afford to go to court. Ironically, WotC was *almost* killed this
way before they struck gold with Magic.

> I don't know how much of this applies to International Copyright

In general, copyright law is one big mess.