http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=50547
By the way, I've always wondered how most people pronounced Drawmij...
Schrijn is pronounced Shrine. (old friend's last name)
The J is for some reason of linguistics pronounced different.
The Oerth Journal is a fanzine begun back in the mid-90s when Greyhawk was dead and unsupported at TSR (sound familiar?). The fans who formed the OJ became the core Greyhawk authors in the 1998 Greyhawk revival and in the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer (and LGJ too). You can download the past 14 issues of the OJ at CF! as well.
Both are fan-created, fan-administered, and fan-centric. They're also well-worth the time to check out :D
Also, I have posted the next set of spells: Mordenkainen! They are available at the link in my first post, and sometime in the next few days I will be posting Nystul's as well. Happy posting!
I will be adding Nystul's spells when I get some more free time (probably tomorrow). Thanks guys! Keep those comments coming.
It sounded like you were, at least indirectly, asking about the copyright/ownership policies for the OJ and CF! In both cases, you retain all rights to your own materials; for more details, see the CF! FAQ page at http://www.canonfire.com/htmlnew/modules.php?name=FAQ&myfaq=yes&id_cat=1&categories=Canonfire%21%3Cp%3E and the OJ FAQ page at http://www.canonfire.com/htmlnew/modules.php?name=FAQ&myfaq=yes&id_cat=4&categories=The+Oerth+Journal%3Cp%3E
Wow, I checked out those spells. Damn fine job.
I'd certainly like to see a "cleaned up" version of those lists. I'd be able to make 'em PDF too. Make it easy to access as well.
If you post those spells to either CanonFire! or the Oerth Journal, you will keep all rights to them. However, I'm not certain how things are in regards to the naming conventions. I know that Bigby is a Greyhawk Property and is not part of the OGL (same with the other guys). But being that it's fan work, it might be alright. I know that Tizoc was looking into that area of things for the OJ. Also the main difference between the two is the editing. CanonFire! does minor editing in terms of grammar. The OJ on the other hand has higher standards. It's not only edited for grammar, but style. It's also gone over by "3e" experts to make sure that things jive (when it's 3e stated). It also takes more time on the writers part. Research for one. I'd bet that with the OJ you could compare it's contents by any author to show their research and it would rival much of the research produced for any WotC produced book.
If you're more interested in making sure your lists get seen CanonFire! is the way to go. Get your 'creds' at CanonFire. Use what you learn there and in your conversions to write new Bigby, Drawmij and others spells for the OJ. Make it like an Expanded Named PC list!
Again, I'm more than happy to help you with PDF'ing the the spells for each Character. I think a PDF of it would be awesome and give it some clarity.
Good Job and I'm looking forward to seeing more!
As you may or may not have seen I am starting a GH fan submission site as well. These spell conversions are great. Currently I'm looking for all the submissions I can find, so we can have some "feature" features for when the site opens up. There will be a spells feature, and if you send in some or all of these spells you do, I'll be more than happy to put them in the spotlight for the very first submitted spells! All rights of course still belong to you, but it's a good way to get them out there. Canonfire is also a good site to submit them to. Why not prep them up for submitting and then send them on over to Canonfire and my site!
You can currently submit to my site by sending your submissions to:
[email]greyhawk_itf@hotmail.com[/email]
Thank you and I look forward to seeing your future submissions!
Also, if you wanna check out what I have for the site so far, go here:
http://angelfire.com/realm3/greyhawkadventures
it isn't much, and this is just a little test zone before I upload into my own webspace and domain.
With that said, once legality of all this has been figured out (I will look into it, but would appreciate any thoughts on the subject from any of you) I would be more than willing to submit these spells to another site. Let's wait until I have them all posted here, of course, and go over proper balancing of the spells with anyone who wants to comment. Once more, thanks for all the interest shown by everyone! Happy posting.
WotC only get narky when you start stealing their graphics and formatting your pages like they were WotC born and bred. Essentially, if you can confuse your website with the WotC website or any WotC product, then you're in trouble.
I doubt anyone is about to confuse Canonfire with WotC... although, they both might be hard to navigate :D
I had a similar issue when I wanted to do a conversion of the Animus template. I wasn't happy with Sean's conversion in the Living Greyhawk Journal so I did my own and posted it to CF. Nobody complained. Well, that's not true, this one guy reckoned the template was broken and my claims that it was truer to the original were misrepresentative... but he was a butthead so we can discount him wholesale :D
I say post away. If WotC have a problem with it, they'll send a letter to CF and CF'll take it down, no harm done, no foul. But I doubt they will.
Now, you didn't hear this from me and this isn't exactly confirmed, but I did hear, in my travels, that CF have a sortof implicit 'OK' to post stuff, even if it does push the lines of acceptability. Now, like I said, don't quote me on that, it's just what I heard from a little birdy that was gnattering in my ear and looking for grubs.
It wouldn't surprise me though. I mean... Roger Moore, Sean K. (I think... I might be wrong on this one), Erik Mona, Gary Holian, Fred Weining, and others have all had associations with WotC in the past or present and have been a part of AOL chats or Greytalk which CF is the offshoot of, so...
From the OJ FAQ:
Wizards of the Coast (a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc.) owns the copyrights and trademarks for the World of Greyhawk. The OJ is a non-profit webzine and has no intent to challenge the company's ownership of its intellectual property. The articles published by the OJ are original works of their respective authors, and as such they are owned by the individual authors, who are not compensated monetarily for publication by the OJ.
The only right that authors surrender by agreeing to publication by the OJ is that of first international distribution in English.
AFAIK, fan-produced, non-commercial websites that use IP owned under international copyright laws operate in a shadow-zone of legality. Fair use doctrine sometimes protects fans but in earlier years decisions came down hard against "us." Also, note that fair use applies only to copyright law. Trademark law is different, and afaik more stringent.
Rather than worry about the actual legality of ownership (not decided until the matter receives final judgement and is then upheld on that issue on appeal), I suggest operating in the domain of ethics.
Don't try to make money off of IP owned or trademarked by Wizards of the Coast. Do imagine, innovate, and create to your heart's desire, for that is the purpose of roleplaying games. Then share your creations with the rest of us, for that is what the utopia of the Internet facilitates.
This was not legal advice. I am not a lawyer.
I've combined all of Owain_Abjurer's spells and the PDF'd them - with a 3.5 logo superimposed in the corner of the GA logo - and bookmarked each characters spells.
Of course if Owain_Abjurer wishes me to remove this then by all means I will. Also if he will further permit, I'd like to have this in the downloads section of CanonFire!.com. I credited Owain_Abjurer - but no email or other form - becasue I do not know it and not sure of his wishes.
Download a copy of the PDF'd version here:
Greyhawk_Adventures_3.5_Spells.pdf
I just found out that my webhost has converted my website to new Intel Xeon Servers. Thus the problem with the previous link. It works now!
If you have given me credit than I am even more thrilled. If you would like to include my e-mail address, I suppose I wouldn't mind. It would be interesting to see if I get many responses from people reading over it. I can always stand some new comments or criticisms. I'm not sure about posting my e-mail address to the message boards. Is that such a good idea? Well, I suppose the worst that could happen is I'll receive more junk mail, and I'm not sure that the laws of physics even allow for my receiving any more junk mail than I already do. So, if you would like to include my e-mail address, it is: [email]silentstdr@aol.com[/email].
I do have some more material that I will be posting to the above thread, but no more mage conversions. Next will be some conversions of a few divine spells from Greyhawk. If the deities of Faerun can have their name in parentheses next to a couple of spells here and there, why can't the deities of Greyhawk get a little credit? I bet the Greyhawk deities have been an inspiration for a couple of spells here and there over the years. ;)
After the few cleric spells I will be posting some more Greyhawk-specific mage spells, similar in nature to my conversions. These new ones, however, will not be conversions... instead they will be spells I have done myself. That's right, I don't steal all of my spells from antiquity. I actually have a creative bone or two.
I am also considering posting some information on which of the converted spells I've been posting can be affected by the spell permanency. A friend of mine, who has helped to playtest some of the spells, was saying how fun it would be if Bigby's force sculpture, or its two big brothers, could be made permanent. The more I think about this the more I consider allowing it. We'll see about the permanency information over the next few days.
After all of that I have some original Greyhawk cleric spells. Greyhawk deities are just much more fun than FR deities. Well, maybe there are some exceptions, but certainly not many. I will be posting my cleric spells after some of them have received a little bit of playtesting. I think one or two might be improperly balanced (one too weak, one too powerful).
The last thing I have for the thread, at the moment, is a fairly decent-sized list of magic items utilizing one or more of the new spells that I've either converted or created. Because, face it, the only thing that is as fun as a new spell, is a new magic item. So, a new magic item utilizing a new spell must be twice as fun! If you can follow that logic...
So, while this is certainly the end of a certain portion of the thread (and probably the part of the thread that will attract the most interest), the thread will continue to have information posted to it every few days for a little while longer. There may be a couple of longer pauses because of my upcoming work schedule, but I am nothing if not a dedicated geek, and I will certainly find some time to post. That's all I have to say for now. Happy posting! :D
The above link now works...
Please let me know what you think, and I'll be sure to make any adjustments to the doc/PDF.
Due to the mistake I made in copying down the Spell Enhancer from MoF into the DOC/PDF I have fixed it. It has been adjusted and re-uploaded.
Please let me know of any further mistakes so that they can be fixed.