Hey all. I have a quick etiquette question. I am looking at re-designing some of the DW classes to fit my homebrew sandbox a bit better than the old D&D classes. However, I am not looking to reinvent the wheel. There are a ton of great classes out there, but none exactly fit the style I am looking for. My question is this. Would people be offended if the moves from their various classes ended up used in other classes (with appropriate credit given of course)? For example using the move “Thoughtsend” from Nemo’s Beguiler in a Telepath class; or the move “Deny Accusation” by Anthony Giovannetti for a Courtier class?
Hey all.
Hey all.
I think they would feel honored. Most DW stuff are creative commons, so give people credit and bobs your uncle.
I imagine most folks wouldn’t mind if given appropriate credit.
…Where is this move by Anthony Giovannetti by the way?
I’d ask, I bet they’ll say yes.
Are we talking a personal, at-home campaign, or a commercial product, or what?
If it’s only for your home game then I wouldn’t worry about it, but if you start publishing anything here on the interwebs then I’d ask. Most likely they’ll say yes (I know I would).
Everyone above has covered it pretty well:
The core DW text is Creative Commons. If you make something with it just say “based on Dungeon World by Sage LaTorra and Adam Koebel” and you’re covered to do anything with it.
The same goes for some of the supplements people have made.
For home use, you don’t need to worry about any of that. Posting online is probably a grey area. If you’re selling it, make sure it’s either CC or that you ask the authors (who will hopefully be cool and say sure).
Even if you’re not selling it, ask the authors, especially if they are selling their playbooks!
I personally think DW has something of a remix culture to it, and I think that this is a great thing. Use all of the things IMO.
These are the questions you need to ask yourself:
1. is it Creative Commons?
All of Funhaver’s (and a bunch of other people’s) stuff is CC licensed, which means you’re free to reuse it as long as you respect the terms of the individual CC licenses (some are going to be sharealike, some aren’t; some might be noncommercial, most won’t; etc.), which almost always means acknowledging the original author.
2. are you planning on selling it?
If so, you need to respect that license no matter what. Again, if it’s a CC-NC license, you just plain can’t sell it. If it’s CC-BY-SA, you have to make it an SA license.
If it’s not CC-licensed at all, you’ll have to contact the author whose work you’re reusing and get their written permission. Disclaimer: not a lawyer, and depending on territory what constitutes valid permission probably differs.
If you’re not trying to sell it, you still want to respect whatever license the other stuff has, but I doubt most people will mind as long as you credit them and drop them a line to double-check they’re okay with it. I know I wouldn’t mind (unless the person doing the reusing is sexist/racist/transphobic/etc., but even then I’d be technically powerless to stop them).
Obviously, if it’s for private use, no one will care, or even know.
3. if you’re planning on selling it, are you making something significantly different that takes a move or two from other classes, or are you reprinting 90% of someone else’s class with a couple of tweaks?
Don’t try to sell something that’s 90% other people’s work without their explicit permission, no matter what license they used; that’s just a dick move.
So generally: credit the original author, respect the license, and if at all possible, ask the original author.
(And also, don’t be a dick.)
This would be purely for at home campaign setting use, but possibly free release playbooks like so many others place out there. Nothing for sale, just shared use, and mostly for feedback purposes – though of course once its released into the wild…
As for using others’ material, if I were only mildly tweaking something with a few moves I wouldn’t bother releasing for input. However, some of what I have in mind might have say 4 moves from one class, 3 from another, 1 from 3 different sources, etc. Some might get used as-is, some tweaked or renamed. Like from the 2 examples I gave, Nemo’s Thoughtsend would be great for a telepath class, but not a lot of the rest of the Beguiler might. I also hate to reinvent the wheel. If someone already wrote a usable power, why try to redo it?
Thanks for the comments everyone.
PS: My bad, copied the wrong source for Deny Accusation. Its actually by Sword-of-the-Spirit on Reddit (here: http://www.reddit.com/r/DungeonWorld/comments/1l27ba/some_move_hacks_for_a_grittier_setting_warhammer/)
I was wondering if I had forgotten the name of one of my moves, lol.
LoL, sorry about that. In my footnotes I have DWT.# and DWR.# as notations and I looked up the wrong one when I made the original post. Might be time to change notations. 🙂