Copyright, OSRIC & Originality

This is the chapter that matters most, because this project exists to be free to use. The whole point is that a referee can take every word of it and run a campaign without infringing anyone's rights. Preserve that, and everything you add is a gift; break it, and you have sown a legal minefield through someone else's labor of love.

What this project is

This project is an OSRIC-compatible implementation of a classic fantasy roleplaying ruleset. OSRIC is a published, open game system built by Matthew Finch and Stuart Marshall specifically to let people play classic-style fantasy games free of the original games' copyrighted text. This project is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Wizards of the Coast, Hasbro, or any successor to TSR. It contains no copyrighted material from the original rulebooks.

The declaration lives in the rules folder (the OSRIC attribution note) and it is not decoration — it is the project's founding constraint and a standing promise. Every entry you add should be able to sign the same declaration.

What "no copyrighted material" means in practice

It means more than not copying paragraphs. It means:

• No copied text. Do not reproduce descriptive passages, tables, or stat-block wording from any published game or setting. Paraphrase and re-express ideas in your own words; the ideas (how combat works) are not protected, but the expression (the exact sentences and tables) is.
• No proper-name product identity. Do not import character names, deity names, unique creature names, or proper nouns from published settings or games. The compendium already runs on original or folkloric naming — keep it that way. A folkloric bogeyman you write fresh is yours; a named god or monster from a published world is not.
• No invented-but-confusing copies. Renaming a copyrighted creature by a hair (changing two letters) does not make it safe. What keeps you safe is writing your own original creature and powers in your own words, not a dressed-up copy.
• No table copies. Specific, elaborate table layouts are expression too. Recreate the rules as your own tables and numbers where you need them, in your own format.

What you may do freely

You may use and adapt the open content of OSRIC and the open game content it draws on, under their licenses — that is exactly what this project does. You may write original text, original creatures, original spells, original pantheons, and original settings of your own. And you may borrow ideas, mechanics, and game concepts generally, because rules and concepts are not copyrightable — only their expression and their specific proper names are. The safe ground is enormous: the entire system, in your own words, is yours.

The conventions this project already follows

Before you add content, absorb the house style that keeps the project safe and cohesive:

• Original and folkloric naming. Deities, creatures, and places are written fresh or drawn from folklore and the public domain — never imported from a published world.
• Generic, self-owned terminology. The rules use plain descriptive terms rather than trademarked ones. Follow the vocabulary the existing rules and handbooks use; when there is an established word in this project, use it.
• The register of a referee's rulebook. Concrete, plain, published-for-play prose — the kind of writing that could be printed in a book you paid for, because it is original writing of its own.

When you are unsure

The test to hold your work against is simple and strict: could this entry be published on its own, commercially, without licensing anything? If the answer is yes — because it is original or folkloric in your own words, or properly drawn OSRIC open content — it belongs. If the answer is no — because it lifts a name, a passage, or a table from a published work — rewrite it as your own before it goes into the project. When in doubt, write it new.

The gift you are protecting

Someone will clone this project to run their own campaign, and they will trust that what they found is safe to use. Your job as a builder is to keep that trust intact: add your own worlds, your own horrors, your own prayers and blades, in your own words, and credit the open foundations the project stands on. Do that, and the project stays what it was made to be — a free engine of adventures, safe to share, and growing richer every time someone builds on it honestly.