Oh thanks, I made that one myself to save money with the goblin artist’s blessing the one in my signature is an early draft, the current one is here (Freehaven Online (Book 4): Cupcake Keep Under Siege) but I’m still waiting for the artist to send me the high res version of the goblin so I can cut it out properly,
Oh I am not trying to imply that a C&D got him canned. I am just curious that WOTC hasn't stomped on him. They Are Known to be quite stringent.
Possibly. But if his claims are right and he gets his books into the top 50, he's beating the tar out of guys like RA Salvatore with his Drizz't books.
There’s always the possibility that he really was gaming the system to inflate his rank hence the banning. Since I’m here as my author self I try to remain neutral when it comes to discussing other authors technical ability, so I’ll say no more.
Objectively speaking, I haven't read an indie author yet who's put out a better book than the old classics - even the ones that I slavishly follow, like Glynn Stewart. I think the high ranking is because sales of old series just naturally drop off after awhile, and Drizzt has been around for almost 30 years now. I can't think of a single 30 year old book that's still a chart-topping best seller. Even using just a 20 year old book as an example, Harry Potter was hovering around the top 100 or so, before getting put up on KU, and even now it's still only #14 after the KU bump. And that's Harry Freakin' Potter, guys. Not books that were niche when they were new (D&D fantasy novels have always been pretty niche compared to traditional epic fantasy, like the Belgariad or the Sword of Shannara), but the international phenomenon that, two decades later, still has people dressing up for halloween and arguing heatedly over which house they should be in and why. MSE is top 50 because he writes on trend and is a prolific author. He's not a bad author, by any means, and is enjoying wild success. But he's also not objectively better than the authors who came before him by any stretch of the imagination.
MSE: That's exactly how the OGL works. It's permitted to be used in D&D-based games, but not in books, movies, or other forms of media! And honestly, while there are a few things that get close, most of them at least have the intelligence to not use the same names. Sometimes it's really hard to tell if this guy is just...not very smart or if he's just deliberately being incredibly obtuse.
he could be using it in a legal way trademark law is weird so its entirely possible he's fine although im no expert.
The current OGL doesn't allow use of certain creatures, such as beholders, mind flayers, displacer beasts, and a few others, for any product. The only people able to use those creatures (and other D&D trademarks, like the Lady of Pain, the Book of Vile Darkness, and the Underdark are those who are creating content for Wizards themselves, or for DM's Guild. If he is using any of the following terms in his works - at least as substantive content - he's probably going to get hit with a C&D takedown at some point. Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master, Monster Manual, d20 System, Wizards of the Coast, d20 (when used as a trademark), Forgotten Realms, Faerûn, proper names (including those used in the names of spells or items), places, Underdark, Red Wizard of Thay, the City of Union, Heroic Domains of Ysgard, EverChanging Chaos of Limbo, Windswept Depths of Pandemonium, Infinite Layers of the Abyss, Tarterian Depths of Carceri, Gray Waste of Hades, Bleak Eternity of Gehenna, Nine Hells of Baator, Infernal Battlefield of Acheron, Clockwork Nirvana of Mechanus, Peaceable Kingdoms of Arcadia, Seven Mounting Heavens of Celestia, Twin Paradises of Bytopia, Blessed Fields of Elysium, Wilderness of the Beastlands, Olympian Glades of Arborea, Concordant Domain of the Outlands, Sigil, Lady of Pain, Book of Exalted Deeds, Book of Vile Darkness, beholder, gauth, carrion crawler, tanar’ri, baatezu, displacer beast, githyanki, githzerai, mind flayer, illithid, umber hulk, yuan-ti.
Another interesting piece in this puzzle. MSE was in a boxset promoted by Rebecca Hamilton (sp?). The box set was called "Dark Humanity" and was basically a vector to get all of the authors their NYT and USAT bestseller "letters." It used incentivized buys, got the bestseller ranks and then was unpublished just as it started to get bad reviews. I believe MSE still uses his "letters" from that box set. RH was banned from Amazon for her scams, and I've read people imply that Amazon may have followed the link back to that tainted promotion. Kboards again, so no meat.
I suspect the former. Doesn't make sense to spend over $1000 applying for trademarks you don't expect to get. I believe each application costs $275 not including lawyer fees.
Going off of memory: Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master, Monster Manual, d20 System, Wizards of the Coast, d20 (when used as a trademark), Forgotten Realms, Faerûn, proper names (including those used in the names of spells or items) (Maybe), places, Underdark, Red Wizard of Thay, the City of Union, Heroic Domains of Ysgard, EverChanging Chaos of Limbo, Windswept Depths of Pandemonium, Infinite Layers of the Abyss, Tarterian Depths of Carceri, Gray Waste of Hades, Bleak Eternity of Gehenna, Nine Hells of Baator (they curse "By the Nine Hells" or "What in the Nine Hells"), Infernal Battlefield of Acheron, Clockwork Nirvana of Mechanus, Peaceable Kingdoms of Arcadia, Seven Mounting Heavens of Celestia, Twin Paradises of Bytopia, Blessed Fields of Elysium, Wilderness of the Beastlands, Olympian Glades of Arborea, Concordant Domain of the Outlands, Sigil, Lady of Pain, Book of Exalted Deeds, Book of Vile Darkness, beholder, gauth, carrion crawler, tanar’ri, baatezu, displacer beast (Maybe can't remember - I know I read something in the last 6 months that used the term. It might have been MSE.), githyanki, githzerai, mind flayer, illithid, umber hulk, yuan-ti.
“Nine Hells” is technically fine, unless he’s specifically using “Nine Hells of Baator,” since it gets the idea of nine levels of Hell from Dante’s Inferno. Otherwise, yeah, all intellectual property of WotC.
Maybe, but it could also be argued that since it's taking place in the same world as The Underdark, it's more likely to be a reference the Nine Hells of Baator than Dante's Inferno which likely doesn't exist in the fantasy world.
Nine Hells, Nine Heavens, Seven Heavens, Seven Hells are all permissible, using something with the word Gehenna would be too, same with Acheron, Nirvana, Acheron, Hades, Pandemonium, Tartarus (from which WotC derive Tarterian), Carceri ( but not Tarterian Depths of Carceri), Abyss, Union, Limbo, Celestia, Elysium, Arborea, Olympian, etc... all of these you are able to use wherever you want, they're all from mythological places and traditions or translations of various words from foreign/ancient languages... You can use any and all of these in the same book (and let me tell you, it would be an absolute mess, but you could) and you would get no call from WotC lawyers... why? because context matters, and these are all fine as is... however, once you start sticking in terms like the Underdark, Ysgard (this you could likely get away with), Faerun, or combining them in the way WotC have done (you might be able to use something like the Infernal Plains of Acheron, but not the Infernal Battlefield of Acheron), it becomes a lot more dangerous for you... the moral of the story is source from history, linguistics, and religion all you want (Just as WotC have done), but make sure you don't deliberately infringe on trademarks... (also, Dakota Krout used a monster very similar to a displacer beast, called a Distortion Cat, borderline, but probably permissible, or at least not worth WotC's time)
It is kind of amusing when you consider how much D&D swiped from other sources - ioun stones and magic system from Jack Vance's Dying Earth books, regenerating trolls from Poul Anderson's Three Hearts & Three Lions, displacer beasts from van Vogt's Black Destroyer and the design of bulettes, owlbears, rust monsters and some others from little plastic kaiju they used to sell in plastic bags at the supermarket.
The evolution of orcs over time. And the whole hobbit to halfling. I renamed kobolds just to be safe in Tower of Gates!
