A Question About Campaign Conversions

[WinterCorvus]

I'm slowly poking at doing a conversion of Dark Sun to Microlite20.  I wanted to know if it was permissible to post what I'm doing to the Campaign Settings forum to get feedback, or would copyright concerns prevent me from doing that?

[copycat042]

I'd wait for greywuf's opinion for Darksun, but if you wanted to post something called BlackSol, or DimStar, or Psi-Desert, I'm sure that would be OK.  

just look at Wildwalker's REDJACKS campaign setting.

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=117&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=redjack

[Slortar]

You know, I'm never quite clear on where the concerns about copyright violations comes from--there's only been a few cases I've ever heard of where fan-derived not-for-profit rpg conversions have ever come under fire for copyright violations and that's because it was Palladium and the people in charge of that company are bark-at-the-moon craaaaazy.

Anything else...in my opinion it's pretty much fair game, particularly for settings that are so long out of print.  Most lawyers, I think, would file it under "fair use", at least in the States as long as you're not being obnoxious about it.  As long as you don't just do a complete C&P on all of the TSR-original text, you should be okay.  If you're feeling really paranoid, put a few disclaimers in.

Hm.  The only other thing I can think of that's even close is one time Lucas Film came after a bunch of people who made a total conversion of Doom with a Star Wars theme...that was back in the days before anybody outside the gaming community knew what a "user created mod" was--they thought the fan group was just making a full marketable game for free using their IP.  You don't really see that sort of thing happening any more.  And that was a video game, anyway.

[WinterCorvus]

If you're feeling really paranoid, put a few disclaimers in.

I ask partly because of paranoia, but also because I'm new here and not sure what the convention for these forums is.

[greywulf]

As I replied in twitter, I see no problems with fan-based conversion of game-rule material, and so long as it's provided for free and no cash changes hands no one is going to get all copyrighty and legalistic.

Post it up in the spirit of freedom and fun, and it's good to me, and I'll defend your right to do so!