Quick question for the experts in the guild. A client of ours has asked us to recreate D&D's Faerun map in our handrawn style for an adventure book they are making. Is this legal under copyright law?
Legality of Selling Handrawn Versions of Existing Maps
Quick question for the experts in the guild. A client of ours has asked us to recreate D&D's Faerun map in our handrawn style for an adventure book they are making. Is this legal under copyright law?
No, it's the intellectual property of Wizards of the Coast. That said they may have legal access to use that, especially if they are writing a book involving that, so you could ask them if they have permission for it. If so you're good to go.
Sorry I was unclear in what I meant here, they may have legal permission to commission the map. If so they will be able to produce documents saying that. There is no reason for you to stick your neck out and be cavalier about it though. Ultimately you will be the one taking the risk, so you should make sure about it before hand. And Gamerprinter is right, you should also check for yourself with the actual owner even if they do produce evidence of said permission.Originally Posted by Falconius
Let's put it this way, I'm a third party publisher for Paizo Publishing for their Pathfinder and Starfinder Roleplaying Games, and am allowed to place a Pathfinder Compatibility or Starfinder Compatbility logo on the covers of products I create for those systems. However, I am not allowed to create content that in any way mentions or relates to their published settings of the planet of Golarion, nor their Pact Worlds setting for Starfinder. I can only create my own settings. Other things like Starfinder's method of FTL, called the Drift, or the engines used to access the Drift (the Drift Drive) are Paizo intellectual property. Any starships I create has to use an alternative engine type, like Hyperdrives or some other thing. Paizo offers a Community Use License that requires Paizo's permission to obtain, allowing a third party publisher to create content for their published settings. However, any products using the Community Use License cannot charge money for those products, they can only be shared freely with appropriate license included with the product. I don't know if Wizards of the Coast has a community use license.
Wayfinder is a fan based quarterly publication that uses the Paizo Publishing Community Use License, that directly support Paizo's published settings. Not only is it freely shared, and never profit based, authors and artists hired to do commission work for Wayfinder cannot be paid, it is done volunatrily only, presumeably to gain more industry exposure, not for earning an income.
Creating a hand-drawn or other created version of any published setting, without direct permission from the publisher is illegal or at least copyright infringement, and may result in legal actions by those publishers.
I would never create a map for any existing published setting without the permission of the originating publisher - and I would never even ask, because I'd much rather create my own settings than to use their's.
GP
Last edited by Gamerprinter; 10-19-2019 at 03:32 PM.
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Wow... You can't use their Drift Drive... the copyrighted a fantasy engine. What's next... Is star wars going to copyright hyperdrive? or star trek going to copyright Warp drive?? That's crazy ... I don't think that should be legal...
Del
Well the Drift, is an alternate plane of existence (think Astral Plane) gifted by an AI that ascended to godhood. The Drift has unique rules like when you access it via a Drift Drive, you pull in some of the plane of existence you enter from, so pieces of other planes float around in the Drift... so it's not like they copyrighted the engines so much as The Drift concept itself, and is a part of the Pact Worlds setting... so that's what they copyrighted.
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There's a bunch of people on Etsy who just resell prints or like, leather wallets or shirts or whatever, of the Lord of the Rings map. Should they be? Probably not. But most artist alleys are full of fanart being used as income tools and cartography also contains its fair share of its fanart properties.
It's a little iffier with the D&D property because some of it is permissible to be printed on Drive Thru RPG's sister, the DM Guild. If that's where they're planning to sell it, they may be entirely in the clear if that's one of the included lores. However, they only allow a certain few and I don't know them off-hand or the associated worldbuilding well enough to know if Faerun falls into that category. [/low nerd cred but heyyyy Star Wars meme am I right eh eh (finger guns)]
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