Question about copyright
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If your work is derived from another work that is copyright to someone else then you need to get a license to reproduce from them. You can only copyright those bits of your work that are novel and creative. There are some fair use exemptions in the USA but not in all countries such as mine but we have some exemptions for other reasons such as parody. But in most cases, it is always best to use your own sourced material or material that was public before about 1920 or so (check the exact date in your juristiction). You can also use someone else's material if you are sure that they own the copyright to it and they have disclaimed the copyright in a statement that says it is now in the public domain.
Then finally, you have these creative commons and other similar licenses. These mean that the owner of the work still has copyright over them and that they are not in the public domain but are making a statement publicly that they are giving out a blanket license to do certain things with this work under certain circumstances. Usually these works are marked with the CC logo such as CC-BY-SA or similar. With these works, so long as you work within the scope of what the CC license grants, you can use the work in the way specified without having to ask new permissions or obtain any other new license for doing so. For example CC-BY-SA means Creative Commons, Attribution, Share Alike. You can use the work so long as you attribute the original person with it and also you must make your derived work licensed with a CC-BY-SA as well.
My advice is to not do it, then if you go against that and do, then don't publish the result or make it known that your charging fees for it. TSR, the company who used to run D&D before Wizards of the Coast took it over used to be known as "They Sue Regularly". Their whole business model is totally reliant on it being copyright since the rule books could be easily photocopied whereas say Warhammer and so on also sold rule books, but you needed the plastic models which was their real revenue which at one time were a lot more difficult to copy (but less so these days).
This site follows the DMCA so don't make our lives difficult by posting a copyright work and openly stating that it is. Where we *may* get copyright works on this forum its hard to know whether it is. Then the DMCA means you need the original copyright holder to come along and claim it then we must take it down. If you state that it is up front then I am not sure what happens and I guess we would have to get legal advice.
This site is remarkably good at posting user generated content which is amazing and creative and novel. But of course we are also big fans of the big gun fantasy worlds like Middle Earth, Westeros, and Forgotten Realms etc and I think most people know that fan based non commercial material is going to get posted.
