Craig, you sound like a conspiracy nut. I say that with love. 
That's because you've been brainwashed by the propaganda. IMO, you're sounding like a brainwashed nut - and, unlike you, I have the actual facts of how copyright laws work on my side: what copyrights are, and what they are not; what can and can't be restricted or controlled by copyrights.
You are doing the equivalent of believing that it is morally wrong to wear blue shoes just because there's been a 50-year propaganda campaign telling you that wearing blue shoes is evil...when, in fact, there's nothing illegal, immoral, or in any way wrong about wearing shoes of any colour you like. (or, for a less fanciful example: propaganda saying it's morally wrong - a sign of insanity - for women to wear "men's clothing" or to do "men's work". or for men to wear "women's clothing". propaganda has an insidious effect when it gets inside people's heads, making them believe things that are false, and then act on those beliefs).
In the case of copyrights, the copyright industries want consumers like you or me to believe that their copyrights give them more control over our use of copyrighted material than the law actually grants them. And part of how they achieve that is by getting people to believe that there's some kind of moral imperative in maximising copyright powers. Many book publishers, for example, used to print lies on the title page claiming that it was illegal to lend or give or sell the book to someone else (it was actually illegal for them to claim that, but they did it anyway because they were almost never prosecuted for it) - and many people believed those lies and thought it was wrong to buy or sell a second-hand book, or lend or give a book to a friend. Nowadays, many publishers just enforce whatever made-up "rules" they like with Digital Restrictions Management (DRM).
So, don't tell me I'm a "conspiracy nut" for observing things that are plainly evident to anyone who actually bothers to look. This isn't hidden knowledge, or even slightly hard to discover - it's obvious, so obvious that it's truly amazing that it even needs to be pointed out.
Let me make clear what I understand. If you make an adventure with HARP stats in it, you are using another company's rules without their permission.
Yes, that is exactly right, 100% true. It
IS using another company's rules without their permission.
However, the point is that
permission is NOT required, doing so is completely legal and ethical. There is absolutely nothing wrong with doing that - it is your natural, inalienable right. This is NOT merely an opinion, it is a FACT - a statement that accurately reflects reality. Anyone who claims otherwise is either a brainwashed victim of propaganda or a propagandist trying to brainwash you. Or both.
Sure, I imagine you can express them in such a way as to not violate their copyright BUT you are still trying to skirt the rules.
1. as long as you don't copy their text or art or otherwise infringe their copyright, then you are doing nothing wrong.
For example, using both a well-known D&D monster and a specific rule from HARP, you can write something like "In room 10, there is a Carrion Crawler. There is also a locked trapped chest with a poison gas trap which requires a cascading resistance roll vs Stamina".
Mentioning either or both of the monster and the poison roll is completely legitimate (unless you've agreed not to refer to Carrion Crawlers by agreeing to the terms of WOTC's OGL).
What you CAN'T do is to, without permission, copy and paste the exact original text or artwork describing either carrion crawlers or the game rules for how cascading resistance rolls work (you CAN paraphrase either description
in your own words to describe how they work. you can draw your own carrion crawler too, if you like).
BTW, unless things have changed since last time I looked, "Carrion Crawler" isn't even a trademarked term. It's part of what WOTC calls "Product Identity" - a made up term that only has significance within the context of the OGL, it has no legal meaning nor does it impose any legal obligations on anyone unless they accept the terms of the OGL (or the terms of use for the "d20" logo and/or a few other licensing mechanisms they use). That said, though, if you were publishing a bestiary with your own version of a similar monster, it would be less hassle to just use another name, like "Corpse Caterpillar" or whatever. Giant corporations have enough money and lawyers to bankrupt anyone who displeases them, regardless of legalities.
2. these "rules" you claim are being skirted are entirely imaginary - they don't exist except as the result of brainwashing which has the aim of convincing people that the rights they actually have either don't exist, or are subordinate to corporate desires to treat anything and everything as their property.
Worse, in the gaming industry that is considered crummy behavior. So, if you want to join the ranks of the RPG small publishers, you generally avoid abusing your peers. So, it's not just about "the law", it's about doing what is right.
This is the exact wrong way of looking at it. Sharing culture has been the universal practice for millennia. Pushing the propaganda line that exercising your rights is somehow "abuse" or wrong, is the "crummy" behaviour. It is privileging the desires of a small subset of publishers (i.e. the for-profit segment) over the actual rights of the majority (the general public as well as the DIY non-profit hobbyist publishers)
The fact that you, and many other people, believe what you believe is
precisely what I was referring to when I said that it's even more reason to resist the propaganda. Allowing this propaganda, this belief, to go unchallenged is detrimental - even corrosive - to society.
Furthermore, you cannot declare compatibility or use another's trademarks or copyright without permission.
You are 100% flat out wrong on this point. You
can, without any restrictions at all, claim compatibility. And you can refer to or mention trademarks and/or copyrighted works that are owned by other people/companies.
What you can
NOT do is falsely claim to have any official or licensed relationship with the trademark owners.
It is generally considered good practice to explicitly state that an unlicensed, unofficial product is unlicensed and unofficial, but that is not a legal requirement - that's just common sense to make sure it is completely obvious that you are not making false claims and can't be accused of doing so by negligence.
So, I could create an awesome world with the greatest adventure ever written but fellow HARP enthusiasts would be hard pressed to find it. I would have to come onto the company's forums and pitch my non-sanctioned adventure skirting their rules to get any eyeballs on it. Also, considered bad form.
Whether your marketing is successful or not is entirely irrelevant.
More to the point, marketing is a completely separate and entirely unrelated issue, with nothing to do with copyright and only indirectly connected to trademarks (counterfeiting is primarily a consumer-protection issue, not a monopoly-rights issue). Bringing up marketing here does nothing but confuse the issue.
ICE has no obligation to allow you to market your products on their private forum, and you have no right to force them to do so. They can not, however, stop you from marketing your product elsewhere as long as you are not either infringing their copyrights or mis-using their trademarks to falsely claim or imply a licensed or official relationship.
I am not creating anything for HARP unless it is under some kind of license.
That is your choice. You are entirely free to make that choice, but don't deceive yourself or others that it is anything but a personal choice. i.e. you have the right not to wear blue shoes - that's equally as valid as the right to wear them.
I prefer "open" licenses or the OBS programs because they encourage independent 3rd parties to create for the system without taxing the time/resources of the controlling publisher.
To start with, as mentioned before, you don't actually need any license or permission to publish content for any game system. There are some licensing deals (like OGL or the OBS CCP) that grant you permission to do things that you otherwise wouldn't be allowed to do (like verbatim copying of some text or artwork from some of the rule or setting books) - but with a very steep cost (like agreeing not to exercise some other rights you already have, or granting a perpetual and irrevocable royalty-free license to OBS, granting exclusive publication rights to OBS, waiving your right to republish your own content for different systems or in a different format)
If you analyse the terms of various "Content Creator" programs, you'll see that they are an incredibly bad deal for third-party creators
except in the very specific case that you want/need the marketing opportunities. That can be very useful for some people, but it would be a mistake to think that you aren't trading several valuable rights in exchange for the marketing opportunities.
e.g. see Bat In the Attic's analysis of the OBS / WOTC content program:
OBS Content Program is terrible and it is now not just an opinion.This is the kind of thing that mega-corporation lawyers come up with to exploit ordinary people - and, make no mistake, WOTC is nothing more than a brand name owned by the mega-corporation HASBRO. This isn't much different from early web hosting and social media platforms that tried to assert copyright ownership over user-content posted on the platform - terms that were universally reviled and generated so much backlash from users that they were forced to back down and strike out those unfair terms. I guess roleplayers are a more captive audience if they are willing to put up with such exploitative terms. Worse, because mega-corporations do it and get away with it, little publishers copy them - thinking that it's normal or legitimate, rather than a complete ripoff and exploitation.
I don't like your approach. It seems questionable to me.
yes. the propaganda has been very successful. It has successfully made you and many other people think that it is somehow wrong or immoral to do things that they have a natural right to do.
I want to explicitly support ICE, in a public and fair manner that builds the overall community. Not find creative ways to borrow their hard work.
As I said in a previous post when you said the same thing, nothing I said is in any way contradictory to explicitly and fairly supporting ICE or building the overall community. I find it very disturbing that you keep falsely suggesting that it is.
