Hello,

My team is designing the rule system for our upcoming fantasy role-playing game (RPG). I know the answers here won't be legal advice, but please, some feedback would be great.

My rule system contains concepts such as Races, Classes, Skills, XP. During character generation, you choose a Race, Class and then choose Skills.

An experienced poster writes this here (to someone else, e.g. I won't have "feats" in my game):

I notice that you're talking about "feats", "classes", "spells", and "skills". These four things taken together tell me that you're thinking about using the rules from one of the Wizards of the Coast–produced editions of Dungeons & Dragons. In that case, you have to be extra careful. The 3rd edition of the game is licensed under the OGL.

If my game mechanics are different from D&D/Wizards of the Coast, am I right that the chance of legal trouble is very small? Game mechanics cannot be patented, and words themselves (especially which existed long ago in the English language such as Race, Class, Spell) cannot be protected either. Only the way they are used can be copyrighted.

Well, this is where I'm hesitating. We use Race as... well, race of the character. Class as the "occupation". Skills as... skills. So game mechanics might be similar to other games (using D&D), but with different values and structures. I read that many games copy XP table concepts, but they make sure to use different numbers, which is a good protection against legal issues. For races, we will have human, dwarf, but other custom (unique) races as well.

After crowdfunding, we might be able to pay a lawyer, but not now (I guess review our rule system would cost a LOT $$$ now).

Copyright and trademark cannot remove the established dictionary meanings of words.

If you are using the words as they are, don't stress over it.

You are right that copying exact rule systems is a bad idea, and copying exact creative and distinctive names should not be done.

"Magic: the Gathering" is distinctive. "A magic game", not so much.

"Dwarves of Orzammar" is creative and distinctive. "Race: Dwarf", not so much.

There is always a risk of patent trolling when specific brand-related terms are used, especially given the case you are using more than one from the same source.

Though these terms do not represent the exact same thing, one might argue that their work has been an invaluable source of inspiration for yours.

Whenever in doubt, I would suggest finding another term that is equally vocal and avoid this altogether.

WoTC isn't specifically known for trolling around (unlike late TSR for example) but it's just good practice to avoid the issue whenever possible.

Thanks guys.

Moreover, I also meant that I'm going to use Race, Class, Skill in basically the same sense as D&D (same fundamental meaning, which equals to a dictionary meaning as well). On the other hand, there will be different classes in my game (except dictionary words such as Druid, Sorcerer), the list of races also won't be the same (and will either use dictionary words, or unique words I make up on my own), and skills will also be different.

Based on your posts, I think it should be OK.

D&D classes stick to fairly dictionary defined classes. As most games that offer selections have races and classes (when races are options), I don't see any problem with those.

A lot of RPGs tend to stick to Classes and Races terminology. That being said, a lot of these have licensed D&D content through WoTC too...