I know I've seen something along the lines of this on here before i just don't remember where i saw it. My question was to verify it though. I had read that game system can be copyrighted, just the fiction and lore around it can't. For instance i could use the star wars game system by changing names of ships and weapons, but i couldn't if i still used a Star Destroyer as a ship. Is this true? Can a system be used and tweeked for monetary gain? With the bulk of the rules staying the same everything else is just renamed? Does that infringe on copyright laws?

Thanks,
Blind-

I have absolutely no idea, although from what people say, the '<x>...war commander' series of games are essentially the warmaster rules updated to fit different time periods, so it probably has precedence

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Just some guy

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Rules mechanics cannot be copyrighted, though their exact expression can be.

So, if you were to copy let's say the Epic rulebook in its entirety, but change the copyrighted names like Space Marines to Star Warriors or something, that wouldn't be good enough... because you've still copied the layout and exact wording of 95% of the Epic rulebook.


But if you re-wrote the book so the way in which the rules were phrased was different, but the actual in-game manner in which the rules were used were absolutely identical, that would be okay.

A lot of similarity of phrasing is permitted because writing the same thing is inevitable in a lot of places - there's only so many ways to say "roll a 5+ on a d6 to score a hit", for example.

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

Very interesting. So im working on my own game system, i have the main rules laid out but theres a couple little things i like from other games. I should be good to use them since 90% of it is my own, and to be safe change stuff like leaderahip value to command value.

Blind-

Yep, as long as you're phrasing it your own way and not using copyrighted phrases, you should be ok.

So, "Moral Tokens" rather than "Blast Markers" is probably a good idea...

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