Older Edition: Licensing Fate 3.0 (OGL)
The following is applicable to the 3.0 era of Fate. Fate Core and Fate Accelerated will be released around July of 2013, under both the Open Game License and a Creative Commons attribution (CC-BY) license.
If you are interested in licensing Fate Core, please see the main licensing page on this site.
Fate, as a derivative of Fudge, can and must use the Open Game License (OGL). Our latest supply of open content came from Spirit of the Century (find the SRD here), so that’s the current basis we’re offering. Once newer material gets published by Evil Hat, we’ll do our best to update this.
I Want To Make A Fate Game
We’re going to be borrowing FudgeRPG.com’s excellent boilerplate approach, here.
What you need to do is:
- Grab a copy of the OGL and put it in your product (we tend to put it where you normally find the copyright page, while others might put it at the end of their work).
- Use the text found below as the start of your Section 15 of the OGL
- Replace all of the [square bracketed text] found there with the specifics of your own product.
That’s it. You don’t have to ask our permission or anything like that, though we’d love it if you let us know your product’s out there and maybe slide us a few free copies (digital is fine). If you want to use the Fate logo on your back cover, you may, with Evil Hat’s express permission. You can find the logo file on the Resources page.
15 COPYRIGHT NOTICE
Open Game License v 1.0 Copyright 2000, Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
Fudge 10th Anniversary Edition Copyright 2005, Grey Ghost Press, Inc.; Authors Steffan O’Sullivan and Ann Dupuis, with additional material by Jonathan Benn, Peter Bonney, Deird’Re Brooks, Reimer Behrends, Don Bisdorf, Carl Cravens, Shawn Garbett, Steven Hammond, Ed Heil, Bernard Hsiung, J.M. “Thijs” Krijger, Sedge Lewis, Shawn Lockard, Gordon McCormick, Kent Matthewson, Peter Mikelsons, Robb Neumann, Anthony Roberson, Andy Skinner, William Stoddard, Stephan Szabo, John Ughrin, Alex Weldon, Duke York, Dmitri Zagidulin
Fate (Fantastic Adventures in Tabletop Entertainment) Copyright 2003 by Evil Hat Productions, LLC. Authors Robert Donoghue and Fred Hicks.
Spirit of the Century Copyright 2006 by Evil Hat Productions, LLC. Authors Robert Donoghue, Fred Hicks, and Leonard Balsera
[Include the appropriate Section 15 Copyright Notice information from any additional Fudge and/or Fate Open Game Content used in this document]
[Name of this document or material] Copyright [Year], [Copyright Holder’s Name]; Author[s] [Insert the name or names of the author or authors of this document]
In accordance with the Open Game License Section 8 “Identification” the following designate Open Game Content and Product Identity:
OPEN GAME CONTENT
[Insert a clear designation of what parts of this document you are releasing as Open Game Content, making it eligible for use by others under the Open Game License. Note that existing Open Game Content must remain OGC. Example: “The contents of this document are declared Open Game Content except for the portions specifically declared as Product Identity.”]
PRODUCT IDENTITY
[Insert a clear explanation of what parts of this document are designated as Product Identity and hence excluded from the designation of Open Game Content. Examples: “All content of this document is Open Game Content” or “All artwork, logos, symbols, designs, depictions, illustrations, maps and cartography, likenesses, and other graphics, unless specifically identified as Open Game Content” or “Any elements of the proprietary setting, including but not limited to capitalized names, organization names, characters, historic events, and organizations; any and all stories, storylines, plots, thematic elements, documents within the game worlds, quotes from characters or documents, and dialogue”]
17 Responses to “Older Edition: Licensing Fate 3.0 (OGL)”
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[…] Originally Posted by Raven Crowking Are 3pp allowed to make Dresden Files adventures? Dresden Files is a FATE system which is an OGL game. Should be possible. Using Fate With The OGL Fate […]
Regarding the use of Dresden Files material, I would expect that the rules are OGL (as required by the use of FUDGE as a base) but that anything actually specific to Dresden Files (especially the major characters and setting information) is restricted under Product Identity.
So I would expect, I haven’t actually reviewed the PI restrictions on DFRPG to confirm.
The new rules material in the Dresden Files RPG is sufficiently entangled with IP owned and originated by Jim Butcher that we declined to make any of its content open.
A project is underway to scrub *some* of the material of its IP entanglements, but it’s been a low priority.
Can i write a PC GAME using FATE 3.0 rules? Not a Spirit of The Century game, but a pc game with FATE 3.0 core rules, no mention about commercial RPGs.
Any product derived from and using the text of the existing Fate SRD needs to include the OGL in an appropriate location.
[…] that I can plug and bolt together. All I need to do is provide a page dedicated to OGL (see http://www.faterpg.com/ogl/ for more […]
[…] I cam across the OGL for FATE. FATE is very cool. Maybe a bit more complex than I am after, but it of course can be tailored to […]
I already got the book but is there also an SRD of Strands of Fate? I’m new to FATE but not to roleplaying and like to build monsters or animals but wouldn’t know how to do it with FATE. Are there some templates for this, some database with good ideas/stereotypes?
Gr,
Couldn’t tell ya. Strands is a 3rd party product with some significant deviations from Fate as conceived by Evil Hat … you’d need to contact them. 🙂
[…] one am a big fan of FATE and this is what I am going to write about today. FATE is published under OGL and thus open for everyone and everybody to tinker with for their own games and rounds. And this is […]
A publisher just contacted me about creating an RPG setting, set in an alternate medieval fantasy Europe. I want to use Fate for this, but while I’ve done lots of tweaks on my own to use the Dresden Files rules in a high-fantasy setting, now that I’m looking at this from a publishing perspective I want to be clear about a couple of things.
The things not currently open content are, unless I’ve missed something:
* Powers
* Templates
* Magic
Powers seem to be fairly straightforward to adapt to original content, particularly since in my homebrew version you need a template to get them. As such, templates work a little differently in my games, and I’m pretty sure it’s fine (under my understanding of the legal niceties) to have the system as long as I don’t copy any of the printed powers themselves. If I’m wrong, well, that’s why I’m posting. Am I?
Either way, the magic system is what I’m fuzzier on. Can I still use the magic system as-is, as long as I strip out all Dresdenesque references and file off the serial numbers? Should I create a different magic system? Is this going to be included in the upcoming updated SRD?
Hi Matt,
Two things going on here.
First, over on our Resources page (up top) there’s a list of “Additional material ‘genericized’ from the Dresden Files RPG” — that’s all the material that we’ve felt comfortable pulling out of Dresden and putting into the OGL. Originally, zero material from Dresden was put into the OGL. Powers/Templates/Magic are not a part of that material.
Second, for that stuff, it’s worth noting rules can’t be copyrighted, only the expression of rules (you can’t copyright the process for making a sandwich, but you can copyright the *instructions* you wrote for following that process).
Simply stripping out Dresden Files references but otherwise keeping the text as is, is not sufficient as a change of expression, though. You could have a magic system that functions the same, so long as you use all-original text that you write yourself from scratch to explain how it works.
Oh, I know about that. (Though I don’t begrudge you assuming I didn’t, as it’s a very common mistake.) That was the “filing off the serial numbers” comment which I should have made more clear. And even if I had permission to copy non-Dresden text, I’d be making my own; otherwise the writing style would very much NOT match.
The purpose of my request was to find out if there were any legal hangups to those systems, much as certain gaming companies omit some elements from their SRDs that, while technically just “game rules,” represent something iconic to their material (such as D&D’s beholders getting left out of their 3e-era SRD). Were I self-publishing, I’d have been confident enough of what you just said to just go full steam ahead; since other people would be involved, I wanted to make absolutely certain.
Thanks for your quick response! (Also, I like the sandwich analogy. Now I’m hungry.)
[…] I felt the need to follow up my post on drama points after playing FATE last weekend. FATE is an open source rules system, so there's a lot of variants out there. I haven't read more then a couple and last weekend was my […]
Nerun’s question is still left unanswered.
Not even a little true, gundead222 — my reply came immediately after Nerun’s question, and answered it directly: “Any product derived from and using the text of the existing Fate SRD needs to include the OGL in an appropriate location.”
Well, I’m using Strands of Fate for the example rules for my Divine Blood setting, but this is one of the things I’m saying in my first chapter:
The golden rule of roleplaying is thus: if you don’t like a rule, don’t use. If Strands of Fate is not your cup of tea, there are other ways you can RP in the Divine Blood universe. This is the primary reason that the setting stuff is presented separate from the rules stuff. There are several generic game systems that you can use and I will list some of them below. In addition, by the time this is published, FATE Core will likely have been released. If you don’t want to use the rules in this book, skip to the setting stuff right away and ignore this first rules banter chapter and the mechanics chapters that follow the setting.
Of course, this will be rephrased now, because, lo and behold, Fate Core is published. Anyway, my original RP setting was presented with no mechanics whatsoever and demoed using BESM. This one is being ruled out with rules based on Strands of (some changes) and elements of stuff in Dresden Files (especially cooperative campaign design).
For stuff on the world setting:
Art for the RP project: http://thrythlind.deviantart.com/gallery/42023478
Art for the setting: http://thrythlind.deviantart.com/gallery/41339005
Free Stories for the setting: http://thrythlind.deviantart.com/gallery/38934667
There is one novel so far published for this setting. I’m hoping to have it published around next March.