Alright so it’s apparently just a trademark on the term “choose your own adventure”, held by chooseco. So you can do those kinds of books as long as you don’t call it that.
It’s funny that there is a whole informal genre of CYOA stuff that uses the name, presumably in violation of that trademark, but actually has very little relation to those books and is more focused on spending points to build characters or settings.
Can’t copyright game mechanics, because copyright involves a particular arrangement of words, visuals, or sounds. But can potentially patent them, not sure what the legal consensus in the Questionably United States is like about that.
As is tradition, copyright keeps getting confused with trademarks and patents time and again.
You can copyright the rulebook and the description of the rules.
You can’t copyright the rules themselves.
Like, for a dumb example, if you invented the game of baseball, you could write a book explaining the rules of baseball and how to play, and you could copyright that book and if anybody made unauthorized copies of that book or even just portions of it, you could sue them for copyright infringement. But you could not sue people for copyright infringement just because they were playing baseball without your permission … or writing books about playing baseball, etc.
I am disappointed to learn that it isn’t some sort of upgrade to Choose Your Own Adventure books.
Same. 'Roll a d20 and add it to your perception skill stat. If it is higher than 16, turn to page 133; if lower, page 64."
There’s a book series called Lone Wolf that is exactly that. There’s a character sheet inside the back cover and your copy it over from book to book
It was remade into an Android app, too!
The above-mentioned ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ series is all like that, though with different mechanics.
I think that concept is copyrighted.
Huh, let me google that
Alright so it’s apparently just a trademark on the term “choose your own adventure”, held by chooseco. So you can do those kinds of books as long as you don’t call it that.
It’s funny that there is a whole informal genre of CYOA stuff that uses the name, presumably in violation of that trademark, but actually has very little relation to those books and is more focused on spending points to build characters or settings.
Aah. I see. Didn’t Netflix get in hot water with them over that one Black Mirror thing?
Yeah, they were involved in a lawsuit. I don’t know who won though…
Can’t copyright game mechanics, because copyright involves a particular arrangement of words, visuals, or sounds. But can potentially patent them, not sure what the legal consensus in the Questionably United States is like about that.
As is tradition, copyright keeps getting confused with trademarks and patents time and again.
You can copyright the rulebook and the description of the rules.
You can’t copyright the rules themselves.
Like, for a dumb example, if you invented the game of baseball, you could write a book explaining the rules of baseball and how to play, and you could copyright that book and if anybody made unauthorized copies of that book or even just portions of it, you could sue them for copyright infringement. But you could not sue people for copyright infringement just because they were playing baseball without your permission … or writing books about playing baseball, etc.