Legendary Weapons "Not-A-Contest"

In order to help launch Swords of Our Fathers, we'd like to run a contest about designing legendary weapons. But contests are a real pain. There's a lot of legal stuff that has to go into real contests, and our lawyer is busy with other things right now. We're pretty sure that some states, like Florida, would make us file a deposit with the state for the value of the prizes. Other states wouldn't let you participate at all. And then there's the international participants and contest law. Perhaps you can see why we don't want a real contest.

But we do want to give you a creative outlet for your legendary weapon ideas.

The Big Idea

We've decided to ask you to submit weapons to us under the Open Game License, which is really easier and more fair than having you give full rights for the work to us (which is what most creative contests have you do). If you don't understand the OGL, please take some time to make yourself familiar. This is the only way you can make sure you're covering your own hind end. Details of the OGL can be found at http://www.wizards.com/d20.

Once you understand what you're getting yourself into with the OGL, buy Swords of Our Fathers (wink wink nudge nudge) and see the great stuff JD has already designed. Check out Mother's Venom, the free legendary weapon we've posted, too. And make sure to read JD's guidelines for creating legendary weapons. With those examples in mind, dig deep and write up your legendary weapon. Please follow the write-ups from Swords of Our Fathers as a template for your work. Then mail it to us at the account below.

To avoid any legal problems, we won't look at any messages unless they meet specific guidelines.

First, the subject must read "OGL Legendary Weapon."

Second, the following text must be at the top of the message before any thing else you write:

A d20 System Licensed Product. 'd20 System' and the 'd20 System' logo are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast, Inc., a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc., and are used according to the terms of the d20 System License version 4.0. A copy of this License can be found at www.wizards.com/d20. Requires the use of the Dungeons & Dragons®, Third Edition Core Books, published by Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
The author (or authors) of this email message hereby represents and warrants that he is over 18 years of age, is the sole author of this email message, and this email message does not infringe upon any statutory copyright, common law right proprietary right, or any other right whatsoever, and that he has not made any commitment with respect thereto in conflict with the terms hereof. The full content of this email message is designated Open Game Content. Material from Swords of Our Fathers, Copyright 2003 The Game Mechanics, Inc. Used with permission.

Yeah, it sounds legalese. It is. We copied it from some old contracts about writing adventures and we think it covers things pretty well. Basically, you're saying that the weapon idea you include is yours, but that you're putting the work fully under the OGL. You hold the copyright, but you're letting everyone and anyone who wants to operate under the OGL use it, free of charge, forever. That includes The Game Mechanics, Inc. and our website. Technically, you should remove the word "Material" and replace it with the list of actual stuff you're using from Swords of Our Fathers, which will probably be the specific scion prestige class name in this case.

Third, the message has to include the full text of the Open Game License at the end. Remember to update the copyright information in the OGL as directed by the OGL. You can get that text from the d20 website listed above.

The contents should be plain text, but we'll probably deal with simple HTML as well. We won't open attachments. That's computer suicide these days. You should also include your real name if you want credit by more than your email address. We're sorry we can't read ideas from people under 18, but the OGL is some dense legal material, and we want to make sure you can legally commit to following it.

Now that you've created an entire d20 System OGL product in an email message, send it to notacontest@thegamemechanics.com. Please keep it to one weapon per message—things will be easier to track.

The Payoff

The plan is to go through all the email we get, filter out the ones that don't follow the guidelines (we won't even look at non-OGC submissions since that could cause us legal problems later), and read through the rest for some well conceived, designed, and written samples (use your spell checker). We'll probably find a way to post the ones we really like on this website. They may even be included in a future book from The Game Mechanics, but that's not the current plan. If they are, the authors will get all due credit the same way the Mechanics would want credit if their OGC stuff was used in someone else's book.

We'd offer a prize for the best idea, but that'd make this a contest, and there's enough legal nastiness in this Not-A-Contest to make us want to avoid a real contest completely. There's no real deadline because, well, there doesn't need to be one.

So, have a look at JD's sample blades in Swords of Our Fathers, look into your home campaigns for inspiration, and let us see what you can do!