Open Adventure is a community-owned game system. The entire game system, its core rules, and even certain art, logos, and design elements are free for anyone to use. All the community-owned content (COC) was released under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) “No Rights Reserved” distribution license. This means the COC is free to use forever with no restrictions.
What is CC0?
CC0 is a Creative Commons license. Creative Commons (CC) is an international nonprofit organization that empowers people to grow and sustain the thriving commons of shared knowledge and culture needed to address the world’s most pressing challenges and create a brighter future for all.
You can find details about the CC0 license here.
A FAQ for the CC0 license is available here.
Attribution
There is no requirement under CC0 for you to provide any attribution to anyone who created the COC. In other words, you don’t need to give Marc Tassin, Mechanical Muse, Russell Marks, Shawn T. King, or anyone else who helped create the original COC credit when you create something new using the COC.
That said, it would be really nice if you did. The Mechanical Muse team put a ton of work into creating this, and giving a nod to those folks is both a personal and professional courtesy they would really appreciate.
What Can You Create?
Anything you want. Roleplaying games, boardgames, computer games, fiction, streaming content, card games, and anything else you can come up with are all okay to create. There are, quite literally, no limits to how you can use Open Adventure. Once you create something, you can share it for free, put it on a website, sell it, or distribute it in any way you like.
DISCLAIMER
The Content Creation & Licensing Appendix displayed here offers basic guidance for using the COC and does not constitute legal advice. If you have any questions or concerns, it is always a good idea to consult an attorney.
What Content is Community Owned?
All the community owned content (that is, the content released under CC0) for Open Adventure is listed and available for download here. Only the content listed there is available under CC0. Each piece of content licensed with CC0 is clearly marked as such. If new content is created in the future and released under CC0, it will be added to this archive.
It is extremely important to remember that if anyone (including you) uses the COC to create a new product, that product is owned by the creator. Even if someone creates a product that just presents the COC in a unique layout, that creator still owns that particular representation of the COC. You may not use anything others create using the COC unless they give you explicit permission to do so. The only thing you can use without permission or restriction is the indicated original COC content.
If you’d like an example, check out the Open Adventure Masterwork Editions created by Mechanical Muse. These full-color presentations of the COC are owned by Mechanical Muse and may not be used (in part or in whole) without permission from Mechanical Muse. Even though the text is the same as the COC and the images are just color versions of those shared with the COC, this particular representation of the COC belongs to Mechanical Muse.
How to Provide Attribution
There are no requirements about how to provide attribution (since it is completely voluntary), but here are some suggestions:
If you use the COC art, include the following in the credits:
Includes CC0 artwork originally created by Russell Marks.
If you use the COC layout or design elements,include the following in the credits:
Includes CC0 design elements originally created by Shawn T. King.
If you use the COC text and rules, include the following in the credits:
Open Adventure originally created by Marc Tassin and Mechanical Muse.
FAQ
Here are a few of the frequently asked questions about using the COC to create new content.