A few questions about credits, reusing content and lore

[Wendek]

Hello!

(Sorry if this is not the appropriate subforum, but I don't think it fits the Development one)

Some of these questions might be stupid, but I'd rather ask than make some terrible faux-pas and then regret it. After all, I know close to nothing about that whole "open source" thingy and how it's used in practice. :p Anyway, I've started working on a campaign and I have the following questions :
-I'll have to use parts of the "Era of Chaos" and alter it for my campaign. In the description it says that I should just "link" to it as an add-on, but if I do that I can't change it right ? For instance if I want to make it so that one of the races doesn't spawn with the "weak" trait anymore. Or if I want to make my own unit and then associate it with any of the Era's races ? Basically : is it acceptable to copy the content that I need inside my directory ? (Knowing that I'm basically using only the Chaos faction from the era) Obviously I'll credit the authors of the Era.
-Speaking of modification, I hope it's acceptable to go and take some old, now-unused sprite (and icons, etc) and use it for a new unit of mine ? (Since there was an older version of the "Chaos" faction with different models, I can take the Demonologist and use it as a completely different unit for my campaign)
-Unrelated to "copyright" issues but related to "etiquette" : is there a canon and is it important ? I'm having trouble finding information about what's currently accepted for Chaos in the Wesnothian universe (I've played IftU a long time ago and it basically stops there), especially since what I intend to do will most likely break any canon anyway. In fact, I don't know enough about the huge Wesnothian lore to ensure that what I'm going to do won't break the "normal" canon as well. I suppose I can go around that by refering to humans as "humans" and never mentioning Wesnoth anywhere... but is there still a risk of it being confusing for players ?

Thanks for your answers. And if you're wondering "why the hell would someone get worked up about that?" well... I'm weird and I'm always afraid of breaking conventions and stuff. :p

[Raijer]

... As far as i know, as long as it's within Wesnoth and you give credits, you can do anything you want. From what i've seen, people will actually be glad someone is re-using their work somewhere else. You might need to tell the original authors you're using it just to check they agree. But in fact, i'm quite sure that if they uploaded it to the server, they will agree.
In short, as long as you give credits, i doubt anyone cares about how you modify an already existing Wesnoth era.

About canon, what's absolutely canon is the history of mainline campaigns (the one by default in the game).
If you're gonna use the chaos era, knowing more about what happens after the Fall could be useful. For that, there's Under the Burning Suns which is canon.
IftU can also be accepted as canon (well, that depends on the point of view, i personnally think it could be accepted into mainline with a few art changes).
You could also play After the Storm, which is IftU's sequel. It's quite awesome too.

For a chaos story, you can choose any time after the Fall, and you're kind of free of any other stories, as canon didn't do much about it.
You can just say "400 years after the events of AtS" or simply not say when it happens, i doubt anyone will complain. Of course, try to avoid saying something like "Kaleh got killed by a meteorite fall".

If you don't want to worry about this, you could say something like "this story takes place in an universe that looks a lot like the wesnothian one, but doesn't have the same history for this or that matter" and hop, you got rid of the "opposing canon" problem.


I hope everyone agrees with what i've said, feel free to correct if you don't.

[Wendek]

I'm mostly interested in the Chaos gods and "society" actually. Mostly because my story involves a kind of rebellion inside the forces of Chaos. I don't intend to mention Kaleh (forgot to mention I had played UtbS too, 'twas even longer ago though, I think it wasn't mainline yet) or any other characters for sure.

I'm also interested in how "sentient" Demons and the Chaos followers are considered. I'm pretty sure that part is the one that'll break the canon in fact. I think I'll go with that last idea yeah, or maybe just not mention it at first and use it as an explanation if people are actually bugged by this. Because for all I know, I'm just inventing problems out of thin air. :p

[zookeeper]

-I'll have to use parts of the "Era of Chaos" and alter it for my campaign. In the description it says that I should just "link" to it as an add-on, but if I do that I can't change it right ? For instance if I want to make it so that one of the races doesn't spawn with the "weak" trait anymore. Or if I want to make my own unit and then associate it with any of the Era's races ? Basically : is it acceptable to copy the content that I need inside my directory ? (Knowing that I'm basically using only the Chaos faction from the era) Obviously I'll credit the authors of the Era.

Yes, perfectly acceptable.

-Speaking of modification, I hope it's acceptable to go and take some old, now-unused sprite (and icons, etc) and use it for a new unit of mine ? (Since there was an older version of the "Chaos" faction with different models, I can take the Demonologist and use it as a completely different unit for my campaign)

Yes, perfectly acceptable.

-Unrelated to "copyright" issues but related to "etiquette" : is there a canon and is it important ? I'm having trouble finding information about what's currently accepted for Chaos in the Wesnothian universe (I've played IftU a long time ago and it basically stops there), especially since what I intend to do will most likely break any canon anyway. In fact, I don't know enough about the huge Wesnothian lore to ensure that what I'm going to do won't break the "normal" canon as well. I suppose I can go around that by refering to humans as "humans" and never mentioning Wesnoth anywhere... but is there still a risk of it being confusing for players ?

There's nothing wrong with add-ons not adhering to canon, so you don't need to worry about that as such. Chaos, demons and all that isn't really canonical in the first place. I wouldn't worry about being confusing for players unless you specifically contradict mainline content (as opposed to simply retconning it, for example), as people very well should expect to find all kinds of non-canonical outlandish things in add-ons.

You'll probably want to maintain some sort of consistency with the user-made content which features them (most notably IftU and its sequels, I suppose), if possible.

[Wendek]

Well the problem here is that from what I've seen, the few appearances of Chaos so far have been as omnicidal maniacs (which is, well, expected from demons and cultists I suppose). And the point of my campaign is exactly to make them something else. To speak in DnD terms, "my" Chaos followers will behave more as Chaotic Neutral than Chaotic Evil most of the time.

So I guess in the end it'll indeed be better to just say "This is an alternate universe" or something to be at peace. At least I'm fixed about the other questions by now, and they were the most important ones. Lore/Canon won't matter until people have played the campaign anyway.

[iceiceice]

Basically : is it acceptable to copy the content that I need inside my directory ? (Knowing that I'm basically using only the Chaos faction from the era)

You might want to change the addon prefix in the ids of the units etc. when you do this, so that you don't get collisions if you have both versions installed. But yeah, GPL explicitly gives you rights to take stuff from an add-on and modify however you please etc.

[Wendek]

Yes I've seen that I need to change a few lines for the files.
Also side question while I'm at it and it doesn't deserve a thread anyway : what would an acceptable "relief expression" be for Elves ? Thanks the gods (or "the goddess" ? I think they have one primary deity...) ? The Forest ? The Queen ?

[Iris]

I'm also interested in how "sentient" Demons and the Chaos followers are considered.

Fully sentient.

[Wendek]

Now that is some nice news. Because it means they have free will and emotions. Maybe I'm not as far from the canon as I originally thought. I guess I should play AtS, but man expert campaigns always get me mad 'cuz I suck.