Quote from: King of Old SchoolThe open stuff is found online, and you can only use material from the online SRD or from a book which includes the OGL (Unearthed Arcana and Monster Manual III, IIRC, are the only Wizards' books which include the OGL).

Monster Manual II, not III.

And D20 Modern Weapons Locker.

Just some additional information:

I seem to recall Sean Reynolds mentioning something back when he was first explaining OGL that the rule set could not be either patented or copyrighted, and that the OGL was created basically so that what *was* copyrightable (flavor text, characters, setting, etc.) could be retained, with the added benefit of third-party book sales driving WotC book sales.

Additionally, many of the mechanics in SAGA seem to be similar to pre-existing rules... True20 has been mentioned, for example. I doubt there would be any problem whatsoever adapting SAGA's rules for other settings.

That said, "beating WotC to the punch with D&D 4e" wouldn't fly well, because too much of what is D&D -- all the non-rule stuff and even the name D&D itself -- is copyrighted by WotC.

If you wanted to post conversion rules online, however, I doubt you'd need to worry.

Yeah, I think you could easily take a lot of what makes Saga Edition a unique iteration of the d20 ruleset, minus the Star Wars IP of course, and write it in your own words so as to avoid any objectionable conduct.  The skill system, frex, is very similar to the Blue Rose iteration of True20; you could likewise do a rewrite and feature it in your own OGL games.

But if your reason for doing so is to "get the jump" on D&D 4e, I don't think there's much point.  True20 already does this in a lot of ways, and I don't think anyone perceives it as a threat to 4e in any way.  Likewise any Saga-derived fantasy OGL game published between now and 4e's release, unless you manage to marry your OGL mechanics to some eye-catching visuals and a high-profile fantasy license like LotR.

KoOS