Official Orc Notice
This product is licensed under the ORC License held in the Library of Congress at TX 9-307-067 and available online at various locations including www.azoralaw.com/orclicense, www.gencon.com/orclicense and others. All warranties are disclaimed as set forth therein.
Attribution
This product is based on the following Licensed Material:
Society of Rafa Handbook, © Chickadee Tales, Inc., Rachel Atwood.
Reserved Materials
Reserved elements in the product include, but may not be limited to: characters, spirits, or locations introduced outside of the Society of Rafa handbook v1.0, any playable scenarios, etc.
Wholesale, verbatim replication of copyrighted descriptions are not permitted, but Chickadee Tales, Inc. seeks to allow downstream licensors to build from a common origin for the sake of a recognizable setting.
Expressly Designated Licensed Materials
Reserved elements in the product include, but may not be limited to: characters, spirits, or locations introduced outside of the Society of Rafa handbook v1.0, any playable scenarios, etc.
Wholesale, verbatim replication of copyrighted descriptions are not permitted, but Chickadee Tales, Inc. seeks to allow downstream licensors to build from a common origin for the sake of a recognizable setting.
In addition to the mechanics, Licensees may use the names, physical or psychological characteristics, and historical background of Characters, Spirits, or Locations within Society of Rafa Handbook.
For those who want to publish compatible games based on Society of Rafa
As is usual for the Open RPG Creative license (aka ORC), licensees may state compatibility with Society of Rafa TTRPG but not use Society of Rafa trademarks or copyrights or impersonate Chickadee Tales, Inc. under the ORC.
Also per the ORC license, any downstream products to licensees would be governed by the ORC license, indicating that mechanics introduced by licensees would be available to future incorporation by others. We actively hope this enriches the community’s available mechanics further.
Full color logo
Logo for dark backgrounds
Simple B&W logo
Are you telling me that I need a license to play with my friends?
No, absolutely not.
You can play Society of Rafa privately like any other TTRPG. And we are also very hands off when you share your own work freely -- post your experiences, art, fan fiction, and fan Scenarios without worrying.
We at Chickadee Tales hope to provide online spaces for fans to share with one another. Currently, please feel comfortable sharing on our Discord, but one day we'd love to enhance this site with a section for fan works. Reach out to us if you'd be interested in that.
This page is for those who want to formally publish and sell scenarios and expansions. If you abide by the ORC licensing herein you don't owe us any money or oversight on your creative or business work.
Publishing my own game for money sounds awesome. Are there any catches?
Do it! You don't owe us any money you earn or creative control over your work. The catch is that you cannot reproduce our copyrighted or trademarked assets, but we're letting you use the mechanics and world building.
You have our blessing through our adoption of the Open RPG Creative (ORC) license for Society of Rafa. You can read the license text or accompanying advice directly, since that's what governs our commercial relationship, but this page provides plain language understandings of how this works. Open licensing is built on good faith intentions that promote others' creative efforts by standing on our shoulders.
So, as for catches, let's start that it's meant to be a game license--irrespective of medium: TTRPG book or video game or some future format not invented yet. If you want to make an vocal Choose your Own Adventure game told by Amazon Alexa, do it!
Secondly, you agree that you won't use the materials that we leave "Reserved" or protected. That means you won't copy our text or artwork and sell it for yourselves. The vanilla ORC License guarantees that you can always use our mechanics like Healing Skills and Scenario structures freely. Furthermore, we are allowing you to use names, histories, and locations so that basic lore can be the same between our Scenarios and your own, which is normally protected by copyright. These extras are "Expressly Designated Licensed Materials" in ORC parlance.
Could you change the terms later and sue me?
No. The official ORC language is that "Licensor [Chickadee Tales] may not thereafter withdraw, modify, or revoke such offer to license the Licensed Material hereunder."
That means that we can't call backsies. This material is yours forever, until our copyright protection ends after we're dead and it goes public domain. (If we're remembered after we're dead, damn, thank you for the love!)
We offer advice in the Handbook for the types of Scenarios and play that are in the spirit of our original game, so we appreciate those who honor the same spirit in their own ventures.
Explicitly, you cannot pass yourself off as the originators of Society of Rafa, and must give us "Attribution" per the ORC License. Please credit us as follows:
Society of Rafa, 2023, Rachel Atwood and Jonathan Davidson.
If you would like to, you may use the language "Compatible with Society of Rafa" and we plan to release a badge image that you could use. Please note that these indicators would be optional and consumer-friendly.
So, I give you Attribution and don't steal your work, and other than that I don't even have to tell you I've done something?
Yup. We'll never come after you with that, but feel free to bring us along with you if your successes eclipse us, lol.
We earnestly wish you the best! You don't owe us, but we'll love hearing about any derivative works that you produce.
Can we do an example of a Healing Skill? What can I lift verbatim and what do I need to be careful of?
Let's look a screenshot of a skill at time of writing:
Above, we see the Mind Speak stats blocks, including layout, the Skill Name, prerequisite skills (if there were any), Specialties that can use the skill, etc. It's our stance at Chickadee Tales that everything other than the Vignette is absolutely fine to use as-is.
The Vignette is interesting, because it is primarily flavor text, material we still reserve under the ORC. So licensors like yourself may not lift that text verbatim although you may reference the characters of Rafa Kula or Luka who fall under the "Expressly Licensed Materials". The last sentence in BOLD however is direction for Storytellers to consider during play, so we consider that sentence free to use verbatim. To aid ORC Licensors, we go so far as to say that all bolded text in Rafa Skills are fair game for licensors to reuse.
What if I do want to use official Society of Rafa artwork, like a town map?
You have two main options as we see it, either:
- Create purely supplemental materials and direct customers to use your materials in conjunction with our game as the base
- Reach out to us to use an agreement other than the ORC License. Just because we're offering you the ORC license freely, you can still approach us at Chickadee Tales about closer collaboration under different licensing.
Email us with any additional questions at info @ societyofrafa.com, no spaces