All Things Unrelated

Intellectual Property is an interesting topic I've come across lately while working on my NWO Foundry stuff. There are clauses there to only use IP of Neverwinter related things and nothing else which is obviously to protect Cryptic from copyright violations. For example I can see how putting Batman in my campaign might cause a few problems (least of all plotwise! Don't worry, I'm not. :P) but they don't really make it clear just how much of the D&D multiverse we can use? If I make references to Krynn, Greyhawk or Spelljammer will I get in trouble? Probably not since people are actively recreating Ravenloft there as I type this.

Then I look at other games where the lines blur sometimes - Mabinogi is a great example. I'm not talking about where other Nexon related characters from their other games hop over occasionally, that is understandable. With the latest release players have the ability to pull off a "shadow clone" move, or kage-bunshin exactly like on Naruto down to the the hand seal. Previously they even had the vocaloid Hatsune Miku (a ridiculously popular singing synthesizer) feature prominently in the game as well, in addition to other anime characters who have been or are yet to be in the NA version.

On a much broader scope does this mean a game like Card Hunter (which I'm still waiting for access to, weeks after signing up. Not a good look in my opinion) are in violation for encroaching on Gary Gygax territory? Who even polices this stuff? The answer, in China anyway, is no one - as evidenced by this wonderful copy-pasted League of Legends rip-off called 300 Heroes. It slightly goes over the limit of what I'd call cross-over acceptable, don't you think?