WOT

I've been considering starting a Wheel of Time campaign, but I want to make sure that doing so on Roll20 wouldn't violate copyright. Does anyone know anything about that?

Unless you are putting up links to copyrighted material (ebooks, pdfs, etc..) that has been pirated you are fine for personal use. If your campaign is inspired and you paraphase (even snip small amounts of text) to get the feel for the setting you are fine with a fair use clause. You don't really want to copy and paste whole sections of the books (that is piracy) but if you do enough for people to get into the setting, it should be fine.

So using actual locations from the books would be ok as long as the story is different, and I don't copy/paste descriptions. Is that correct?

Typically, copyright concerns are geared around distribution. If you're using materials in your campaign, it's usually fine. If you're distributing that content, or otherwise allowing folks to copy it, that's an issue. Given your topic; using existing story or locations is perfectly fine so long as you're not distributing the source materials (ie: dupliacating the written work and allowing others to read it) verbatim.

Thank you.

Here is a U.S. Copyright Office reference on Fair Use, which gives the main points, <a href="http://copyright.gov/fair-use/more-info.html" rel="nofollow">http://copyright.gov/fair-use/more-info.html</a> I agree with Mark's reading that Fair Use considers a big difference between distributing large portions (which would constitute copyright infringement), versus personal use such as in your own private campaign with your players (which should be considered Fair Use). Additionally, if Wheel Of Time is a game/RPG, then its contents are meant to be used in your game with your players for purposes of playing the game (again, not for distribution to general public, but for the group's use in the gameplay).