A short history of D&D and open gaming
What's going on with Wizards of the Coast and the Open Gaming License?
Right now, there’s an enormous ongoing controversy linked to Wizards of the Coast, the Open Gaming License, and copyright. To understand this controversy, and to understand why Wizards of the Coast has been threatened with legal action by other game developers and a fan boycott as a consequence of trying to revoke the Open Gaming License, it helps to understand the history of the game.
This isn’t my usual topic, and I probably shouldn’t have taken the time out from promoting my newly-published book on the Electoral College in order to write this article, but D&D is one of my oldest hobbies. It has occupied a special place in my heart for a long time, and current events have caught my attention.
The Arneson era (1969-1976)
In the beginning (1969), a handful of creative players went off the rails in what had been intended as a simple tactical simulation of a Napoleonic war scenario by David Wesely. Among these creative players was Dave Arneson, who subsequently took over running the scenario. Two years later (1971), Jeff Perren and Gary Gygax banged together a polyhedron-based set of rules for a tactical miniatures game, called Chainmail.
Very soon (still 1971), Dave Arneson created the role-playing setting of Blackmoor, utilizing and updating the Chainmail rules. In 1974, the first version of D&D was published by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson as a product of the newly-formed company TSR, and spread to gaming groups across the country. This first version of the game assumed the use of another game to handle some situations, Outdoor Survival (which was published by Avalon Hill, not TSR).
By 1975, D&D had competition in a similar fantasy role-playing game, Tunnels & Trolls. The basic idea of a fantasy role-playing game and dungeon-crawling with a party of adventurers could not be copyrighted.
Players of D&D shared their house rules with each other and with TSR (with Gary Gygax in particular) leading to the addition of many new elements to the game (including a fourth core class, the thief, originating with a California group). Many - perhaps all - of the iconic elements of early D&D were invented by early players like Terry Kuntz, who came up with the now-iconic beholder. More detailed histories of D&D tend to cast Gary Gygax’s role as being mainly the man who integrated others’ creations together into one system.
Thematic elements were borrowed freely from a wide range of fantasy and science fiction novels, usually without direct citation. Most famously, this led to a lawsuit from the litigious Tolkein estate, which led to “hobbits” being renamed “halflings,” but it includes some things that are mainly associated with the D&D brand today, such as displacer beasts, vorpal swords, and the regenerating version of trolls.
The invention of D&D was the creative synthesis of existing fantasy literature with tactical miniatures rules and the idea of letting players do anything - not just fight - and this idea couldn’t be copyrighted. Neither could the numerous fantasy elements that D&D borrowed from the existing literature; and the ownership of ideas taken from fan work is unclear.
The Gygax era (1977-1984)
Although Arneson had developed the first role-playing setting and invented much of what is now recognizable as D&D, he left TSR in 1976, and the company published two new version of the game, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and Basic Dungeons & Dragons, in 1977..
In this era, there was an explosion of new material as D&D caught on in a big way, moving beyond the core network of wargamers and into stores across the country. Tie-in material started to come out, with Dragons of Autumn Twilight hitting best-seller lists in 1984.
Gygax tried to cut off Arneson’s royalties on the reasoning that the new version of the game was substantially different; Arneson sued. An out-of-court settlement was reached that gave Arneson a perpetual 2.5% royalty on all AD&D products. Material authored by Arneson was pulled out of D&D Basic sets. This was the first time that the company owning D&D had acted to cut out an existing creator from royalties due on the use of the material they’d come up with. It would not be the last.
House rules continued to proliferate as well as commercial third-party material compatible with AD&D. In 1982, Mayfair Games began publishing the highly successful Role Aids series. The TSR board convened and decided, reportedly against the advice of Gary Gygax, to launch legal action against Mayfair.
Mayfair didn’t back down, and since game mechanics can’t be copyrighted and Mayfair’s limited use of the D&D trademark was fair use (i.e., marking products as compatible with AD&D but not authorized by TSR), this legal action went nowhere and was settled out of court on terms that were generous to Mayfair. TSR had spent a significant amount of money on legal bills with no return on their investment.
Lorraine Williams era (1985-1997)
TSR was in financial trouble for various reasons, and in 1985, Gary Gygax was unceremoniously booted out by Lorraine Williams. The new executive had a traditional corporate background and no interest in the game. As Gygax was the credited author on AD&D core rulebooks, work on a new edition not authored by Gygax began soon after, in 1987. AD&D 2nd edition was published in 1989; this is the version of the game that I have used the most.
Lorraine Williams continued the litigious strategy pioneered against Mayfair Games, and TSR became known by the backronym “They Sue Regularly” as they pursued legal action against everyone from Gary Gygax to fans posting homebrew material on the internet - with limited success at inhibiting competition. Legal bills mounted. With ill-will growing in the community, increased competition from non-D&D games, and an aggressive publication schedule that relied on continuing purchases by dedicated fans, book sales stalled, leaving TSR with warehouses full of unsold rulebooks.
While fans regularly received C&D letters for circulating non-commercial homebrew content, third-party material fully compatible with AD&D 2nd edition, such as Kingdoms of Kalamar (1994) and a new Role Aids series, continued to hit bookshelves, as game mechanics were not copyrightable.
Additionally, as TSR continued to earn ill-will from gamers, other role-playing games using entirely different systems started to displace D&D, such as Vampire: The Masquerade (1991), which at some points in the 1990s looked like it might be more popular than AD&D. With the company teetering on the edge of total collapse and the player base increasingly alienated, Lorraine Williams sold TSR to Wizards of the Coast in 1997, an up-and-coming game company.
Wizards of the Coast, first era (2000-2006)
After buying TSR in 1997, Wizards of the Coast was bought by Hasbro in 1999. In 2000, a new edition of Dungeons & Dragons, known as D&D 3rd edition, hit bookshelves, accompanied by a big-budget film. The film flopped at the box office, but the new edition of D&D was a hit.
It was also accompanied by something called the Open Game License, which told 3rd party developers that they could develop D&D compatible material freely without being worried about sued by Wizards of the Coast, provided that they limited their use of the D&D trademark and didn’t use “Product Identity” elements, a list of characteristic spells and monsters that Wizards of the Coast’s legal team thought could actually be copyrighted. After a few small hiccups (leading to the release of a “3.5” version of D&D), D&D hit its stride.
The lessons of the “They Sue Regularly” (TSR) era were fresh in the minds of both fans and of developers at Wizards of the Coast, and the new business plan of the Dungeons & Dragons brand was a sophisticated one: Allow third-party developers to use the core game system of D&D freely in building similar games and compatible supplements, and that core game system would become the de facto standard for tabletop roleplaying games.
Since Wizards of the Coast had the most valuable trademark in the business (D&D), a strong market share, and the largest development budget, independent game developers helping grow the d20 sector of the tabletop roleplaying game market would be good for them. This plan was a massive success, as many independent game companies decided to publish d20 material in order to sell to D&D players - in many cases bringing their fans and players with them.
As the material released under the Open Game License consisted almost entirely of game rules with a limited number of descriptions of the more generic spells and monsters, and game mechanics cannot be copyrighted, it can be argued that the Open Game License didn’t give independent developers any real rights they didn’t already have. In effect, what Wizards of the Coast promised with the OGL was to refrain from launching rafts of merit-free lawsuits.
Wizards of the Coast, second era (2007-2013)
In 2006, Wizards of the Coast was at the center of a thriving and lucrative D&D-centric ecosystem in a growing tabletop role-playing game sector. However, corporate leadership was uncomfortable with the Open Game License. After receiving legal advice that the OGL could not simply be revoked, they released a 4th edition of the game with a new and more restrictive accompanying Game System License.
4th edition D&D made the largest and most substantial changes to the core D&D game mechanics than any other edition of D&D. Critical fans charged that it was like a video game more than a proper tabletop role-playing game, and many players were reluctant to switch. A few independent developers chose to publish under the more restrictive GSL; a few intrepid developers stood their ground. An updated Kingdoms of Kalamar campaign supplement, for example, did not use the GSL.
Other independent developers refused to have anything to do with 4th edition. Many continued to publish 3.0 / 3.5 compatible material under the Open Game License. At first, 4th edition D&D’s biggest competitor was the now-out-of-print 3rd edition D&D.
One publisher, Paizo, published a highly successful new game called Pathfinder that was, mechanically, more closely related to 3rd edition D&D than Wizards of the Coast’s new product. (Fans sometimes refer to Pathfinder as being D&D 3.75, as opposed to the 3.0 and 3.5 versions published by Wizards of the Coast.) It took off immediately. For several years, Pathfinder sold better than Dungeons & Dragons.
In the mean time, a few intrepid publishers continued to publish unauthorized compatible supplements instead of publishing under the GSL, such as the latest iteration of the Kingdoms of Kalamar campaign setting book. Wizards of the Coast had made two mistakes at once: They’d made major mistakes in the design of their new edition and their decision to transition away from the features that many of their existing players like, and they also alienated the independent publishers they’d come to rely on.
Wizards of the Coast, third era (2014-2022)
In 2014, Wizards of the Coast turned around, made the 5th edition more similar to older versions of D&D, and released it under the Open Game License they’d published in 2000. 5th edition D&D was, in many ways, closer to 2nd edition AD&D had been than 3rd edition was, and was easier for new players to learn than 3rd edition had been. They also started to reprint and sell old classic D&D books from the TSR era, and made a deliberate effort to reach out to fans of previous editions.
In other words, Wizards of the Coast had identified both the Game System License and their dramatic move away from past editions’ mechanics as mistakes. This worked. 5th edition was a smashing commercial success, very quickly becoming the most-played tabletop role-playing game, and a thriving market in 5th-edition supplements erupted. Wizards of the Coast was once again at the center of a thriving open D&D ecosystem.
Wizards of the Coast the 1.1 and 2.0 “Open” Game Licenses
Update: Following large-scale backlash from the community and a highly effective boycott, Wizards of the Coast decided not to try revoking OGL 1.0a, and instead released SRD 5.1 (the most recent SRD for 5th edition) under the Creative Commons license. This is a big win for the community and a good decision by Wizards of the Coast. The below paragraphs summarize what happened in the first few weeks of January 2023.
Recently, Wizards of the Coast has been working on a new edition of D&D, called “One D&D.” They recognized that, with the amount of community support for 5th edition, this version of D&D would be the main competitor to One D&D. They also recognized that if they simply pulled their own 5th edition products off the market, third party publishers would continue to support 5th edition, and at least one would produce an improved version of the core system.
They decided that the key to this was to revoke the Open Game License. Their instrument for this was issuing a “new version” of the OGL that was not in any way an open gaming license, had onerous terms that would give Wizards of the Coast complete control over licensees’ ability to publish material, and claimed that the previous version of the Open Game License was hereby “unauthorized” in order to force existing publishers using the Open Game License to sign their new license.
This revocation is arguably illegal, and many independent game companies they approached privately refused to sign. Some are exiting the market, some are putting their old OGL books on fire sales, and some are going forward with plans to challenge the revocation, make a new open game license not owned by Wizards, and in other cases decided to publish their next edition under Creative Commons.
The D&D community's reaction was vociferous enough that Wizards of the Coast’s D&D Beyond unsubscription page crashed from excess traffic, as did the websites of a couple of the largest independent publishers who made announcements to go forward with their projects. If Wizards of the Coast proceeds with their plans, they will face immediate opposition both in the courtroom and in the court of public opinion.
On the merits of it, they seem unlikely to be able to prevail in either arena if their opponents are resolved to fight - and at this moment, that seems to be the case. By the facts and the history of it, the long arc of D&D’s existence over the last half-century seems to point towards this being a poor business model. When the owner of D&D tries to shut down their competition with aggressive legal action, the only people who profit are the lawyers themselves.
It's getting MYCH worse at Wizards... https://youtu.be/zg-VJJDL99Q
What's going on with the movie? Producers now saying they want to detoxify the men in the movie! LoL ... What can possibly go wrong with this strategy?