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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
Does game maker Wizards of the Coast really want to create an open-source Dungeons & Dragons, or is it just trying to capitalize on the buzz?
Mar 29, 2000 | Have you ever cast a magic fireball into a lair of Orcs? If so, you might be able to imagine the overheated reaction within the Net's gaming community, when Wizards of the Coast announced that it was contemplating making the core rules to one of its prime properties, Dungeons & Dragons, open source. Wizards Vice President Ryan Dancey said in an interview earlier this month that the plan was to make the essential D&D rules available as a free license to anyone interested in creating, publishing, even selling their own D&D-derived work; his hope was that the move would spur sales of an upcoming release of the classic role-playing game.
The impact of this news caused double-hit point damage throughout the hardcore tech community. "Like computers and caffeine," Slashdot contributor Emmett Plant notes, "Dungeons and Dragons is a geek staple." What's more, Dancey's announcement linked the future of D&D to one of the most inspiring (to geeks) crusades in the kingdom of software -- the open-source movement, which declares that making the source code to software programs freely available results in better software.
The timing couldn't be better. Although Dungeons & Dragons, originally created in the 1970s by the legendary Gary Gygax, may seem rather hoary, fantasy role-playing games (RPGs) have never been more popular. On the Net, massively multiplayer role-playing games like Everquest and Microsoft's Asheron's Call are proving that RPGs can lure hundreds of thousands of players into persistent (and due to the monthly fees, persistently lucrative) realms of magical heroism. Meanwhile, "The Matrix" producer Joel Silver will bring "Dungeons and Dragons," the film, to the big screen this fall featuring Jeremy Irons, "American Beauty's" Thora Birch, and lord help us, Marlon Wayans. Also slated for 2000 release is the first film in New Line Cinema's version of the beloved "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, the Tolkien novels that imbued the genre with its essential tool chest.
But despite this excitement in the air, reaction to Dancey's plan has been decidedly mixed. The relationship between the corporate owners of Dungeons & Dragons and the fans obsessed with the game has not always been harmonious. Was Dancey simply trying to ride along on the bandwagon of the phenomenally popular open-source movement? Or was he really sincere, hoping to increase D&D's popularity and, at the same time, assuage some of the bad feeling accrued in the past? The answers to these questions requires a trip through D&D's twisty past, a journey almost as mysterious and labyrinthine as a dungeon campaign from days of yore.
In some online forums, to be sure, a few observers were optimistic: On Usenet, Henry Link proclaimed, "If this is drafted, then not only does [Wizards] benefit, but fans and small publishers benefit also." Rick Gutleber echoed this in a Slashdot post, saying, "Sounds like a return to the old days [when Gygax ran TSR] ... This is wonderful news for the players and the future of the game and RPGs as a whole."
In his Slashdot article, Plant quoted an Oregon game-store manager, who vowed to sell fan-created campaign modules and other game supplies published under "D20," the name Dancey proposes for D&D's open-gaming license. Until very recently, all Dungeons and Dragons material was largely confined to the forges of TSR, the company founded by Gygax, and since 1997, a subsidiary of Wizards of the Coast. (Wizards is the purveyor of the phenomenally popular Magic and Pokimon collectible card games and was purchased last year by Hasbro.)
Dancey's open-source suggestion also provoked some ominous flames of discontent from gamers still feeling the scars from an epoch when less benevolent rulers ran TSR. The company didn't want anyone posting any version of D&D or anything related to it (like the charts and graphs found in the rulebook) on the Internet. "[In the early-to-mid-'90s, TSR] sent out cease-and-desist letters to many, many people. It was a horrible, horrible time," says Bryce Harrington, project leader for Worldforge, an open-source, online role-playing game. "I couldn't believe this company, which had produced so many things we loved so much, could be so callous and vindictive. Kids who were just trying to share the fun of their game ... were being called thieves and threatened with legal action," says Harrington.
For the thing of it is, Dungeons & Dragons has always been, by design, open source. Back in my own more youthful days, occasionally (misspent?) as a Dungeon Master, I remember modifying this rule or that, as desired. By doing so, you then had a "patch," so to speak, on the gaming rules. It was "open" so far as you were willing to communicate your changes to other painfully introverted adolescents. In the beginning, this interchange was largely confined to infrequent game conventions and nearby gamers. But with the growing use of bulletin-board systems and Internet discussion groups, this became a worldwide, active consortium.
"When I first became involved with Usenet while in college, in the '92-95 time frame," Harrington reminisces, "there was a very strong sense of community-sharing and free gaming collaboration." This took many forms, from transcribing D&D's rules and supplementary material to data files, to creating game-management programs. Much of these migrated to Internet servers, where anyone, anywhere, could access them.
