Dancey brushes off the notion that this open-source idea is Wizards' ploy to pilfer from independent designers. But he defends the company's right to publish, with proper credit, the work of anyone who is using the official D&D core rules. Through the D20 license the company would be "... releasing our core-game system in an 'open condition'" he says. "In return, if a designer chooses to use that material to create a derivative work, and if we choose to use that work (with full documented credit) in a product we produce, I see no theft of value of any kind."

Dancey also believes it's the best way to mend the trust broken by TSR early last decade: "The open-gaming effort is the most visible action we could take to clearly state our position on the benefits of fan-created content."

Harrington has his own ideas about how Wizards could further mollify veterans like him: "An apology and acknowledgment would be a logical first step. Returning the contents of ftp.mpgn.com [TSR's proprietary server] to the public would be a good second step." On the whole, though, he seems impressed: "I applaud Dancey's vision, and think that raising the importance of open gaming is a service we as a community will always be grateful to him for."

If Dancey is right, and the open-gaming license is enacted with Dungeons & Dragon's 3rd edition, it would tap a market that is still, by his measure, the most popular RPG, online and off. "There are 1.5 million people who play D&D every month in the United States between the ages of 12 and 35," he says. A recent marketing study conducted by Dancey shows that D&D commands 60 percent of the table-based RPG market.

"Baldur's Gate, the D&D computer game, has sold more than a million copies [while] EverQuest has at most 300,000 people paying membership fees," says Dancey. "Asheron's Call is a nonstarter, despite the fact that it was funded and published by the largest software publisher in the world." In other words, the world is ripe for his wares.

All well and good, if the core rules can build on the game's appeal. "The rules are OK for what they are," says Robert Rossney, a longtime gamer. "The problem is what they are. They're overly mechanical, obsessed with the minutiae of hand-to-hand conflict and the notion that characters develop by accumulating money." Though D&D created the role-playing genre, he finds it lacking against its recent antecedents.

"D&D is very skimpy on actual role playing," says Rossney. "The rules in the games I like -- Legend of the Five Rings, 7th Sea, Over the Edge, Feng Shui -- emphasize character development and role-playing ... [and] none of the players spend much time arguing about whether a two-handed sword should really get a +2 bonus if it's wielded against spiked armor."

To this, Gygax gently demurs: "[D&D] remains the most popular of the RPGs. This seems to indicate that at least a plurality of participants want a system that deals mainly with combat and gaining treasure ... The RPG is a game form with many facets, but as with all heroic-quest theme entertainment, fighting and slaying evil foes is a key and central element."

But while D&D is still associated with the hack-and-slash, swords-and-sorcery mayhem that first enthralled teens in the '70s and '80s, mainstream culture now seems infused with a wildness that outstrips such trappings, accommodating everything from the satiric phantasmorgia of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" to the breakneck kinetics of Hong Kong action movies. Many of the games Rossney cites seem to reflect this promiscuous mix and match of genre and mood, accompanied by an ironic knowingness, which Dungeons & Dungeons decidedly lacks.

According to Dancey, however, "The D20 system, the core game rules themselves, are not D&D. They are a set of axioms which create a robust, fun foundation for a gaming experience ... Laying on top of that core is a healthy chunk of fantasy sword & sorcery rules ... But that layer can easily be altered; or completely replaced." In previous interviews, he has said he would be happy to see it applied to myriad unexpected genres and eras, from gothic horror to the old West.

Perhaps some future D20 variation may even take a cue from recursive movies like "Being John Malkovich" and the "Scream" series. In it, you'd play a game-company vice president with the Bard-like name of Dancey. To win, you'd need to regain the trust of embittered former loyalists and guide them through the bizarre Astral Plane known as the Internet -- where a cruel kingdom called Microsoft battles a guild of gnome-like tinkerers and their nebbishy leader, a sorcerer from faraway Finland, the one with an unpronounceable name and a magic penguin.

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