Embedded Files
By releasing the D&D rules into the domain of Free Culture through the Open Game License of 2000, Ryan Dancey and Peter Adkinson ought to go down in history as the two of the greatest stalwarts of the D&D lifestyle since Gygax and Arneson.
This action alone will ensure that some form of D&D culture will continue to be supported “forever”. Dancey and Adkinson put their love of the game into action. They prepared that bold move during the short window of time from the purchase of TSR in 1997 until the sale of WotC to Hasbro in 1999, so that the OGL was already coming out of the oven when Hasbro took over the kitchen.
On the other hand, by selling D&D to Hasbro Incorporated, Adkinson and Dancey sacrificed the D&D brand name and the published D&D Worlds (such as Greyhawk, Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, and Mystara) to further descend into a corporatist prison. From the prevalent commercialist worldview, this sale is entirely understandable. I remember back on the old WotC message boards how Dancey frankly noted that the sale of WotC monetarily enriched, to a large degree, all the individuals who were stakeholders in WotC. It’s not bad that these individuals are now well-funded. I’m simply stating the trade-off that occurred.
A question for me is: how to free the D&D game, the D&D worlds, and the D&D culture from corporatism?
Corporatism distorts culture
Corporatism affects the cultural substance of the D&D lifestyle, and even affects the quality of the D&D offerings or products. While there were some good things about 4E, the culture around it was tainted. The game was re-shaped in a way which was not contiguous with its existing cultural community. Rather, for speculative economic reasons, the game was made into a form which was supposed to attract the MMORPG market. I’m not suggesting that a game should stagnate, and cater only to longtime grognards, but for 4E, sheerly economic motives noticeably intruded into the creative design process. In hindsight these motives proved to be inadequate.
Then the corporatist GSL killed the goodwill. Instead of the Open Game License, the "Game System License" required third parties to pay Hasbro a fee, and the GSL could be revoked at the whim of Hasbro. Considering how Hasbro viewed its third-party licensees as "competitors" (as evidenced by its pulling the rug out from under them with the 3.5E switcheroo), and considering how Hasbro (purposely?) dickered around with them by delaying the GSL, resulting in the hemmorage of third party product releases, it's not surprising that relatively few publishers relished submitting to Hasbro in this way.
"We were also promised that there would be a third-party license, similar to the OGL, really soon.
"When we got back to Seattle, we anxiously awaited the opportunity to playtest 4th Edition, but that never materialized, and the license that eventually became the GSL was delayed month after month. Meanwhile, the more the public learned about 4th Edition, the more our community—and our gut—was telling us not to go there."
—Lisa Stevens, Paizo CEO, "The Year Everything Changed"
I myself remember the feeling I had when I saw the GSL, and saw the new 4E-licensed products and game aids. I felt that D&D was now an insider’s game, and that I was no longer a sovereign participant who might make and distrubute my own OGL game someday, as a free contributor to the D&D lifestyle. Now I was only supposed to be a “customer” and “consumer” and “fan”. I was viewed as Hasbro’s beeotch.
Then there was the Stern Chastisement from the Hasbro rep, in regard to some fools who pirated the just-released 4E splatbooks. A message from this corporate big shot was handed down by Hasbro to be posted on the frontpage news of EN World. Had this fellow ever played a game of D&D in his life? This too was a culture-killer. I felt as if Hasbro viewed me and the gaming community as naughty children who needed a stern talking-to from Mr. Hasbro Yes-Man.*
*(I'm sure in everyday life he's a fine person. I'm speaking of the role he was playing in this episode.)
The authentic purpose of copyright
The legalists in the corporate world, and even among the community of rpg aficionados, will always chime in that any deviance from the Federal Copyright Law of the United States is THEFT and BURGLARY which should be punished to the fullest extend of the National Law. Some fans in the community seem to take pleasure in showing how well they understand and respect the national law—making sure that the woman who self-published a book which used a map and names from Hasbro's D&D World of Mystara was promptly reported to the authorities.* While I don’t advocate sabotaging sales from books which are still in print, in regard to the Copyright Extension Act of 1998, I ask: “Who’s the thief?” In the early days of the American Republic, copyright was for 14 years. Yet in 1998 the Walt Disney Company and the entertainment industry purchased—through the legalized bribery known as campaign contributions—a gigantic extension...to 120 years.
*(This is described in "Tracey Allen, Plagiarism, and Copyright Infringement" and at the Mystara Piazza. Her case wasn't helped by how she avoided frankly admitting the source of her map. But what I found strange was how D&D fans went after her.)
Not everything which is good for business is good for human culture. The original and genuine purpose of copyright is to provide material support for an artist or inventor just long enough for that person to create something new—not to perpetually lock down our cultural wellsprings and shared mythologies into immortal corporations, or to provide a pension to the blood descendants of someone who had a bright idea, so that their grandchildren can sit on their duff and play polo in some Caribbean paradise.
Humanity is being nursed on corporate-owned mythologies
Though my imagination was nursed on the D&D Worlds, and thus have a love for them which is hard to walk away from, I feel some distaste for how I was raised on corporate-owned mythologies. Besides the D&D Multiverse, I have the Star Wars Universe and Marvel Universe (both now owned by Walt Disney Company) in me, along with many others—from Thundarr the Barbarian to Doctor Snuggles to Smurfs. Disrergarding the quality of these mythologies—all of which do have at least some gold nuggets of meaning and wisdom within them—the thing that gets me is that even though these mythologies are a part of me as an adult, I’m not legally free to contribute to their further unfolding.
There’s some quote from an early World of Greyhawk book which says something like: “Now this world is yours to do with as you wish!” (I can’t find the exact quote; if someone has it, let me know.) But if one is not free to share one’s work outside of one’s immediate circle without a face-off with the National Law, and is not free to be paid or gifted with “bread” for one’s contribution, then it’s not really open and free. My sentiments are locked in a corporate-shaped box.
The traditional mythologies of earlier epochs of humanity were not locked down by economic corporations. In primeval cultures, storytellers would embellish and extend the myths with each telling, and, if their contributions evoked unforced gratitude, they would be materially supported for their cultural offerings.
From Open Gaming to Free Culture
There is an idea which goes beyond Open Gaming-as-it-exists. The idea is to go even further in the direction of Free Culture. The nascent Free Culture Movement is initiated by Lawrence Lessig, the founder of Creative Commons. But others, such as Think OutWord free culture group, which I’m a member of, would take it further.
Some would say we should be tickled with delight that Basic D&D is “free”. Yes, I’m glad that it's monetarily free. Yet Free Culture is about both kinds of free:
1) Monetarily free, so that cultural services are not bought and sold as commodities, but are freely available regardless of our economic status. The producers of cultural objects would be freely supported by freely given gift monies.
2) Copyright free, so that the cultural offerings are free from legal hindrances which would block their being improved, tinkered with, kit-bashed, and shared. And free from hindrances that would block others from receiving bread for their efforts. Without this kind of freedom, the police and courts will come in and destroy one’s life if one attempts to share one's own rendition of a corporate-owned fictional world.
The "Social Rule of Three"
Every organization and activity within human society is either economic, political, or cultural. That’s the “Rule of Three” of the social organism.
Food, shelter, clothing, and transporation are economic. The healthy goal for economic products is for them to be fairly-and-truly priced—charging just enough for the producer and distributor to live a dignified life long enough to make the next product, and to support the economically un-productive (children, disabled, elderly).
Laws, citizenship, and human rights (moreso than corporate rights) are the political sphere of life. In a healthy society, laws and civic rights are not for sale. In a genuine democracy, only individual adult citizens, representing only themselves, would have any voice whatsoever in the shaping of laws and rights.
And “culture” isn’t only opera. Though most fields of culture have been snagged by either business or government, the domain of culture rightfully includes education, art, science, worldviews (religion and philosophy), medicine, libraries, museums, media, and several other fields of life.
Nearly all of the social ills in the whole wide world are caused by the entanglement of these powers: economic, political, and cultural. When one of the three interferes and intrudes into the activity of the other two, then societal distress and injustice are the result. In these times, it is economic power which is most often overstepping its legitimate sphere of activity. Monied power purchases government candidates. Between corporatism and governmentalism, there is little space left for authentically free culture.
What’s this threefold separation of powers have to do with D&D?
D&D has cultural potential
D&D isn't a government agency. D&D is presently a business. But the authentic roots of D&D and rpgs lie in culture. Culture is about meaningful stories, warm-hearted times, and good clean fun. It’s about what J.R.R. Tolkien calls the threefold purpose of fantasy stories: Escape, Recovery, and Consolation.* I hope I don’t sound too hoity toity when I say that the D&D adventure is a cultural journey. A band of adventurers of diverse origin set out on a Quest. That’s the human story. That’s culture.
*(J.R.R.T. "On Fairy Stories" pdf.)
Gygax once said that he predicts that tabletop RPGs are going to become a sideline phenomenon relative to the computerized MMORPGs such as Warcraft, in a similar way that live theater has mostly been replaced by television and films. I suggest though, that TRPGs, despite their being perceived now as a geeky subculture, are social artforms and cultural vehicles of the future. My perspective is that in the coming century, there will, or may be, a rollback of passive forms of entertainment. Inter-active, face-to-face, humanized cultural forms of play are glimpses into an approaching future of cultural realness. Examples include: Bread & Puppet Theater, civic masques (such Percy McKaye’s St. Louis play which had a local cast of thousands), “murder mystery” style dinner party games, live action roleplaying...and tabletop pencil & paper rpgs.
D&D has become economicized and governmentalized
Corporatist values have shaped D&D culture ever since Gygax's beloved hobby fellowship was turned into a conventional American business through a hostile takeover (which wasn't helped by Gary's own difficult streak). Though hardly avoidable given the societal system in which TSR, WotC, and Hasbro are embedded, the one-sided corporatist influence in the rpg hobby is nevertheless an intrusion of economic power into the cultural life. Yet WotC was still a small-ish company whose ownership was youthful, energetic, and loved D&D.
While probably all of the Hasbro D&D design team loves D&D, it is likely that they are to some degree hampered by the corporatist culture in which they are couched. It may not be easy to make a bold, risky, unorthodox, but health-bringing move. There aren't many rpg design positions which cover the house payment, healthcare, student loan repayment, and college tuition for the youngins. Hasbro is a very large publicly-traded entity which, like all stockholder corporations, is vulnerable to the pressure to put short-term profit above all other concerns. Stockholders can cash out at any time, and so don't have to have any deep, inherent interest in what is actually produced; Hasbro could be manufacturing gazebos, or canning blancmange, as long as it's raising the cash value of stock shares. But real life and the real economy are about practicing loving interest in things.
The longer and longer extension of copyright law is a corporatist-purchased distortion of a genuine rights life. D&D has been around for 40 years, but I would still be accosted by the national government if I offered my own iteration of the game and called it Shane Henry's Dungeons & Dragons RPG or published my own worldbook called Shane Henry's D&D World of Mystara. This is a concrete manifestation of the governmentalization of D&D; the political state is intruding into the domain of free cultural creativity. I feel it's not an inherent sin or tragedy to break the National Law-as-it-exists. I'd love to write Mystara books (I do have a few articles in the Vaults of Pandius, the official Mystara website), and several of my friends do a great job with amateur publishing (for example, Threshold magazine), yet it would be more feasible to take the time to write and self-publish D&D sourcebooks and adventures if I and my friends were free to accept remuneration for our efforts.
From economic service to cultural service
Mike Mearls recently said that answering customers' questions is a kind of service. That’s true. And that’s a great improvement from how Lorraine Williams treated gamers like cretins, or how when one Ravenloft enthusiast showed his compiled timeline to a TSR rep, he received the response: “get a life!”* (I’d ask the corporate rep: Why are you purveying such evocative mythologies, and profitting off them, if you think they’re beneath you? You're too cool to express genuine fondness for the fictive worlds of D&D? You're just in it for the bread and butter? )
*(Recounted in John W. Mangrum's Ravenloft Timeline: Fraternity of Shadows (.doc download). I realize that the TSR worker, William Conners, obviously has affinity for D&D since he wrote Ravenloft sourcebooks and novels, and that he said it in a half-joking way, but still it's not such a nice thing to blurt out.)
Yet the goal of the Free Culture impulse is for every cultural field—including gaming—to shift from the economic service model to the hardly-yet-manifested idea of free cultural service. Instead of customers and fans ("fan" is short for "fanatic"), there are participants, co-creators, enthusiasts, and aficionados. ("Enthusiast" orginally meant "filled with the gods" and "aficionado" means "someone with fondness and affection.")
This is not only a change in vocabulary. The goal is to free all fields of culture-shaping power from both corporatism and governmentalism, by making a third sector which does not charge any fees for its cultural services, and which is supported only through freely given donations from participants. Selling cultural services is like the Church selling sacraments. The Free Culture Movement is the Protestant Reformation of our time.
“Philanthropy is about putting your heart into something and then giving it to the world for the love of it. It is not a marketing tool.”
—Rob Lang, "ENnies and philanthropy and you", The Free RPG Blog
What hindered the Second Golden Age?
The early 2000s were halcyon days for D&D, the likes of which hadn't been seen since the Red Box/Orange Spine days. So why did it end? What smothered the continual flourishing and growth of the 3E/d20 System/OGL era? Others such as Dancey have spoken of the breakdowns in strategy. Mike Mearls wrote a thoughtful essay awhile back called: “Has Open Gaming Been a Success?” Besides what Dancey and Mearls say, I think that there are six important factors, some of which have been voiced by others. But some of this I believe no one else has put their finger on. Here are six hindrances which brought that “Second Heyday” to a close:
1) 3.5E punctured the cultural "glow". I suggest that when continuity is ruptured, this destroys the cultural base. Despite their technical improvement to the rules, Hasbro’s 3.5E shift is when my interest started to wane. The corporatist “competition”-minded management wanted to knock their “competitors” out of the marketplace. 3.5E was a dick move. Hasbro succeeded in making many d20 publishers disappear...including such luminaries as Necromancer Games. Hasbro ruptured the culture. The arrival of 4E, despite my brief interest in flipping through the new books, is when my patronage of D&D ended. I never bought a 4E product. Pathfinder rose not because the OGL opened the door to “competition”, but because Hasbro killed the golden goose. (If WotC had been close-fisted from the start, the 3E boom would've never happened anyway.) Hasbro's conventional corporatist mentality got scared, and instead of spreading D&D's wings further, it closed, contracted, and clenched. And its sales contracted. Mearls has expressed awareness of this when he said something to the effect that requiring the participants to purchase a new set of rulebooks is disruptive, and therefore that 5E is intended to only gradually change through well-playtested revisions which have already been adopted by a plurality of D&D game-tables.
2) 3E was way more coherent than AD&D, but still too crunchy. Though we didn’t realize it at the time, 3E was too gearheady and slow-to-play. This is the one thing that Hasbro’s team has clearly realized and gotten right so far. At long last, D&D is streamlined enough that I’m confident I could share this game with my Catan-playing friends who aren’t naturally “gamers”. The 5E iteration is a good contribution in this regard.
3) The OGL was still too much legalese. Mearls expressed his remorse that "we never did put that OGC wiki together". My view is that one reason the “great Open Game Content wiki” never materialized is because it was too much of a hassle to credit each previous developer. I suggest that, unlike the 3E-era, that Hasbro not use the Open Gaming License which requires people to keep track of legalese, but simply release the text of the 5E rules into the Public Domain. Let’s put principles (love of the game) above personalities (having to credit each source in the legal appendix). Just let it flow.
4) The d20 “system” wasn’t really a seamless cross-genre game system, but rather, was a design template for building discrete “d20 games”. For example, WotC’s Wheel of Time, Call of Cthulhu, and Star Wars d20 rpgs, despite their mechanical resemblance to D&D3E, were not directly compatible, since Vitality Points and various other snags hindered cross-world play. If these had been seamlessly compatible with 3E, they would’ve had more sales and longer shelf life. This also would've made it more likely that the stand-alone OGL third-party games (such as Conan and Spycraft) would've used the D&D rules as-is. For 5E, I suggest that Hasbro release a D&D Modern book which is 100% compatible with the medieval fantasy rules so that a PC could, like Murlynd, multiclass in Fighter/Gunslinger/Starship Pilot with no rules tweaking necessary.
5) The glut of mediocre and poor products has been voiced by many. Yet Hasbro overreacted. The cream would rise to the top before long. This could've been facilitated by Hasbro initiating a "Quality Mark" association with those companies who consistently put out quality product, such as Paizo, Green Ronin, Malhavoc, and Necromancer. The game distributors and retailers, and the gaming public, could've been educated about why this Quality Mark signifies a worthwhile product. This would've required Hasbro to act as a peer to its "competitors" instead of as a sly, dickering dog-eat-dog giant. That's the difference between Association and Corporatism. Instead of clearing the market through the 3.5 rupture, and then killing and splitting the market through 4E, the emptying of the dregs would've allowed the 3.0 glow to happily resume.
6) I believe that no one has voiced this before, but another factor in the waning of the Second Golden Age, is that no one at WotC thought of using Dancey's strategy to fuel worldbook and novel sales—namely, of opening their world-specific IP (not only the rules IP) for anyone to develop freely, so that sales of the core worldbooks such as the FRCS would be fueled by third party publishing and self-publishing.
What's to be done?
This is not about dwelling in the problem. These are the suggested actions toward solving what is in the way of a Third Golden Age:
Action #1: I suggest that in early 2015, WotC release Basic D&D as a Free Culture document. By Free Culture, I mean the text is released into the Public Domain, with no licensing required whatsoever. So that it’s not only monetarily free and free to be kit-bashed for one's own small gaming group, but is also free to be used by any and all third parties and self-publishers. In that way, the 5E game system would be poised to become the basic text of a Third Golden Age of roleplaying. Further updates of the Basic D&D text would be released into the public domain as well. Forget about all the existing legalistic designations as to which names, such as “beholder” are Hasbro IP, and which one's aren’t. Release them all into the public domain. To the cultural creative faction within Hasbro: tell the corporatist-lawyer faction to hold onto their seats and see what happens.
Free Culture logo
Action #2: I suggest that over the course of the next three years, from 2015 through 2017, take every single TSR/WotC rpg book and novel which is no longer in print, and formally free it into the Public Domain. Make each new Free Culture release a celebrated event. Do these ceremonies so that they're coordinated with new 5E releases. For example, publish a 5E worldbook every few months (2 or 3 worldbooks a year), and for each one, release all the previously-published setting materials for that world into the Public Domain...the entire text, art and all...relevant DRAGON and DUNGEON magazine articles...the world-specific web enhancements and online articles...everything. Also free the related rulebooks at an opportune time: OD&D, BECMI, 1E, 2E, 3E, and 4E.* Turn the D&D Classics website into a free download site, but add a donation button so that we could freely contribute a few dollars here and there.
*(As part of this celebration, I suggest that Hasbro produce special editions of the three core 5E books which mimic the original fonts and illustrations from each earlier edition; for example a manila-colored, stapled version of 5E to celebrate the Free Cultural release of all the OD&D rules, and a orange-spined version of 5E to celebrate the freeing of the AD&D 1E rulebooks. In February 2012 I shared this idea with then-Art Director Jon Schindehette, and his response: "This is an interesting concept. [...] It certainly would be fun doing a OD&D version and a 4e version in the same breath...and all the rest of them. I'll kick the idea to the business team and see what they think about the business end of this idea. Thanks for sharing!")
Though I'm grateful the D&D Classics are becoming available again (after they were "sternly" removed out of fear of pirates), speaking from my own experience, here’s why the existing monetization of the PDF downloads will be a hindrance to sales of 5E worldbooks: I don’t have the money to buy a bunch of PDFs (much less collectible hardcopies), and so since I can’t keep up with earlier lore about a setting, I don’t bother buying the new campaign setting books. I’m not going to buy some 5E Eberron or Forgotten Realms worldbook when I know I’ll never have the means to really become fluent in the setting. Yeah I know everyone says: “just take the information from the worldbook and make it your own!”...but if the sentiment which is invested in a world’s continuity is not a factor in sales, then why bother with published settings at all?
If I had, say, the entire Dark Sun and Eberron corpus on my computer, at my fingertips, I might very well buy the new 5E Dark Sun or Eberron worldbook, because I’d know I could really use all those resources to make an immersive experience for my players. And...since it'd all be Public Domain (except for the 5E worldbook itself), I’d know my investment was really worth my time, because I could then write and publish my own Dark Sun and Eberron adventures, guidebooks, and novels.
Short of Public Domain, I'd be just as happy with an easy-to-use license which permits D&D rules and setting IP to be used only for works which are not sold, as long as the license permits donations (including donation-based kickstarters) to be received; and as long as the license permits the hardcopy publishing of books if the author and game producer receive no royalty for the work, so that the hardcopy price covers only the cost of printing and distributing. (A further stipulation could be that all such hardcopies have to have a link to a free PDF download posted in the front matter.) Such a "copyleft" license would be in line with the goals of Free Culture, and would allow even hardcopies, not just digital texts, to freely flow.
The schedule could look something like this:
2015
All Forgotten Realms setting books (from all rules iterations) and all 2E rulebooks* are freed into the Public Domain when the 5E FRCS is published. *(Since FR was the “core setting” of 2E. Theoretically all the kits and other generic 2E splat at least existed in Toril.)
All Planescape and Spelljammer books are freed when the 5E Manual of the Planes comes out.
All Greyhawk materials and OD&D, 1E, and 3E rulebooks are freed when the 5E Greyhawk worldbook comes out.
2016
All Eberron materials are freed in synch with the 5E Eberron worldbook.
All Dragonlance setting books and SAGA rules are freed when the 5E Dragonlance worldbook comes out.
All Dark Sun materials are freed to go with the 5E Dark Sun worldbook.
2017
All Mystara, Blackmoor, and BECMI rules are freed when the 5E Mystara worldbook comes out.
All the d20 Modern books and non-fantasy rpgs (such as Boot Hill, Gangbusters, Dark•Matter, Gamma World, Star Frontiers, and Star*Drive) and rulebooks (such as Alternity) are freed when the 5E D&D Modern book is published.
All the rest of the settings are then freed (Birthright, Jakandor, Pelinore, Nerath, and so forth) and the 4E rulebooks are freed.
As has been hinted by Mearls, I agree that Hasbro ought to only release a few books per year, and keep them in print, instead of bogging us down with month after month of disposable splatbooks and magazine articles. If those worlds were opened to the Public Domain (except for their 5E worldbook), the aficionados and third parties would publish plenty of supporting articles and adventures each month.
Or what?
...Or Hasbro could keep those IPs locked down for 120 years, as one-by-one the less “popular” D&D Worlds are mothballed and the “Next Eberron” is invented wholecloth every decade. The less “economically viable” worlds (basically everything but Forgotten Realms) then lag and sink as the next generation of gamers no longer have the opportunity to develop interest and fluency in those other worlds.* As a Mystara-man myself, I’ve witnessed how Mystara has fallen from being the second-most beloved world in the early 1980s (after Greyhawk), which myriads of my peers experienced though the Red Box, with its Bargle the Infamous and Aleena the Cleric, and through the Blue Box's village of Threshold and and Isle of Dread...to becoming the butt of Hasbro's April Fools joke. I’m glad to see Mystara mentioned in the Basic D&D text, but Mystara will never flourish again unless it is freed by its corporatist steward.
*(As far as the truism that supporting multiple D&D worlds fragments the consumer base, I suggest that for 5E, the D&D Multiverse be presented again as a coherent, plane-hopping, multi-world setting composed of all WotC’s worlds. Don’t even use setting logos, except for a little logo on the back of the book, similar to the “Era logos” on the back of Star Wars books.)
I’m not against new settings being developed. But let’s open up the IPs so that all of the various fragmented communities can get excited about D&D again. And in the D&D culture, there’s hardly anything more exciting than being able to write and publish one’s own work in a shared world, and to receive a bit of bread for the trouble, instead of being forever relegated to “fandom”. Each author’s depiction of the D&D Multiverse and its worlds would explicitly be an alternate, parallel multiverse, separate from “WotC’s D&D Multiverse.”
What’s in it for Hasbro?
The knee-jerk, corporatist thought is that the more tightly something is held, the more profitable it will be. Dancey suggested that the opposite gesture is true. And the sales of the 3.0E core books proved him true. The thing is: every mention of the words “D&D”, “Forgotten Realms”, and "Dragonlance”, no matter what the context or rules iteration, propagates awareness of, and interest in, the D&D culture. And because of the Hasbro team’s savvy, and because of Hasbro’s material resources, the Hasbro PHB, MM, and DMG, and the Hasbro campaign setting books, would remain basic texts whose sales are fed by that interest.
Free Culture + D&D = possible or impossible?
Because I don’t know of anyone who is positioned within Hasbro who is personally devoted to Free Culture, I admit that it is unlikely for my plea to be taken up. And I’ll probably be hammered or ignored as a “dreamer” by much of my D&D and EN World community.* I may have to wait until “Seventh Edition” to see D&D released from corporatism. Yet imagine if a more youthful Dancey had, as a relative unknown, written a letter to TSR in 1989, during the roll-out for Second Edition. Imagine that his letter suggested that AD&D 2E be released with an Open Game License. His letter would’ve been thrown in the wastebasket. The idea of Open Gaming just wasn’t in the mindset of TSR employees and management yet.
*(Edit: My post was locked by an EN World administrator within six hours. Ah well...live and let live.)
Am I picking on Hasbro because it’s the giant? No. I’m aware that Paizo, despite its more vibrant culture, has still only partially realized Free Culture. Pathfinder is half-free or quarter-free. Though, as far as I understand, Paizo cannot legally release its OGL-based material into the Public Domain, since it's still under the OGL license, I suggest that Paizo gradually release the Golarion IP into the Public Domain. Has anyone hurt Paizo by crassly reprinting and selling the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Reference Document? No. Likewise, it’s just “business superstition” that people would do the same with the Golarion IP if it were consciously and ceremonially released (not dumped) to the Public Domain.
The Third Golden Age of tabletop roleplay
Those two suggested actions—1) releasing 5E Basic D&D* into the Public Domain, and 2) freeing all the TSR/WotC settings into the Public Domain, so that their Hasbro-published 5E worldbook sales can benefit from synergistic interest—would bring the awaited Third Golden Age of roleplaying.
*(That is, a Basic D&D updated with all the classes, races, monsters, and key DM info from the three upcoming core books.)
Under these conditions, not only would there be a massive increase in self-publishing and third party publishing, but Hasbro’s 5E books would retain steady sales over the long term, and would remain in print for years.
On the EN World forums, readers rolled their eyes when I suggested that if 5E Open Gaming were done right, then within 6 or 10 years, there could be 5E worldbooks published for the worlds of all 57 authors who are listed in Appendix E in the 5E PHB. No one believed me.
Has everyone forgotten that within three years—from 3.0E in 2000 to 3.5E in 2003—70-some existing IPs (such as Babylon 5, Conan, Deadlands, and Farscape) had been fully or partially published with d20 rules? (Here’s a link to a rough list of d20 IPs as of 2003.) Not to mention the hundreds of new-for-d20 IPs, such as Freeport, Dragonstar, Scarred Lands, Spycraft, Darwin’s World, Sidewinder, Thrilling Adventures, and Mutants & Masterminds.
If the Hasbro leadership were to enact this, then at least in regard to the D&D gaming community, no longer could Hasbro be vilified as a cold corporatist entity, but would be rightfully viewed as a cultural benefactor who freed these fictive mythologies and worlds which have so endeared themselves to us. And Mike Mearls and his team would be lionized as great heroes of the D&D lifestyle and culture.
If, come 2015, Hasbro flubs the Open Game, then I myself will probably lose interest in the D&D brand, regardless of how streamlined and playtested the system is. Maybe I’d use Basic D&D until Paizo or someone makes a D&D 5.5, but I’d avoid buying any Hasbro products in the meantime, since I don't want to get entangled with some imaginal axiom which I cannot freely elaborate and share.
An invitation
If any of the EN World participants and other gamers are interested in Free Culture, you’re welcome to attend our “Prospects for a Free Culture” workshop on September 5th through 7th, in eastern Upstate New York (near the Massachussetts border). The event is not specifically about gaming, but we'll touch on the various potentials for a Free Culture movement in our time, in every field of culture. There’s no set donation required. Here's the registration page. Come as you are.
Epilogue
I linked to this blog again in a second post on the EN World RPG news forums, entitled "I'll Make my Own Fifth Edition." There were a 104 replies, including from Morrus, the operator of EN World, and over 5000 views. It was a challenge to field all the questions and concerns about Free Culture and tabletop RPGs, yet I feel satisfied that I thoughtfully responded to most.
Four days later, Mike Mearls, the brand manager of D&D at Hasbro, in an interview with Morrus, responded to some of the concerns I voiced. ("30 Minutes with D&D 5E's Mike Mearls")
In regard to my perception that the design of 4th Edition D&D was inordinately influenced by the sheerly economic reason of trying to bring in the computer gaming crowd:
Mike Mearls: "And I think what 4th Edition, looking back, what we were trying to do was to start predicting for D&D where we thought the game was heading… so that was a big part of it. So what we think, when people are coming to role-playing games, they’re going to have that MMO background or a video game background. ... There are a lot of games which have managed to be ahead of their time or have defined genres, right? Like World of Warcraft is a great example, or first-person shooters like Halo for the console. ... So I think there is always a risk when you take something that you think you understand and try to really change it that you can then have that discontinuity."
In regard to my perception that the 3.5 and 4th edition of D&D punctured the cultural continuity:
Mike Mearls: "I think that a game with the history of D&D, there’s a culture that grows up around it. So much of it is making sure that culture has continuity. You know?"
In regard to making the out-of-print PDFs freely available:
Mike Mearls: "There are plenty of people out there who can justify the economical necessity of piracy, and just as many who say here’s the solution to piracy and I’m going to sell it to you. I mean I look at it that when I was a kid and I pirated software, it’s because I only had 50 dollars a month I could spend on games, so all that would mean is I’d skip stuff, I’d never play Ultima V because I could never buy Ultima III. But instead, I played a pirated version of Ultima III, and then when Ultima V was announced my 50 bucks went right to Lord British. But really, if there was no piracy to play the earlier game, I wouldn’t have spent money on the later game when I had it. And I think it’s easy as a creator to say, oh this piracy it’s killing me! Instead, I see it, and I think you have to approach it because it’s a challenge, how can I make you say, you know what I want this."
I like Mike Mearls, yet he didn't address the crux of my essay—making the Fifth Edition SRD open source. I will continue to hold off from patronizing 5E until I see if and how Open the system is when that's revealed in early 2015. And it doesn't get any more open than the public domain of Free Culture.
Update 2016:
Mearls came through and brought 5E to the OGL, and even brought the D&D and Forgotten Realms brands (and potentially the other D&D world brands) into a semi-open space via the DM's Guild. Well done Mike. That's heroic. Now I'm interested in participating in the 5E product and culture.
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