In 1994, Starbucks opened their first store in New York City. Everyone thought this would be the end of locally-owned coffee shops in New York City. What ended up happening was the opposite. Locally-owned coffee shops flourished. Business was booming for everyone. What happened? How is this possible? The answer is simple. Starbucks made coffee more popular than ever and everyone benefitted.

In 2000, Wizards of the Coast introduced the Open Gaming License version 1.0a which was a legal agreement that allowed third-party publishers to use certain rules and content from the Dungeons and Dragons game system in their own products while retaining some control over their intellectual property. This agreement was made during 3rd Edition of Dungeons and Dragons and has been updated several times but all the while it allowed content creators to make rules supplements, campaign settings, new adventures and video content discussing ideas to use in D&D games. This agreement allowed companies like Paizo to make Pathfinder and Green Ronin Publishing to make their great content. This gaming license was a brilliant plan because it ‘floats all boats’ as Gonzo would say. Everyone wins. Third parties could make content that they benefited from and all roads led to Dungeons and Dragons products since players typically needed handbooks and adventures so nearly anything made under this license made more money for Wizards of the Coast in the long run and was exponential as the game grew more and more popular.

However, we all know Wizards is owned by a large corporation and someone wanted to maybe not play the long game anymore and proposed changes to the Open Gaming License that definitely did not benefit everyone. The ideas in the license were decidedly punitive to third party creators and would effectively kill the golden goose. This understandably infuriated most creators. We have always stayed clear of drama in the Dungeons and Dragons community. We believe there is room for everyone at our gaming table regardless of what gaming system we are using or what gaming system a player has come from before. This is after all a game we play to have fun with our friends and family. We would however, not support anything that dictates what you can and can’t do at your table. We also wouldn’t support anything that would infringe on the game master and players playing live together. So the idea of an AI Game Master, if that is what is being proposed, is not something we can support.

Now that the smoke has cleared and Wizards has backed off on the proposed changes, for now. I see this huge misstep on the part of Wizards of the Coast as a door that has opened that heralds in a renaissance of games like we have never seen before. Tabletop Role Playing games will continue to rise in popularity with the success of the movie and Wizards pushing more and more into the mainstream. As creators make role playing games that are free of any control by another company, we will have many, many more innovative engaging games to choose from. We are already seeing a huge demand for something different with the success of Kickstarters like Shadowdark RPG which has a target of $10,000 and raised over a million dollars.

So going forward, I propose that Wizards continue to create their next iteration of Dungeons and Dragons (without AI Game Masters) and let them continue pushing into the mainstream and it will continue to bring more players into table top role playing and it will continue to ‘float all boats’.