Council of Wyrms

Little Flower · Jan 31, 2003

Greetings All!

Could anyone tell me if there are any plans for any publisher to reprint the Council of Wyrms (2nd Ed D&D) campaign setting for the D20 system?

Many thanks,
Little Flower

Alzrius · Jan 31, 2003

Welcome to the EN World boards Little Flower!

As far as I've heard (if anyone else knows more, please chime in), there are no plans on anyone's part to turn Council or Wyrms into a d20 supplement.

Your best bet is to use Savage Species, which will cover playing monsters as PCs in 3E, and maybe the information in the revised Monster Manual as well. That done, all that's really left is the campaign information, and that can be used directly from the 2E Council of Wyrms with no need for porting over old rules in virtually every case.

Sorry if I sound like the bearer of bad news, but ultimately, its not that hard to make your own Council of Wyrms campaign in 3E.

Little Flower · Jan 31, 2003

Thanks Alzarius.

I've actually just run a D20 Council of Wyrms campaign module at a convention, and it was so popular I was considering publishing it. Every 'home group' GM who played asked for a copy, and I'm already booked to run 40 hours (just for 2 groups) of it at the next convention.

I was trying to find out who might already have an interest in the setting so I could find out if it's worth publishing, and what's involved.

Thanks much,
Little Flower

Alzrius · Jan 31, 2003

Ah, testing the waters huh? I see. By the way, are you going to be running that game at GenCon? I might be interested.

That said, you'll want to be very careful about trying to publish a d20 Council of Wyrms. The entirety of it is WotC's Intellectual Property, even the name "Council of Wyrms". Things such as place names, names of deities, and possibly even the campaign history, all belong to WotC, and publishing it yourself would bring their wrath down on your head.

Also, like I said before, its not that hard to play a dragon yourself now. Special rules for doing so aren't needed as much in Third Edition as they were in Second. While Council of Wyrms does have some mechanical aspects that are as-yet unconverted to 3E, these alone don't seem like enough "crunchy" bits for a new release, which should have plenty of crunchy goodness. It also doesn't help that the things that have mechanics are also WotC's IP (I think).

You're best bet is to try and get a license from WotC to produce a d20 Council of Wyrms, but that seems unlikely to happen. Even if it did, WotC would almost certainly insist on being the publisher themselves, thus taking a large portion of the profits. You would get paid as a writer, but wouldn't see continual revenue from sold copies.

And of course, just being a publisher yourself can be expensive and difficult.

Here are some pages with more information on these topics:

http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33037 this thread is a FAQ all about d20 publishing.

http://wizards.com/D20/main.asp?x=welcome,3 this WotC page has information about the d20 License in all its forms. Be sure to check out the sections under "Official Licenses" and "Official d20 System FAQs" as well as the SRD itself.

http://opengamingfoundation.org/ and of course, the homepage of the Open Gaming License itself, which makes the d20 License possible. Not every game out there must be d20. Some, such as the Everquest RPG and Monte Cook's upcoming Arcana Unearthed are pure Open Gaming License games, with no d20 Content, though they're still 100% compatible with D&D 3E.

Hope this helps!

Little Flower · Jan 31, 2003

Thanks much Alzrius!

That helps a lot.

I won't be running at GenCon this year as I'm in Australia and really haven't budgeted for it! However, my husband keeps saying he wants to do GenCon in the nearish future, so next year is a possibility. Til then it will just be Canberra, and maybe a few Sydney Cons.

Cheers,
Little Flower