In 1978 at age 12, I bought my second roleplaying game, Metamorphosis Alpha (MA) by Jim Ward. That’s the day I became a fan of the Open Gaming License and the d20 logo. Or at least I would have been a fan if someone had gone back in time and told me about them.
The rules in MA described a different reality from those of Dungeons & Dragons, and I was disappointed. I already knew how many Hit Dice wolves, humans, and other creatures had; how combat worked; how experience and levels worked; and more. MA ignored all that and presented a different system. If it had been an improved version, I would have been OK with it, but it was just a different way of doing things, and it didn’t even have an experience system. I felt as though TSR had betrayed my trust. Even so, we played a lot of MA, at least until Gamma World released and we bought that game. It came in a box and a had a map of a war-devastated North America, so we were sold.
In 1979, I switched largely to RuneQuest from Chaosium. It had a single dice-rolling mechanic that it used for everything: magic, skills, and combat. The system was designed from the ground up to be rational. Within a few years, the publisher used variants of the same system for their other roleplaying games, notably Call of Cthulhu. It made sense to me that if a publisher’s RPG rules were good then they’d want to use those rules for all their RPGs.
Meanwhile, GURPS from Steve Jackson Games showed how much mileage a publisher can get out of a single RPG system.
After I started doing professional game designer, Mark Rein•Hagen and I dreamed up simple, universal dice-pool system that we thought could apply to any setting. He ended up developing some of those ideas into the core mechanic for Vampire: The Masquerade, which then served several other RPGs. I derived a different dice-pool system and used mine for Over the Edge (Atlas Games, 1992).
My interest in universal systems rose again in 1997, when Wizards of the Coast purchased Dungeons & Dragons. Along with D&D, Wizards acquired Alternity, the as-yet-unpublished science fiction game that TSR had been working on. As with MA, Alternity was designed with a novel rules system, which made it harder for RPG fans to pick it up and play. Wizards not only released the game but then followed up with a series of settings for the same universal mechanics. The idea of using one rules system for multiple settings makes sense, but in this case it was a rule system that no one knew and that was incompatible with the system everyone did know: D&D. Predictably, Alternity never really got off the ground despite the large number of support products released for it.
I was working at Wizards when they acquired D&D, and my plan was just the opposite. I got approval to do a standalone RPG using D&D-style rules, and it was going to be Gamma World. Finally I was going to do mutants and lasers with D&D-style rules, just like I wanted from MA in 1978. My new take on Gamma World was bound to be a strange product with no logical place in the D&D line, but it was part of the Odyssey series of D&D settings, and those were all strange products with no logical place in the game line.
The plans to do D&D-style Gamma World as an Odyssey product came to an end when Ryan Dancey took over as the brand manager for roleplaying games. His first priority was to unify the AD&D audience, which had been fractured by the release of multiple, incompatible settings. While he was trying to bring AD&D players back to a single line of products, the last thing he wanted was a post-apocalyptic version of AD&D. My dream of lasers and mutants with D&D rules was denied.
Ryan had plans of his own, and they were more ambitious than mine. He released D&D 3rd Ed with an Open Gaming License and the d20 license, which let other publishers publish D&D supplements—provided the serial numbers were filed off. In 2000 when 3rd Ed released, the exhibitor hall at Gen Con was full of publishers trying to lure players away from D&D. A year later, they had gotten on the bandwagon, and publishers all across the exhibit hall were encouraging players to play more D&D and buy their d20/OGL products. The OGL was a tremendous success. Both Wizards and other publishers released new RPGs using D&D rules, just like I had hoped 20 years earlier.
The other half of the Third Edition project was getting the D&D rules in shape. As the lead designer, I took a lot of inspiration from RuneQuest, and we succeeded at developing a game system that was rational to port into other settings, again including Call of Cthulhu.
Some people in the RPG department, however, never liked the OGL, and when 4th Edition rolled around, the license that came with it was unfriendly. Paizo, which have been supporting D&D like mad through the OGL, switched to being a competitor with Pathfinder. Fourth Edition D&D had a lot of issues, and one of them was lack of 3rd-party support.
With 5th Edition D&D, the folks who opposed the OGL are gone. In fact, the fellow who runs D&D design, Mike Mearls, did a big, cool d20 book for Monte Cook, Iron Heroes (2005). Publishers are having a great time supporting the new version of D&D with products labeled “5E”.
A best friend of mine is Rob Heinsoo, the lead designer on 4E. He and I created a d20-style RPG called 13th Age (2013). It has a lot of same rules and elements as D&D, but it’s streamlined to create more dynamic battles and more player-driven story. Our game, in turn, is supported by people who use our open gaming license to publish their own compatible material.
A lesser known game of mine was a d20 version of Gamma World. It was called Omega World, and it released in 2002 as part of Polyhedron Magazine. It features weird mutants, dangerous technology, murderous monsters, and a high body count. My 12-year old self would be happy to hear about it.
The rules in MA described a different reality from those of Dungeons & Dragons, and I was disappointed. I already knew how many Hit Dice wolves, humans, and other creatures had; how combat worked; how experience and levels worked; and more. MA ignored all that and presented a different system. If it had been an improved version, I would have been OK with it, but it was just a different way of doing things, and it didn’t even have an experience system. I felt as though TSR had betrayed my trust. Even so, we played a lot of MA, at least until Gamma World released and we bought that game. It came in a box and a had a map of a war-devastated North America, so we were sold.
In 1979, I switched largely to RuneQuest from Chaosium. It had a single dice-rolling mechanic that it used for everything: magic, skills, and combat. The system was designed from the ground up to be rational. Within a few years, the publisher used variants of the same system for their other roleplaying games, notably Call of Cthulhu. It made sense to me that if a publisher’s RPG rules were good then they’d want to use those rules for all their RPGs.
Meanwhile, GURPS from Steve Jackson Games showed how much mileage a publisher can get out of a single RPG system.
After I started doing professional game designer, Mark Rein•Hagen and I dreamed up simple, universal dice-pool system that we thought could apply to any setting. He ended up developing some of those ideas into the core mechanic for Vampire: The Masquerade, which then served several other RPGs. I derived a different dice-pool system and used mine for Over the Edge (Atlas Games, 1992).
My interest in universal systems rose again in 1997, when Wizards of the Coast purchased Dungeons & Dragons. Along with D&D, Wizards acquired Alternity, the as-yet-unpublished science fiction game that TSR had been working on. As with MA, Alternity was designed with a novel rules system, which made it harder for RPG fans to pick it up and play. Wizards not only released the game but then followed up with a series of settings for the same universal mechanics. The idea of using one rules system for multiple settings makes sense, but in this case it was a rule system that no one knew and that was incompatible with the system everyone did know: D&D. Predictably, Alternity never really got off the ground despite the large number of support products released for it.
I was working at Wizards when they acquired D&D, and my plan was just the opposite. I got approval to do a standalone RPG using D&D-style rules, and it was going to be Gamma World. Finally I was going to do mutants and lasers with D&D-style rules, just like I wanted from MA in 1978. My new take on Gamma World was bound to be a strange product with no logical place in the D&D line, but it was part of the Odyssey series of D&D settings, and those were all strange products with no logical place in the game line.
The plans to do D&D-style Gamma World as an Odyssey product came to an end when Ryan Dancey took over as the brand manager for roleplaying games. His first priority was to unify the AD&D audience, which had been fractured by the release of multiple, incompatible settings. While he was trying to bring AD&D players back to a single line of products, the last thing he wanted was a post-apocalyptic version of AD&D. My dream of lasers and mutants with D&D rules was denied.
Ryan had plans of his own, and they were more ambitious than mine. He released D&D 3rd Ed with an Open Gaming License and the d20 license, which let other publishers publish D&D supplements—provided the serial numbers were filed off. In 2000 when 3rd Ed released, the exhibitor hall at Gen Con was full of publishers trying to lure players away from D&D. A year later, they had gotten on the bandwagon, and publishers all across the exhibit hall were encouraging players to play more D&D and buy their d20/OGL products. The OGL was a tremendous success. Both Wizards and other publishers released new RPGs using D&D rules, just like I had hoped 20 years earlier.
The other half of the Third Edition project was getting the D&D rules in shape. As the lead designer, I took a lot of inspiration from RuneQuest, and we succeeded at developing a game system that was rational to port into other settings, again including Call of Cthulhu.
Some people in the RPG department, however, never liked the OGL, and when 4th Edition rolled around, the license that came with it was unfriendly. Paizo, which have been supporting D&D like mad through the OGL, switched to being a competitor with Pathfinder. Fourth Edition D&D had a lot of issues, and one of them was lack of 3rd-party support.
With 5th Edition D&D, the folks who opposed the OGL are gone. In fact, the fellow who runs D&D design, Mike Mearls, did a big, cool d20 book for Monte Cook, Iron Heroes (2005). Publishers are having a great time supporting the new version of D&D with products labeled “5E”.
A best friend of mine is Rob Heinsoo, the lead designer on 4E. He and I created a d20-style RPG called 13th Age (2013). It has a lot of same rules and elements as D&D, but it’s streamlined to create more dynamic battles and more player-driven story. Our game, in turn, is supported by people who use our open gaming license to publish their own compatible material.
A lesser known game of mine was a d20 version of Gamma World. It was called Omega World, and it released in 2002 as part of Polyhedron Magazine. It features weird mutants, dangerous technology, murderous monsters, and a high body count. My 12-year old self would be happy to hear about it.
