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True, but the goodwill of the publishers and individuals producing content to support the SRD also matters, and they're likely to be as plugged-in to this outrage as anybody in this thread. Alienating them means a lot of content that was bringing gamers to D&D isn't going to be created any...

Yep. OGL 1.0 created a safe harbor that even the smallest RPG publishers could trust. Hasbro's actions have already cast into serious doubt whether there's going to be a safe harbor at all. If you're a small- to medium-sized RPG publisher putting out a new game that was going to be OGL-licensed...

He should be more organized than that -- he has a Trapper Keeper.

WOTC/Hasbro made a ton of money because of publishers using the OGL. Ryan Dancey said that the network effects of fostering an open gaming movement would expand the number of people playing D&D and sell a lot more copies of the PHB, DMG and MM, and he was right.

The archive of the mailing lists OGF-L and OGF-D20-L will have a lot of posts where he (and by extension WOTC) reassures RPG publishers that the license can be relied on forever. Instead of using a dubious legal retcon to crush 23 years of OGL 1.0-licensed work, Hasbro should be finding ways to...

As someone who was on the OGF-L mailing list when Ryan Dancey announced the original release of the Open Gaming License and System Reference Document in 2000, I can't believe Hasbro thinks it has the power to remove the right to publish a quarter century of works released under OGL 1.0...

I don't understand the motivation for this pile-on. Why are people so invested in portraying the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons as a sad-sack loser? He has the greatest co-credit in TTRPG history and worked on a lot of other stuff, continuing to be active in the field until his death. If his...

A lot of people are terrible at writing business letters, even some you'd think would be good at the task. Dave Arneson should be judged by things he wrote for publication. He also did well for himself teaching game design and computer documentation at Full Sail University in Orlando for many...

Awesome.

There's more to it than that. The judge in Arizona ruled that any trademark rights owned by Bizar were lost when he sold zero copies of the game from 1990 to 1994 and during another multi-year span. A trademark can be lost when it's not used. The appeals court threw the trademark question back...

There is at least one more contract, a 1982 agreement between Bizar, Dee, Herman and Eclipse Comics to publish a Villains & Vigilantes comic book written and illustrated by Dee and Herman. That contract states Fantasy Games Unlimited is the owner of the trademark.

The original contract is on my blog: http://workbench.cadenhead.org/media/villains-and-vigilantes-original-1979-contract.pdf It is an agreement between Fantasy Games Unlimited Inc. ("Publisher") and Jeff Dee and Jack Herman ("Authors"). Section 17 (Termination) states: "This Agreement shall...

After the longest court battle in the history of tabletop roleplaying games -- four years, eight months and 16 days -- the creators of Villains & Vigilantes have secured the rights to publish the game they created as teens in the 1970s. On Tuesday night, Jeff Dee and Jack Herman of Monkey House...

There's talk of a Kickstarter-funded third edition. Jeff Dee has been successful with art and gaming projects on that site. I can't post a link to his page there, but it's under username jeffdee.

After a 20-month legal battle, the creators of the super-hero roleplaying game Villians & Vigilantes have prevailed in their court fight with the game's longtime publisher. Magistrate Judge Mark E. Aspey of the U.S. District Court of Arizona ruled on January 15 that Jeff Dee and Jack Herman own...

The creators of the Villains & Vigilantes roleplaying game, Jeff Dee and Jack Herman, have filed a federal copyright lawsuit against Scott Bizar, the game's longtime publisher. They allege that Bizar has no right to publish the game or related products. There's a long contentious history behind...