Does Wizards of the Coast really own anything that uses a 20 sided die?
A conversation among a couple of friends brought this question up. My friend states that Wizards of the Coast, who (I believe) came up with the D20 system, can legally claim anything that uses a 20-sided dice as part of their gaming system regardless of whether or not the conversion/game/whatever is meant to be an extension of their product or a completely different game.
I’m not sure this makes any legal sense. I can understand the legalese stating that any fan-made materials can be legally claimed if they use the D20 system, but having WotC claim ownership of anything and everything that uses a 20 sided dice regardless of the game content seems to be quite a stretch. I personally feel like it would be akin to stating “Your movie has vampires in it, therefore Ann Rice owns the copyright”, but I’m no lawyer and I’m not sure if I’m comparing apples to oranges.
In short, can Wizards of the Coast honestly claim copyright over anything that uses a 20 sided dice, regardless of whether or not it’s part of their D20 system?
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Much of the D20 system was released under an open license so not really.
All they really have a legal claim to is the stuff that they made themselves that isn’t covered by that license, like storyline stuff. As for mechanics, if they took it to court then they would lose as soon as the defense lawyer whipped out a copy of the licenses that WOTC themselves wrote.
However, they realized that the license for AD&D 3/3.5 was not in their best interests and revised it for 4th edition, but as far as the old D20 used in 3/3.5 goes, they can’t say a damn thing about it since they painted themselves into a corner with the original OGL.
We were using 20 sided die in D&D 35 years ago. That probably predates any claim this group pretends.
@stranger_in_a_strange_land TSR tried to copyright the term “Nazi”. I don’t know if that ever flew, but the tried. Hence, one of TSR’s nicknames was “They Sue Regularly”.
Wizards of the Coast’s D&D system is called D20 but they don’t own exclusive rights to 20 sided dice.
Yeah I think that, since the “D20 system” has very specific rules about how to use the 7 different dice (not just the d20 one), they might own the copyright to the rules. But if I want to play backgammon with my friends using d8 instead of d6, I don’t think anyone can stop me.
WotC have tonnes of books explaining how exactly to use their system, and these are copyright, but the shape itself is not. I have a game that uses 6 d14s, and “Exhalted” uses lots and lots of d10s.
So the shape of the individual dice cannot be copyrighted. Though the name and logo “d20 System” is probably a registered trade mark.
Wizards of the Coast took over D&D in its 3rd edition. That makes them about 20 years too late to claim ownership.
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