Death of d20?

Wizards of the Coast have just changed the d20 license to include a 'decency clause', stating that d20 products may not include nudity or overly graphic depictions of violence (and a few other things - if you care enough, it's easy enough to find the actual text of the changes). This is, in part, aimed at the "Book of Erotic Fantasy", a book on d20 sex that is due to be published in a few weeks. Unfortunately, it's the wrong solution to a non-problem, and may kill d20 dead.

Now, before I go off into my rant, I should point out that I was never intending on getting the BoEF. Not because of the topic, although I don't think rules for sex are really needed. Instead, I found that I really strongly disagreed with some of the commentary in the sample I read (about alignment views towards sexuality). I felt that it was yet another example of game designers not really understanding alignment, and/or failing to seperate their views on alignment and morality, and thus projecting them onto the game. Or, perhaps, it was I who couldn't make the distinction. Either way, that was enough to remove the book from my consideration.

The changes to the d20 license aren't going to make me buy the book.

Now, on with the rant.

Publishing RPG books is a rather large gamble. Returns are notoriously small, and most businesses survive only by carefully controlling their expenses. Certainly, very few companies could afford to remain in business if required to issue a recall on one or more of their products. By adding a content clause to the d20 license, Wizards of the Coast have set a precedent, allowing them to dictate what is and is not acceptable in a d20 product, rather than simply providing rules on how to call attention to the need for the PHB, and so on. Further, since these changes are retroactive, they have shown that they can, and will, kill the publication of books as they see fit.

What this means is that a company could put out "The Big Book of Toasters" just before Wizards were due to launch their own line of bread-based products. Wizards could then, in theory, adjust the license to kill the competing product. I'm not suggesting that they necessarily would, merely that they could.

The net effect of this is that an aspiring d20 publisher would have to consider the risk/reward benefit of using the d20 license, rather than just the OGL license (which cannot be changed retroactively). And, I suspect a significant number of publishers may well choose to go that route.

Then again, I'm just a player, with no plans of ever running a d20 business, so what do I care?

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and nothing I have said should be taken as legal advice. Although, quite who would take legal advice from some clown posting on a Blog on the internet is a mystery I hope never to learn the answer to.