As much as D&D news is ever capable of “exploding” – given its limited fan base and similarly truncated social standing – it’s been exploding this week. That’s because last Thursday (2008–04–17), Wizards announced their D&D 4th Edition Game System License, or GSL. While generous to the third-party content community in terms of being cost-free and royalty-free, the big noisy issue that came out of it immediately from outside observers was the part about the GSL replacing the former d20 System Trademark License (STL). The STL had been the basis of third-party content rights under 3.0/3.5.

The alleged fear as of now is that this is intended to fork content developers, in essence saying they have to choose between continuing to develop for 3.0/3.5, or leave those products behind for 4E. The best characterization I’ve seen is one of Microsoft trying to force users from XP to Vista – it’s apt given that the D&D rules can be likened to your RPG operating system.

This is in mid-boil as I write, and there’s a lot of speculation and misinformation being repeated without fact-checking. I’ve read through the forums on several gaming sites about this announcement and it mostly seems to be bringing out the haters of the presumed new system, which is understandable, but not particularly useful. (Very poor signal-to-noise ratio on Slashdot, for example…)

The folks at ENWorld have apparently lined themselves up a GSL interview with the Wizards folks, and maybe later this week there will be some clearer answers to be had. (They also have an Unofficial D&D 4th Edition Info Page that may be longer than the Races & Classes book itself!)

OK, but it does raise the question – other than 3rd-party publishers, who really cares? Our group tends to acquire a whole lot of the official Wizards books as they come out, but aside from one recent campaign setting (and that only because the set was on massive clearance discount – de facto evidence of market failure), we really don’t ever touch 3rd-party stuff.

Maybe if you want to make a Microsoft analogy, it’s that the additional books are like Office – the best designed and tested and integrated apps available for the system. It’s not like Wizards supplements aren’t sometimes broken, but at least you can use the wisdom of the crowds to help you sort it out and deal with it, because they will be widely known and discussed. Does third-party material suffer a legitimacy challenge with everyone? With 4E being such an alleged rules reboot, will it make it that much easier or more important to work with the “official” offerings. Mostly, we-house rule on a local basis as needed anyway. I would guess, and conservatively I think, that all 3rd-party companies combined don’t make 2% of Wizards’ revenue on their D&D books.

But if nothing else, this recent rumbling reminds us that it’s going to be an interesting year for our favorite hobby.