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Open gaming is synonymous with the popular d20 System, but games have been published under open content licenses for a considerable period of time prior to the d20 phenomena.
First published in 1995, the FUDGE roleplaying game is probably one of the first systems to be published under an open content license. A legal notice accompanying the FUDGE rules permits redistribution and modification for non-commercial works. Other systems were published under various different terms which could all be considered "open", including the Dominion role-playing game , whose license permitted supplementary material to be written for it's rules, and the Circe roleplaying system, published by the Worldforge project under the GNU Free Documentation License.
The official start of the open gaming movement begins in 2000 when Wizards of the Coast's (WotC) published their popular Dungeons and Dragons role-playing system as the d20 System under the Open Gaming License. Ryan Dancey , the driving force for the new policy at WotC, first used to term "open gaming" with respect to roleplaying games and formed the Open Gaming Foundation to promote open gaming within the role-playing industry.
Because its heritage is intertwined with the most successful RPG, "open gaming" often refers to the d20 System, but other open systems and licenses have been developed as well.
The initiative for an open license on rules resulted from the many unique sets of rules used by RPGs. To ease the designer's development process and the player's learning process, major RPG developers created generic role-playing game systems, such as Steve Jackson GamesSteve Jackson Games (SJG) is a game company that creates and publishes role-playing, board, and card games. It was founded in 1980 by Steve Jackson. History Founded during the hey-day of role-playing games and the birth of Dungeons & Dragons SJG created s' GURPSGURPS G eneric U niversal R ole P laying S ystem), created by Steve Jackson Games in 1986, is designed specifically to be a role-playing game that adapts to any imaginary gaming environment. Prior to GURPS, role-playing games of the 1970s and early 1980s, for use in the design of their own games. Wizards of the Coast took the idea a step further by making the core rules system free (as in speech and beer) so that game designers could produce games under the d20 umbrella of rules and so that players need not make any purchases in order to learn the core rules. Among other things, game developers believe that this drive will make their games more accessible and that it could further channel the popularity of the RPG industry towards Dungeons & Dragons.
Several game designers criticized the Open Gaming License for not being as open as it could be and for being controlled by the RPG market leader Wizards of the Coast. In response, some of these critics sought alternative licenses or wrote their own open licenses. Examples of these include the October Open Game License and the EABA Open Supplement License .
Lately, drafting new open gaming licenses has waned slightly as it becomes apparent that numerous copyleft-style licenses that could be applied to game rules already exist, such as the GNU Free Documentation License.