Good of you to ask. It’s entirely possible to play D&D without buying any official materials (and you should play it without buying anything Hasbro currently sells, but that’s just my opinion).
In fact, you can find a more or less complete set of rules for most versions of D&D just by searching combinations of the version you want and terms like “SRD” or “wiki”. Some of these will lead you to officially hosted sources, and some not, but the great thing about D&D is that Hasbro can’t ever sell it away from players.
I’m not going to provide any links to anything because someone will accuse me of breaking the rules, but D&D isn’t Hasbro, and it wasn’t even really TSR. It’s just collections of rules, and game rules are not patentable. Hasbro owns a copyright in the 5e PHB’s written content, for example (and some trademarks on trade dress and some terms), but crucially it does not own the way people play D&D. Ergo, in a matter of speaking, Dungeons and Dragons is already open source. If you’ve got a pen, some paper, and a fistful of dice, you can play. Less is more.
Having said that, many folks believe that the best versions of D&D aren’t in print anymore anyway, but even if 5e is your version of choice (and to its credit, it has a few marks in its favor), I’d recommend checking a used book store before getting worried about whether this rumor ever amounts to anything. Hasbro can sell D&D, or not, and millions of people will happily keep right on playing D&D every week without ever giving them a dime.
Small improvements and cosmetic changes appear throughout, but outside of a few minor changes in terminology, the changes are not anywhere substantive enough to be considered a new edition.
Pathfinder 1e had a good license and would be very familiar to D&D 3e players. Pathfinder 2e has a great license but would have a bit of a relearning curve for D&D 5e players.
Tales of the Valiant is probably the closest to 5e with a great license.
No. Don’t trust the OGL. WOTC tried to “revoke” the OGL last year in a way that would fuck over all 3rd party publishers. People raised absolute Cain and WOTC kinda sorta backed down (kinda sorta) but there’s no guarantee the OGL is safe moving forward. To the point that Paizo (makers of Pathfinder 2e) are reprinting all of their Pathfinder 2e materials to remove anything that could remotely depend on the OGL.
If you want something more trustworthy than OGL, look into ORC.
Just asking, is there some sort of “Open Source DND”?
Good of you to ask. It’s entirely possible to play D&D without buying any official materials (and you should play it without buying anything Hasbro currently sells, but that’s just my opinion).
In fact, you can find a more or less complete set of rules for most versions of D&D just by searching combinations of the version you want and terms like “SRD” or “wiki”. Some of these will lead you to officially hosted sources, and some not, but the great thing about D&D is that Hasbro can’t ever sell it away from players.
I’m not going to provide any links to anything because someone will accuse me of breaking the rules, but D&D isn’t Hasbro, and it wasn’t even really TSR. It’s just collections of rules, and game rules are not patentable. Hasbro owns a copyright in the 5e PHB’s written content, for example (and some trademarks on trade dress and some terms), but crucially it does not own the way people play D&D. Ergo, in a matter of speaking, Dungeons and Dragons is already open source. If you’ve got a pen, some paper, and a fistful of dice, you can play. Less is more.
Having said that, many folks believe that the best versions of D&D aren’t in print anymore anyway, but even if 5e is your version of choice (and to its credit, it has a few marks in its favor), I’d recommend checking a used book store before getting worried about whether this rumor ever amounts to anything. Hasbro can sell D&D, or not, and millions of people will happily keep right on playing D&D every week without ever giving them a dime.
How close is Pathfinder to that?
Pathfinder 2e Remaster (which isn’t out yet) is the most “open source D&D” thing there will be any time soon.
And Pathfinder 2e (non-Remaster) is the clostest thing there is right now.
The remaster is out!
What’s the remaster do to it? I’m sure it’s a lot, but does anyone have the cliff notes?
Pathfinder Second Edition Remaster Project!
Don’t quote me on it, but I’m pretty sure the remaster was about removing anything licensed under OGL so they could license it under ORC.
Yes, also allowed for a very nice balance and QoL pass on a few classes.
Ah got it! Thank you.
I think Tales of the Valiant is closer to D&D 5e and also licensed under ORC. Either is a great option for people looking to leave D&D though.
vOwOxel didn’t ask anything about 5e. Just about “DND”.
Pathfinder 1e had a good license and would be very familiar to D&D 3e players. Pathfinder 2e has a great license but would have a bit of a relearning curve for D&D 5e players.
Tales of the Valiant is probably the closest to 5e with a great license.
Here might be a good start for you: https://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/Open_Game_Systems#Open_Game_License
Just because of the nature of those games, I would speculate that the page above is just a fraction of what is available.
No. Don’t trust the OGL. WOTC tried to “revoke” the OGL last year in a way that would fuck over all 3rd party publishers. People raised absolute Cain and WOTC kinda sorta backed down (kinda sorta) but there’s no guarantee the OGL is safe moving forward. To the point that Paizo (makers of Pathfinder 2e) are reprinting all of their Pathfinder 2e materials to remove anything that could remotely depend on the OGL.
If you want something more trustworthy than OGL, look into ORC.
There are other licenses listed besides the OGL. Good feedback though.
https://open5e.com/
D&D’s 5e SRD was released under CC-BY. It only includes one subclass per class and a handful of monsters, but it’s all the rules.
Tales of the Valiant and Pathfinder 2e both have SRDs licensed under the ORC license and are based in D&D-type gameplay.
FATE is a different type of TTRPG that has a SRD licensed both under OGL and CC-BY.
Powered by the Apocalypse is a different system and has a permissive, but hand-wavey license.
Of all of these, ToV is the most like 5e without being controlled by a multi-national, public company.
I’d suggest checking out the EN World Advanced 5E. It’s open source, way better than basic 5E, and the creative team is very pro-player.
I prefer Dungeon World which has D&D flavor on different dicing mechanics but others have posted other systems closer to familiar D20 system.
Try DC20
Seriously… where’s the repo? Lol.
https://2e.aonprd.com/Default.aspx
This is fantastic!