The d20 Free Zone
	Why is everyone jumping onto the d20 wagon? We sure as heck don't know. Until we get some factual information, here's a few wild guesses: 1) The game system is good. Is it? We know ADD and DD have always been big sellers, but is this more due to the fact that they were the first or because the game system is so "good"? Funny how a similar situation exists with Magic The Gathering: It was the first and is the largest, although "better" games have come along later. We're not saying the game system is BAD, just that there are BETTER, or at least EQUALLY GOOD game systems out there. And as a game designer, you should be striving to build AT LEAST as good a game system as d20. 2) Game designers like to use a ready game system. Ok, fine. There's just two little problems we foresee with that one: If you're not actually designing a game system, why would people buy your game? If they already have DD3E, why would they need to buy a game about, say, the French Revolution, when they can just go and do the research themselves (and as gamers, they will)? What you're left with is a game that's basically a sourcebook for a game. Would people buy GURPS if the basic rules were printed in each book? Nope, they wouldn't like the concept of handing out money for 30 pages they already have. And another thing: If you're using a ready game system, where's the "design"-part of the work? I don't know about you, but I'm a game designer, not a campaign setting editor. 3) The game system fits so well my campaign setting. Does it really? We of the dFZ believe that a game system should be tailored to the campaign setting, not the other way round. The d20 system needs A LOT of tweaking to fit A LOT of the campaign settings already out there, yet people seem to be tweaking the campaign settings, not the game system (because hey, then you couldn't call it d20 anymore...). Thus is destroyed a lot of originality, and a lot of sort of Orwellian grayness takes is it's place. 4) It's good marketing! Yes it is. For WoTC. What you're doing is giving them a free avenue of advertising for what's basically THEIR game system. What you're getting is a name mentioned on a web page. So what are we saying? We're not saying NO to 20-sided dice. They have their place in gaming. We're not saying no to WoTC's game system either. What we ARE saying is that perhaps it wouldn't hurt game designers to include a bit of originality in their game systems, and not take the easy way out of system design, especially as it seems to be a very short-sighted decision (while your game might initially gain popularity, all this popularity will eventually cause another company's product to reach more people). What can you do? Well, you can join d20 Free Zone by simply including the following bit of HTML on your homepage (you can either copy the dFZ logo into your own domain, or link it from ours). Simply copy&paste the following bit into a convenient location on your home pages: Member of the <A HREF="http://www.gniko.com/gniko/d20free.html"><IMG SRC="http://www.gniko.com/pics/d20free.gif"></A> If you want to, you can let us know that you've joined us, and we'll put your URL on our members page. The only obligation we place on our members is that you should not fall in with all the other d20-zombies, but should remain a Real Game Designer.

Additional information: dFZ

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Credits: Original idea for the d20 Free Zone by Ville Vuorela. These pages written & maintained by Niko "GNiko" Mikkanen. The d20 Free Zone logo is (c) of Ville Vuorela, but may be freely copied to join or promote the dFZ. The dice sidebar art is (c) of Lars Wirzenius.