After many long hours of discussion, we have arrived at a process for working with the D20 System Reference document. I'll post some instructions first, then describe the plan in more detail for those of you interested in the trivia. Step 1: Send me an email message with the subject "D20SRD REQUEST". In this email, include your name, your mailing address, and a return email address with spamblockers and other oddities removed. If you represent a company, please indicate your company name as well. Step 2: I will collect these emails every day or two and forward them to our internal R&D team. The R&D team will send you via email a copy of our standard NDA agreement. Step 3: You will email us a reply to that message by indicating that you approve and accept the terms of the NDA. The reply needs to go to the sender of the NDA message, not to me and not to the list. Step 4: When we receive your approval, we will transmit to you the 3e PHB manuscript. In addition, as more material is released from R&D, we will send that material to you as well. Step 5: We will also include instructions explaining how to use the 3e PHB to create material that will comply with both the Open Gaming License and the D20 System Trademark License. ===================== This is the only process we will be following for the release of this material, and we are not making a public announcement about it or answering questions for the press at this time. Due to all the craziness going on around here right now with the release of 3e, we need to keep the amount of administrative overhead to a minimum. The R&D team is in the process of developing the D20 System Reference Document. This task is taking longer than we expected. Instead of holding up the process any longer, we have decided to go ahead with this alternate plan. By providing you with the 3e PHB, you will have all the rules and systems needed to create products compatible with D20 as expressed in D&D. We will continue to provide information on magic items and monsters over the next few weeks to assist in that effort. In addition, we will provide information on how to use the 3e experience point system and the concept of monster "templates". In parallel, we're working on the D20SRD. The D20SRD may not be finished until the beginning of August and we want to help people who want to shoot for a GenCon product release if we can. We can give instructions for using the 3e materials so that you can overlap your efforts with the D20SRD and avoid problems when the final materials are released to the public. Those instructions may be more limiting than the contents of the final D20SRD, but we feel it will be easier to err on the side of caution than to have to try and clean up some problems later. I expect that we will begin to transmit 3e materials by the end of this week or the beginning of next week. At the end of this week, I will close the ogf-d20-l list and remove all the existing subscriptions. As people respond with their approvals, I will add them to the ogf-d20-l list and the list will permit the discussion of NDA'd materials. After August 10th, I will remove this restriction and the list will revert to being public. The Open Gaming License will probably not be approved for formal use until the 10th of August; and the D20 System Trademark License may be later than that. We are going to work on an interim solution for people who want to put the D20 logo on their products and I will attempt to have more information on this process ready sometime in the next two weeks. We thank everyone for their patience, and look forward to seeing just how creative this community can be! Ryan ------------- For more information, please link to www.opengamingfoundation.org
