From Newsgroup: rec.games.frp.dnd

On Fri, 25 Apr 2025 11:59:02 +0200, Kyonshi <gmkeros@gmail.com> wrote:

https://www.geeknative.com/172570/did-wizards-of-the-coast-refresh-their-deck-of-many-things-trademark-before-releasing-dds-srd-5-2/

https://thaumavore.substack.com/p/i-drafted-a-legal-argument-against

So it seems that WotC with their response to the widespread criticism
about their license changes released a lot of things under a Creative >Commons license, and now with the release of SRD 5.2 they are trying to
get some parts of it back. (specifically they are trying to refresh >trademarks for the Deck of Many Things and the Orb of Dragonkind, which
mind you, still are in the SRD, but renamed to Mysterious Deck and
Dragon Orb)

I wonder how that all will shake out for them.

Not well.

I'm actually surprised they left the Deck in the SRD to start with,
both in names and mechanics. It seemed unique enough -in character and mechanics- that it should have been left out from the start (then
again, they also left in the (renamed) Apparatus of Kwalish and Sphere
of Annihilation... or the Bag of Holding, for that matter, all of
which I might have cut in favor of leaving in only generic +1 Swords
and ordinary Potions of Healing).

But having put these items into the SRD, they are there forever. At
this point, all WOTC/Hasbro wants to do is reclaim the names, and
under ordinary circumstances I'd be all for that. As I said, I think
they are unique enough that they deserve them but it's too late for
that. They were careless to release them to the public in an earlier
SRD, and that's a one-way road. Even if you argue that users of SRD
v5.2 aren't granted rights to that name, they can just snag that right
from SRD v5.1, yank the name, and apply it to an SRD v5.2 game.

I don't think this was an intentionally malicious ploy of WOTC;
doubtlessly somebody saw the name "Deck of Many Things" in the SRD and
said, "Ooh, that's not right, that's our trademark, must've gotten in
there by accident" and updated the name to something generic. (It's
what they did with the Appartus of Kwalish, which was renamed
'Apparatus of the Crab'). Then -if somebody else mentioned that it was
already in SRD v5.1, they just hoped nobody else would see it. I
suspect it was more covering-ass than an intentional clawback of
legally surrendered rights.

But it's been seen, and WOTC/Hasbro needs to admit fault, eat crow,
and not fight this in court. If they do, THEN it becomes malicious in
my eyes.

Unfortunately, Hasbro is a US company, and the current trend in that
country seems to be supportive of legal maliciousness, so I don't
expect them to give up willingly.




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From Newsgroup: rec.games.frp.dnd

On 4/25/2025 1:24 PM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

On Fri, 25 Apr 2025 11:59:02 +0200, Kyonshi <gmkeros@gmail.com> wrote:

https://www.geeknative.com/172570/did-wizards-of-the-coast-refresh-their-deck-of-many-things-trademark-before-releasing-dds-srd-5-2/

https://thaumavore.substack.com/p/i-drafted-a-legal-argument-against

So it seems that WotC with their response to the widespread criticism
about their license changes released a lot of things under a Creative
Commons license, and now with the release of SRD 5.2 they are trying to
get some parts of it back. (specifically they are trying to refresh
trademarks for the Deck of Many Things and the Orb of Dragonkind, which
mind you, still are in the SRD, but renamed to Mysterious Deck and
Dragon Orb)

I wonder how that all will shake out for them.

Not well.

I'm actually surprised they left the Deck in the SRD to start with,
both in names and mechanics. It seemed unique enough -in character and mechanics- that it should have been left out from the start (then
again, they also left in the (renamed) Apparatus of Kwalish and Sphere
of Annihilation... or the Bag of Holding, for that matter, all of
which I might have cut in favor of leaving in only generic +1 Swords
and ordinary Potions of Healing).

I'm sure the Deck was a thinly veiled copy of something in some fantasy
book, like so many other things, like the Apparatus of Kwalish which I remember finding came from somewhere else originally. Bag of Holding,
really? "It's bigger on the inside." Sphere of Annihilation = micro
black hole.
--
-Justisaur

|+-|+
(\_/)\
`-'\ `--.___,
-|-4'\( ,_.-'
\\
^'
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From Newsgroup: rec.games.frp.dnd

On Mon, 28 Apr 2025 15:58:09 -0700, Justisaur <justisaur@yahoo.com>
wrote:

I'm sure the Deck was a thinly veiled copy of something in some fantasy >book, like so many other things, like the Apparatus of Kwalish which I >remember finding came from somewhere else originally. Bag of Holding, >really? "It's bigger on the inside." Sphere of Annihilation = micro
black hole.

From https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/212052/what-is-the-origin-of-the-deck-of-many-things

"The Deck of Many Things has appeared in every edition of D&D
so far, and while the exacting particulars have varied, the
overall feel of the deck has remained consistent: the rules for
how to draw cards, what the cards do, and when and where those
effects happen (often immediately and in the presence of the
card-drawer) are fairly similar across nearly 50 years since
its first appearance in Greyhawk (1975), but never does the
Deck of Many Things explain itself as an item - why does the
deck exist, and why do these cards have these effects?

"Is the Deck based on a real life equivalent? It calls out
the usage of a Tarot deck for some later editions, but as
I understand it, a deck of Tarot or Tarock cards were
historically performing the same function as a deck of
playing cards today: they were utilized in an established
card game, not as a mystical or "magick" tool. Indeed, when
Tarot cards are utilized for fortune-telling in fiction (or
if you've ever had a tarot reading) the fortune-telling is
never as immediate as what the Deck does.

"Of course, this makes some sense for a fortune-teller: if
the fortune teller were predicting a massive windfall (or
a massive personal loss) for the customer that occurred
starting right now, it would be much easier for the customer
to identify the fortune-teller as a charlatan, a rogue,
a scoundrel who is using the fear of future uncertainty to
make money.

"Fortune-telling itself usually relies on the vague
interpretation of prediction, as well as some psychological
elements of fear, uncertainty, and a lack of control... but
the Deck, in many ways, does the opposite: it gives the
creature control over the Deck, it gives the creature
exacting certainty in its outcomes, and not a single card
in the original causes fear of any kind. Moreover, the
original Deck of Many Things has proportionally far more
positive outcomes than negative outcomes (five negative
outcomes out of a total of eighteen possible outcomes),
making the Deck potentially a risky, but very "fun" element
of the game, but also very different from a Tarot fortun-
telling, where the cards have a roughly 50/50 chance of
telling a good or bad fortune upon each draw. [Granted,
the Deck itself claims to have a 50/50 split of good and
bad outcomes, but this just doesn't square with the
effects of the deck and the gameplay of D&D. Certainly,
as the game evolved, this discrepancy almost certainly
was noticed but not meaningfully corrected, which means
that at some internal level, the Deck is operating as
intended.]

"So, why does the Deck of Many Things operate as it does?
Is there a culturally relevant reason or reasons coming
from fiction or real life that Gary Gygax or Rob Kuntz
(or Dave Arneson or David Megarry or others that they
were playing with those proto-D&D rules in 1972-4) may
have had to create the Deck as such a potent, immediate,
and yet somewhat controlled type of item? Is it even
truly connected to Tarot in any meaningful way, or is
the later cribbing of Tarot cards for use with the Deck
a kind of appropriation for game purposes?"

And from a comment on that same article:

"In Dragon Magazine #386 (April 2010), Bart Carroll and
Steve Winter discussed the origins of the deck of many
things, but were unable to discern exactly. Their best
guess is that Gary Gygax, a long-time fan of games of
all sorts, could easily have looked for a way to add
playing cards to D&D"




While you can doubtlessly trace the underlying idea of the Deck to
other ideas in literature and myth (an item that randomly bestows
blessings or curse, isn't that unusual; heck, at its broadest
interpretation it describes poker cards ;-) the actual implementation
--a deck of cards, with fixed effects dependent on the card pulled,
and the effects themselves-- seems to be entirely unique to D&D.


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