There are 4 common ways Publishers receive a license to create products for Dungeons & Dragons that use official intellectual property:
- A private license with Wizards of the Coast
- The Open Gaming License with the System Reference Document
- The Creative Commons with Attribution License
or
- Publish your title on Dungeon Masters Guild
Number 1 is the least likely to occur. Wizards of the Coast is a large company and facilitating the amount of partners that wish to work with them is a difficult task.
Using the OGL(#2) or the Creative Commons license(#3), products cannot use official Dungeons & Dragons settings, characters, locations, etc, or any D&D rules not found in the SRD, like The Artificer class. Very specific legal language also has to be followed.
Publishing on DMsGuild is the quickest and easiest way to make content for Dungeons & Dragons and use official rules and IP.
Wizard of the Coast and Roll20, LLC do not claim ownership of any IP published to DMsGuild.
When you publish a product to DMsGuild you are not giving away the ownership of your product. You are giving DMsGuild the exclusive right to sell your product in perpetuity.
Wizards of the Coast DOES NOT own any of the unique IP that you create in your publications.
Wizards of the Coast DOES own the IP that they contribute to your product, ie rules, lore, characters, locations, etc.
DMsGuild creators are granted access to use any content published on DMsGuild by other community creators in their own DMsGuild products, this does not mean products or content can be copied and sold as a new product.
DMsGuild License and Legal Text
Your product should contain the following legal text to be compliant with DMsGuild guidelines:
DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, D&D, Wizards of the Coast, Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft, Eberron, the dragon ampersand, Ravnica and all other Wizards of the Coast product names, and their respective logos are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast in the USA and other countries.
This work contains material that is copyright Wizards of the Coast and/or other authors. Such material is used with permission under the Community Content Agreement for Dungeon Masters Guild.
All other original material in this work is copyright [current year] by [your legal name or company name] and published under the Community Content Agreement for Dungeon Masters Guild.
Credit for using DMsGuild Community Content
As more authors contribute to the DMsGuild’s pool of community content, we do not expect to maintain perfect attribution every time an author re-uses elements originally contributed by another author. Such attributions are not strictly required. However, we highly recommend these best practices for all DMsGuild contributors:
- When re-using a larger element that you have taken from another DMsGuild author’s work, include a reference to the original work by linking to the product page on DMsGuild.com within your PDF. For example, if you are using a Rainbow Unicorn creature that you found in another author’s work, you might reference that inside your own work where you provide stats for the Rainbow Unicorn the first time, using an internal citation such as, "(Rainbow Unicorn from Cloud Forest by Jane Doe)."
- On your title’s credit page, make a list of such references.
This DOES NOT apply to artwork/maps on DMsGuild.