Game RPG D&D:Main Page

If there is any RPG that needs no introduction, Dungeons & Dragons is it. Dungeons & Dragons so dominates the industry that people who have not heard of any other role-playing game have heard of Dungeons & Dragons, and may in fact not be aware that other role-playing games exist; to many people "Dungeons & Dragons" and "role-playing game" are more or less synonymous.

(I don't think this is a good thing, but more on that later.)

I went back and forth a lot as to whether to include support for D&D in the Wongery. Certainly when I first conceived of the Gamespace in the Wongery, D&D was one of the games I fully intended to support. Not only was it the most famous and most widely played roleplaying game, but it was one I had a lot of sentimental attachment to, having like many people been introduced to RPGs through D&D and having played it since the early days of first edition back in the late seventies.

(Well... technically, when I first conceived of the Gamespace in the Wongery, I think D&D was in its fourth edition, which would have made it difficult to include it since it wasn't under an open license. There was a pseudo-open "Game System License", but I'm not sure how feasible it would have been to include support in the Wongery under that license—one of the biggest sticking points being the injunction against publishing "any product pursuant to the OGL that features the same or similar title, product line trademark, or contents of a Licensed Product", which could have been a problem if I also wanted to support other systems published under the Open Game License, which I would have wanted to do. However, once the fifth edition was released under the OGL this became moot, and if I hadn't before I certainly planned then to include D&D as one of the supported systems.)

(Before fifth edition was released (or I think even announced), I did actually go so far as to make full 4e statblocks for a few Wongery creatures—the ateshua, damacolot, earth bear, fask, gulanga, iorx, mereger, and uuari. (In fact, in some cases, in keeping with typical practices for 4e creatures, I statted up several variants—a "fask iconoclast" and "fask mimic" (there was also going to be a "fask spellsinger", but I didn't finish that statblock); a "iorx hamstringer", "iorx miscreant", and "iorx troublemaker"; and, in addition to the base mereger, an "ancient mereger" and a "mereger larva". (I'd planned to make several gulanga variants as well, but only finished one, the "gulanga rocktosser".) I was actually pretty happy with how the stat blocks turned out (they ranged in level from 2 (for the iorx troublemaker and miscreant) to 21 (for the ancient mereger), but... well, I'm not sure if there's anything I can really do with them now. Oh well.)

But that was before Wizards of the Coast, the company that owns D&D, tried to revoke the Open Game License in early 2023... and before it announced the upcoming "One D&D" (as it was then called), which wasn't initially stated to be under any sort of open license. Given the company's abominable behavior and the contempt for the community it showed through its shenanigans, and given the imminence of a new edition that might not end up being under any sort of open license at all, I seriously considered omitting D&D entirely from the Wongery Gamespace.

What tipped me into deciding to support D&D here after all was the release of the 5e SRD ("Standard Reference Document", a compilation of licensable material) under a Creative Commons license in the wake of the backlash against the disastrous attempted OGL revocation... and the later promise to release the newest edition (now apparently called 'D&D 2024"?) under a similar license. At the time I'm writing this, the latest edition hasn't been released under an open license yet, and there won't be any content in this subspace until it is... but when it is, there will be. (Well, maybe not right away; it'll take me some time to create that content... unless there's a significant delay between the release of the last core book (the 2024 Monster Manual) and the licensing.)

Still, while D&D is currently the most popular role-playing game, that's not because it's just objectively better than every other role-playing game out there; it's because D&D is the oldest and best known role-playing game and has the most momentum and name recognition, and because it's the one with the biggest company and the most advertising dollars behind it. Despite my own nostalgic fondness for the game, I have to admit there are a lot of things about the ruleset I'm not crazy about, and there are other rule systems I much prefer even if they don't have the same level of support. If D&D is the only role-playing game you're familiar with, I'd strongly suggest trying out some other role-playing games. Maybe you'll turn out to like one of them much better. Maybe not—maybe D&D really is the game for you—but you'll never know until you try. (Note that there are many other role-playing games that have at least the core rules available for free, so you don't lose anything by trying them out except time.) You can use the list of role-playing games supported by the Wongery as a starting point, but there are of course lots of role-playing games that aren't represented in the Wongery namespace (either because they're not released under the necessary licenses, or just because we haven't gotten to them yet), and you should be able to find many different games by looking or asking around.

D&D and the Worlds of the Wongery

Like other fantasy-specific role-playing rulesets, the D&D rules lend themselves better to some Wongery worlds than others. It's not too hard to get them to work with low-technology fantasy worlds like Vlastach or Gala. Adapting the D&D rules to modern or futuristic worlds like Gallerra or the Dupliverse is more of a challenge, though not necessarily impossible. (For such settings, however, it may be a better fit to use a different system.) For the moment, we only plan to make pages for the former type of world, although we may make more extrapolative adaptations for the latter eventually. (Or we may not; this isn't a promise.)

Even the low-tech fantasy worlds in the Wongery, however, have some significant differences from most Dungeons & Dragons worlds. For one thing, with the exception of the human, none of the standard D&D folks canonically exist on any world of the Wongery: there are no elves, dwarves, gnomes, and so on—at least not in the D&D sense, though there may be other creatures by those names. That doesn't mean that all PCs must be humans; most Wongery worlds do have other folks that are suitable as PCs, even if the standard D&D folks don't exist there. Of course, your campaign doesn't have to follow canon, and if you want to find a place on Varra or Diddu for D&D-style elves, dwarves, and so on, nothing is stopping you from doing so.

Perhaps even more significantly, the worlds of the Wongery have their own magic systems which in general work very differently from default Dungeons & Dragons magic. This means that, canonically, D&D wizards do not exist on the worlds of the Wongery, nor do clerics, druids, or any other class with magical powers. The only standard D&D classes that work straight out of the book on most Wongery worlds are fighters, rogues, and barbarians, and maybe monks, and even for those classes there are some archetypes and abilities that don't really fit. Again, this doesn't mean that class selection on Wongery worlds is more restricted, only that it's different—most Wongery worlds will include additional classes to choose from. And, again, the above only refers to canon, which you're by no means required to follow in your campaign; if you want to have D&D wizards and clerics running around Curcalen or Ecemere, you can absolutely do that.

Though it's less of an immediate issue than the differences in races, classes, and magic systems, it's also worth mentioning that alignment, in the D&D sense, is not meaningful on worlds of the Wongery—the only esture of the Wongery that (so far) has anything similar to D&D alignments is Dverelei, with its axioms, and even those are significantly different from D&D alignments. While D&D-style alignments are provided for creatures and characters of the Wongery, they are given only in case you want to use them in a crossover campaign, import them into a standard D&D world, or modify the rules for Wongery worlds in your campaign. (And, of course, you're free to change those alignments if you want to—if you prefer in your campaign for Kaylit to be lawful evil, or for Horimeis to be chaotic good, that's up to you.) Likewise, some Wongery worlds may have different monster types than standard D&D rules—in particular, dragons of any sort do not exist on most Wongery worlds, and where they do exist they don't conform to all the characteristics of the D&D monster type. And, of course, D&D monsters, except for the animals that exist on real-world Earth, don't canonically exist on worlds of the Wongery: there are, canonically, no gnolls in Norg, no ropers in Ranthis, no blink dogs in B'gor. (Again, though, there are (well, there eventually will be) plenty of new monsters in those worlds for you to use instead.)

To reiterate, however, all of the above only reflects the canonical assumptions, and you are not in any way bound to follow these assumptions in your own campaign if you don't want to. Nothing prevents you from, for example, running a campaign set in Jhembaz using all the standard D&D races, classes, and monsters. For that matter, nothing prevents you from publishing an adventure or sourcebook set in Jhembaz using standard D&D races, classes, and monsters. It may not be fully compatible with other published material, but that may not matter to you. Once again, as stated elsewhere, you can use as much or as little as you want of the Wongery worlds as written.