Can I write a book of my D&D game?
I am a long time Dungeon Master of Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder. My games run in a custom world of my own making. However, I utilise a lot of the traditional lore and races of D&D.
I'm quite proud of one of my current storylines and have been thinking about turning it into a book. Of course to do this I will need to get the permission of the players to use their characters, assuming I get this is there any other reason I can't publish this?
Things I'm concerned about are the particular interpretations of the classic fantasy races, the classes/abilities of the characters and most importantly the magic system. To experienced players I expect these things to be fairly recognisable, and I'm trying to work out how much I need to modify it in my writing.
Can I publish a story from my D&D game without plagiarising D&D lore?
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It is sad fact of the publishing industry is that they have seen far too many fantasy novels or trilogies based on the author's D&D games. Nothing loses the interest of a pubisher's fantasy line editor faster than the realization this novel is yet another D&D game turned into a novel. In fact, a number of publishers put their disinterest in publishing D&D or other fantasy games translated into works of fiction, in their submission guidelines.
Expect almost instant rejection (unless your writing is so exceptionally brilliant to overcome this handicap). The problem is too many game-relayed novels have been published. The market is saturated and the novelty is gone.
Yep a whole bunch of game-based novels have been published. That's then, this is now. Publishers and readers have mostly lost interest.
However, if you have a game-based storyline is really good, then you can use that as the basis of a novel. The important thing to do is use as the starting point for fantasy fiction. That means reinvent, reconstruct, and redefine the characters representing your other players, other aspects of the lore of the game, but basically really make them your own.
The main trouble with so much of D&D lore is that is too familiar to fantasy readers and game players. Publishers know this all too well.
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Yes you can, for example Record of the Lodoss War started as a Japanese DnD campaign that the DM started writing transcripts which became popular and were novelized and later animated.
You only have to avoid using certain copyrighted words, for example the Beholder copyright is owned by Wizards of the Coast (DnD and Magic publishers) so in the Light Novel/Manga/Anime Goblin Slayer they had to call it Giant Eyeball instead even though the monster was clearly a Beholder.
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As others have noted, you have to avoid names. You can't use their world or some specific monsters (no illithids!). Other monsters, like gnolls and orcs, predate D&D and thus are fair game (so to speak).
I think the rise of LitRPG shows that plenty of people want to read about game-like worlds, at least as long as you put an interesting twist on it. In my my own series (Sword of the Bright Lady, published by Pyr) experience points are tangible objects, like coins that you can collect and trade. This change lets me write about a fantasy world that is like the ones we play in rather than like the ones that usually get described in stories. My characters talk about being a fourth level wizard and my high ranking warriors can jump off of cliffs without dying. Yet it's not a parody or a game; it's a serious epic (albeit with plenty of humor, as to be expected when a Earth-borne mechanical engineer encounters magic for the first time).
The real problem with writing your game as a novel is that the plot that makes for an exciting game rarely makes for an exciting story, and vice versa. In a game, the players derive satisfaction from their own actions; but in a story, the action of the characters exist to satisfy the reader. One notable exception: The TV show The Expanse is derived from an RPG run by its two authors (there are a couple of places in the books where this is obvious). But clearly they've cut and trimmed the campaign to meet their dramatic needs.
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Plagiarism would be taking exact text from the various game manuals and representing it as your own. So don't do that.
But you probably weren't going to anyway, because you want to tell a story, not publish a game log. Think of your story as being inspired by your game, but retell it as a story. When you tell a story you use the language of description, not specification -- powerful fireballs and mighty blows with great-axes, not third-level spells doing 5d6 damage and axes that do 2d12 (+3 for strength 18) etc. (It's been years since I've played D&D; please forgive my made-up stats here.)
Mechanics get in the way of storytelling, and mechanics are the part most tied to a particular game system. Unless you're targeting the gaming market specifically, you probably want your fantasy story to not clearly identify the game system at all -- readers don't need to care whether it was D&D or GURPS or RuneQuest or Fate or a product wholly of your own imagination. They want to read about your wizard calling lightning from the heavens, not about a seventh-level wizard casting a fourth-level spell and opponents making saving throws.
There is one thing to watch out for, but it's not about plagiarism or copyright -- beware of trademarks. If there is a named monster type or special artifact, check to see if the game publisher asserts a trademark on it. They can't trademark common things like trolls or healing potions, but they might have trademarked a specific monster or artifact invented for that game. Try checking another published source such as the the 3.5 edition System Reference Document; trademarked stuff is usually absent (or renamed) in such works. If you're still not sure, you might want to change the specific names just in case the publishers decide they care. (A similar concern might have caused Gygax to change "hobbits" to "halflings" after the first edition.)
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