The Genealogy of D&D Terms, Part I
What Does WOTC Really Own, Really? Not Armor Class, I don't think.
Since Wizard of the Coast’s perfidious treachery, I have been researching the genealogy of Dungeons & Dragons with the able assistance of Autarch’s intern Homer. (Yes, that’s his real name and he’s Homer like the epic poet not like the cartoon character.)
WOTC has, of course, retreated from its grave errors of policy, but they have yet to explicitly state that they cannot deauthorize OGL 1.0a, nor have they offered to create an updated, irrevocable version of OGL 1.0a, nor have they placed any material under Creative Commons save a very slender portion of the 5E rules. Those of us who relied on the 3.5E SRD are left in the cold.
Therefore, I believe that WOTC’s retreat is just that, a retreat; and a temporary one at best. It has not surrendered. Its original objective — to wipe out competitors using OGL 1.0a — remains its objective. WOTC’s executives have simply realized that they cannot boil the frog too quickly. With the heat reduced to a lower simmer, most of the frogs are now content to stay in the pot.
I, for one, have clambered out of the boiling pot, left the kitchen, exited the house, and moved to another city. That is, I have re-written my game ACKS to get rid of their reliance on the OGL and WOTC SRDs.
Doing so raised the question of what, exactly, Dungeons & Dragons could lay claim to. Do they own an actionable copyright to the the six ability scores? What about “magic missile” and “fireball”? What about “armor class” and “hit points”? And this is the task that Homer and I have researched. In this missive, we’ll look at the term armor class.
DISCLAIMER: I’m a lawyer in the New York State Bar, but retired from the practice of law since 2001. Moreover, I was never an IP lawyer at any time. This essay is not legal advice to you. Please treat this as simply a summary of the discoveries we’ve made and the justification for Autarch’s own business decisions!
The Genealogy of Armor Class
“Armor class” was a naval term whose published use long predates Dungeons & Dragons. For instance, the term can be seen in Volume 1, Part 2 – Page 4 of the periodical The Nineteenth Century, published in February of 1880 which is quoted as:
Turkey has twenty-one, one of the first reached 8,800 tons, the maximum thickness of the armor class, and five of the second.
The term can also be found in the first edition of the Text-book of Ordnance and Gunnery, written by Lt. Colonel William H. Tschappat, published in 1917. On page 530, ships were assigned armor classes, categorized in 3 parts:
Class A armor is used for the main armor belt of ships and for the heavy armor on the front and sides of the turret.
Class B Armor is made of special treatment alloy steel.
While not face hardened and not as hard as Class A armor it has remarkable toughness and ability to resist projectiles at oblique impact. In comparatively thin plates it is much superior in this respect to the harder Class A armor. Class B armor is used for turret tops, deck tops etc.
Class C armor consist of armor bolts and deck fittings.
The naval origins of the term armor class were specifically cited by Dave Arneson, co-creator of D&D. In a 2004 interview with Gamespy, he said “I adopted the rules I’d done earlier for a Civil War game called Ironclads that had hit points and armor class.”
Research by D&D scholar Jon Peterson has confirmed that “the concepts of armor thickness and withstanding points of damage existed in several naval wargames prior to Chainmail.” However, Peterson was not able to identify which specific game Arneson relied on. Some gamers on the Playing At the World forums have claimed to find the game, but I have not myself been able to.
In the article “Armor Class in Chainmail,” Peterson wrote:
When Gygax added a table for bowshot in the August 1971 issue of the International Wargamer (about four months after first edition Chainmail), he provided a more recognizable precursor to the Dungeons & Dragons concept of armor class. This same table would eventually turn up in the second and subsequent editions of Chainmail.
We must first of all note that the "Individual Fires with Missiles" table uses the construction "class of armor worn by the defender," a first version of the term "armor class." Earlier, first edition Chainmail called this quality the "defender's armor protection type," a slightly more cumbersome construction. The actual term "armor class" first appeared in the January 1972 International Wargamer in a later set of Chainmail revisions, which noted that "attacks from the rear and right flank negate the shield, if any, for armor class."
So the term “armor class” as a denotation of armor protectiveness in ships dates to at least 1880 and was still in use by 1917. From actual naval manuals, the term matriculated into naval combat rules that were published in the intervening years, and was then adapted into Chainmail, and from there into D&D. When it was adapted into Chainmail, no explanation of the term was given — Gygax presupposed that his readers would know what “class of armor” or “armor class” meant because of the term’s broad use in wargames.
Based on the above, I have concluded that Wizards of the Coast would have difficulty asserting a copyright claim on the term “armor class” in general. Obviously the closer one hews to the exact terms and implementation of D&D armor class, the more dangerous the legal position becomes, but the term itself has more than a century and half of documented usage.
Upcoming Kickstarter
Not only have I been busily re-writing ACKS, I’ve been busily expanding Ascendant. Autarch’s eleventh Kickstarter project, Ascendant: Platinum Edition™, will launch this month.
Ascendant™ is Autarch’s superpowered role-playing game of infinite possibilities. Crowdfunded in April 2020 and launching in January 2022 on DriveThruRPG, Ascendant became a #1 bestseller and hit Platinum tier within weeks. The first printing of Ascendant sold out within a month of release.
Now, with Ascendant: Platinum Edition, we’re debuting a revised second printing of the core rules, the game’s first official sourcebook, and the Ascendant Universe’s premiere graphic novel.
I hope I can count on you to back Ascendant: Platinum Edition this month. Who will you become when you ascend?
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Interesting. I think it'd be difficult for WotC to assail something so old as this, when checking out an old and dusty library book would resolve the case to a judge nicely. Now they might try... that's the risk here, especially as history is forgotten by pop culturists stuck in current year mentality.
Interesting. I think it'd be difficult for WotC to assail something so old as this, when checking out an old and dusty library book would resolve the case to a judge nicely. Now they might try... that's the risk here, especially as history is forgotten by pop culturists stuck in current year mentality.