Editing D20 System (section)

===2003 onward: 3.5 edition and d20 bust===
In response to the sexually explicit ''Book of Erotic Fantasy'' (2003) announced by Valar Project for ''Dungeons & Dragons'', Wizards of the Coast changed the d20 license so that publications were required to meet "community standards of decency", prompting Valar to simply remove direct references to ''Dungeons & Dragons'' and publish the book under the OGL. This event, by highlighting that Wizards of the Coast still held wide discretionary power over what counted as legitimate d20 material, made third-party game writers leery of publishing under the d20 license.<ref name="designers" />{{rp|293}}

Wizards of the Coast released an updated version of ''Dungeons & Dragons'', edition 3.5, at [[Gen Con]] 36 in August 2003. Third-party publishers were given little warning regarding the update and therefore many companies were stuck with books that were out-of-date before even reaching their audience. Wizards did not make any 3.5 update available for the d20 trademark.<ref name="designers" />{{rp|293}} Between these two crises, many d20 publishers went out of business or left the field, but most that remained totally abandoned the d20 trademark in favor of publishing under the OGL. Publishers realized that they could publish d20 games successfully without depending upon the core books from Wizards of the Coast, and publishers even started to create OGL-based games that were direct competitors to ''D&D''.<ref name="designers" />{{rp|293}}