An "
Open"
Gaming System created by
Wizards of the Coast (
WotC) to support their line of
Role Playing Games after they aquired
TSR.
The name itself is slightly misleading if you are expecting West End Games' (WEG) d6 system translated to a d20 (This comes from that fact that the system was announced shortly after WotC aquired the rights to the Star Wars RPG from WEG). While the d6 system works soley on six-sided dice in multiples to produce stats, the d20 system uses the same set of polyhedral dice that Dungeons & Dragons did. The diffrence being that most checks are made using a d20 +/- modifiers. This makes the d20, after character creation, the most used die in the game.
Why Open is in quotes:
Originally the d20 system itself was supposed to be an open gaming system, the rules were to be available so that any game comapny could publish supplements against it. No progress has been made towards this recently, probally because they have yet to publish any standalone d20 products. It also is not turely open since it requires some lincecing agreements which restrict certian aspects of the system, such as character creation.
Current d20 Games: