Dungeons & Dragons & lawyers, oh my — eight society face accusations they illegally posted the pioneering role-playing game’s newest handbook for download on the World Wide Web.

Wizards of the Coast LLC, a subsidiary of Hasbro Inc., is seeking unspecified damages in three copyright infringement lawsuits naming a total of eight defendants in U.S. District Court in Seattle.

More than 2,600 copes of “Player’s Handbook 2,” released March 17 with a suggested retail price of $39.95 a copy, were downloaded from Scribd.com, and more than 4,200 copies were viewed online before the material was pulled from the document-sharing site at Wizards’ inquiry, according to two of the lawsuits.

One of those cases, which names as defendants Thomas Patrick Nolan of Milton, Fla., and Stefan Osmena of the Philippines, is headed for mediation, according to a court filing Tuesday.

Another case is against Mike Becker of Bartlesville, Okla., and Arthur Le of San Jose, Calif.

The third, filed against Krysztof Radzikowski of Poland and three folks whose identities remain unknown, did not quote any numbers but asserted that unauthorized copies of that handbook and “Manual of the Planes,” “Open Grave: Secrets of the Undead” and “Dungeon Delve,” each retailing for $29.95, additionally were found on document-sharing Web sites.

Tolena Thorburn, a Wizards spokeswoman, would not give the home towns or other personal or contact info for Osmena or Radzikowski.

Dungeons & Dragons, created in 1974 and described in the lawsuit as “the first role-playing game,” involves the use of pen, paper and dice to create imaginary characters of varying attributes and randomly determined levels of skill as players search for treasure and battle monsters in magical lands.

According to the lawsuits, all filed on April 6, about 20 million humans worldwide are believed to have played the game, including 6 million at present.

The handbook, which includes 242 pages of rules,…

[Source] dhiram