Bethesda posts a D&D adventure, then pulls it due to potential plagiarism

It’s hard not to conclude that Bethesda Game Studios put out a plagiarized D&D module to promote the Elsweyr expansion to The Elder Scrolls Online — then took it down when the similarities between it and The Black Road module from Wizards of the Coast became apparent. There’s still a lot we don’t know, of course, like if the people at Bethesda knew what was happening or who exactly is responsible, but the original tweet from Bethesda announcing the release of the free “campaign” is now gone. Since the internet never forgets, people had already promoted that tweet and we know what it said.

Our friends over at @bethesda_nl put together an amazing ESO tabletop RPG adventure! Check it out and be sure to let us know if you try it

The tweet implies that the module, the Elsweyr Tabletop Scenario, was the creation of Bethesda’s Netherlands studio. But soon, people began noticing some significant similarities between that scenario and an Adventurer’s League module called The Black Road, which is up for sale on Wizards of the Coast’s DMs Guild site and has been around since 2016. Over on EN World, they complied a pretty comprehensive list of ways the two modules are… let’s say similar.

That’s a good word. The modules are very similar. And to be fair to Bethesda and the folks at the official The Elder Scrolls Online Twitter account, they didn’t leave the module up long once they were informed of the situation, instead posting the following tweet.

We have pulled a previously shared ESO tabletop RPG adventure while we investigate the source. Thank you to those who reached out with concerns.

— The Elder Scrolls Online (@TESOnline) May 8, 2019

I’m really sad to see this kind of thing happen because, frankly, I love cross-promotion like this and if I’d known the folks at Bethesda needed a fast D&D module to promote their MMO, I would have written one for them. I mean, seriously, guys. Cat people calling down magic fire from the sky, it’s already writing itself in my head. What do these mysterious sky pirate Khajiit want? Who is their leader, The Matron of Obeisance? How does their floating fortress, Lightning’s Eye, keep aloft over the sands and can the reclusive Sapphire Ones aid you in ascending to the heavens to confront them? Seriously, call me, Bethesda.

EN World also has some response tweets from Paige Leitman and Ben Heisler, the creators of the original module — which you can see here, if you’re curious — as well as a pretty strongly worded response from Greg Marks, who is the Content Manager for the Adventurer’s Guild. And Mr. Marks is right — while you can use a lot of the rules and so forth from modules with the OGL on them, you cannot just cut and paste the entire module and change a few words here and there to make it look original. Whoever ultimately decided to do this either completely misunderstood D&D’s Open Gaming License, which allows creators to use the the 5e rules framework to create their own adventures, or they just didn’t care.

Either way, it’s a bad look for Bethesda, a game studio with a lot of proprietary IP.