Dungeons & Dragons Handbooks Subject Of Lawsuits

Tolena Thorburn, a Wizards spokeswoman, would not give the home towns or other personal or contact information 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 people worldwide are believe to have played the game, including 6 million at present.

The handbook, which includes 242 pages of rules, and manuals sold online bear electronic watermarks that restrict use of copyright material to a specific buyer or user.

Nolan, denying that he uploaded the handbook for public access or committed other wrongdoing, wrote personally to the court on May 20 that he lost his wallet with material showing his Web site usernames and passwords on a trip to Michigan in February.

"Any person who looked at my Scribd page could tell that I was an avid Dungeons & Dragons player and could use the page to post the file," he added.