Bootleg role-playing games are unauthorised copies of game instructions and gameplay rules of role-playing games. As with the music and video industries, the business of RPGs changed markedly in response to high-tech methods of copying.
Unlike many other types of games, RPGs are nearly entirely text-based, requiring few non-standard components other than books. Because both the price and complexity of RPG books rose in the 1990s, a cottage industry grew around copying and distributing many copies from a single purchased copy.
In the United States, the rules of a game may not be copyrighted and thus can be freely copied by anyone.
Read more about Bootleg Role-playing Games: Hard Copying, Electronic Copying, Responses To Bootlegging