Timeline for Is it legal to develop a game using D&D rules?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
8 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| S Nov 16, 2018 at 9:18 | history | suggested | CommunityBot | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
Clarifying that the d20 License is no longer available.
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| Nov 14, 2018 at 19:25 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| S Nov 16, 2018 at 9:18 | |||||
| Dec 3, 2011 at 0:09 | comment | added | corsiKa | I believe HOMM3 had Beholders, but they also ripped a lot of names for their Heroes from other games (FF7 in particular). Was still an awesome game with very solid balanced gameplay, but they did borrow a lot of names from other games. They also went bankrupt a little while later... coincidence? | |
| Nov 18, 2011 at 4:32 | comment | added | Sean Middleditch | They're not copyrighted, they're trademarked, iirc. Very different set of laws. Trademarks cover any names, images, designs, etc. that can be used to identity a product. So far as flying eyeballs, knock yourself out. Just don't make them flying bodies with a big eyeball and a mouth and eye tentacles with an eyeball on each where each eye has a specific magic power and which the creature is called a Beholder. Note that D&D has "Treants" instead of "Ents" because the Tolkien estate has those trademarked, despite the conceptual creatures being identical. | |
| Nov 16, 2011 at 18:27 | comment | added | Mikle | Can someone explain why Beholders are copyrighted? Can you copyright mythological creatures in the US or did they "invent" all those creatures? I'm having a tough time believing they were the first to think about a flying eyeball... | |
| Nov 14, 2011 at 14:48 | vote | accept | Max | ||
| Nov 14, 2011 at 13:19 | comment | added | Martin Sojka | +1 for "D&D's rules work great in pen-and-paper games but do not work well in a computer game". I know it's very tempting to use a known, tested (and likely well-understood and liked) P&P system for your game, but those systems have a lot of abstractions for things which the computer can easily calculate and simulate (damage models, for example), while on the other hand falling back on "common sense" for other less regulated areas (social interaction ...), which the computer can't provide without a detailed ruleset. | |
| Nov 14, 2011 at 8:01 | history | answered | Sean Middleditch | CC BY-SA 3.0 |