The Red Prison - roguelike based on 5th edition D&D

[pat]

I haven't actually thought more about race or classes at all while I undergo this development arc. I've sort of made the decision that that side of the game is complete enough for the moment and it's a completely different focus now. I'll eventually come back around and reconsider those aspects of the game and see how I'm placed once I've got an idea about how the overall game structure is looking.

[mouser]

I have not read the whole thread, so this might have been covered already, but:

Using rules from a RPG in your game should not be a problem, since rules are not patentable on most jurisdictions. The expression of the rules (ie wording, tables) is copyrighteable, but that does not apply to a videogame unless you put fragments of the RPG manual in your documentation or game.

However, trademarks are an issue. Tradekarking is different than copyrighting. Many iconic DnD monsters are registered trademarks and you cannot use their names. I think Beholders and Mind Flayers are, for example. You might get away by having them in your game (risky!) if you don't call them that, but you can't have a moster named Beholder in your game.

Finally, Dungeons and Dragons is a trademark, so you cannot say that your game is a DnD derivative, or include DnD in the title or promotional material. There are many workaraounds (Rogelike based on the most popular OGL of all times!) but you have to be careful.

[pat]

I appreciate the concern but I'm reasonably confident that I comply with the Wizards of the Coast licence. I'm a lawyer by day and I can tell you that it's almost incomprehensible to me, let alone a lay person, but I've been as careful as possible to do everything correctly. There's actually a lot of content that you can use legitimately but you're right that there's some specific stuff which is definitely off limits, such as beholders, drow, yuan-ti, etc.

I'm also not allowed to use D&D trademarks or to suggest that my game is an official product, but I don't necessarily agree that the current licence prevents me from referring to the title and content of the document which sets out the open content which can be legally used. Maybe that wasn't always the case with previous versions of the licence, but I've done my honest best to comply with the licence that currently exists and I'll keep doing that until I receive some kind of legal correspondence telling me otherwise.

The game is far from popular in a broad sense but I suspect that it's been publicised enough that some employees at WOTC might have seen it and I hope that I'm past the point where I need to be worried about some kind of legal disaster.  If I'm wrong about that then the game dies a quick death...

[getter77]

I still give it fair odds you could garner a Solasta style upgrade to Semi-Endorsed, yet not Licensed at that if it came down to it as things only get more polished and improved~   

[Sereg]

As far as the IP stuff is concerned, it's worth noting that the developer of DoomRL received a Cease and Desist from ID software, once he and his team began work on the (for profit) spiritual sequel, Jupiter Hell.

Personally, I don't see the problem with tributary stuff that's offered for free - seems like free publicity for the original, to me - so hopefully you don't have any similar issues.

[pat]

getter, something like that would be great but I'm not holding my breath. I think best case scenario is that they take a view along the lines of what Sereg says - officially being ignored but unofficially tolerated because I'm actually doing something to help them at my own expense.

[getter77]

JH situation has an additional key wrinkle of that coming after ID got gobbled up by Zenimax, even beyond the OGL situation being distinct in practice from ye olde doom and such modding scene and source ports into standalone total conversions and whatnot.

Red Prison should surely be Good, with only Better yet to come by all indications~      Bound to garner some direct fellow travelers as well honestly given the ongoing revival of D&D in games proper and all sorts of games in the works across various studios and hobbyist fare alike---it is just a lively era for it, at last, again, in a way that stands a fair chance of dwarfing the golden era of so many years ago now unless something goes weird.

[anselmus]

Hey, pat: great job. Congratulations and thank you very very much for sharing your work. Go ahead with the project! Giving is receiving. Now: if came the day when wizards of the Toast can patent (and patents) Goblins, to me at least, the answer is clear: fuck them wizards of the Toast!

[getter77]

Hey guys, firstly, can I apologise for the really long delay between new versions with the game. I was distracted by other projects and only just made it back to working on this game.

There's actually a heap of behind-the-scenes changes, which I'll outline briefly, along with some important in-game additions, which I might actually start with because it's far more interesting.

Additions to the game are merchants and guildmasters. In friendly settlements throughout the Red Prison world, you can find merchants who are stocked with various goods, ammunition and sometimes magic items for you to buy. Prices are affected by your charisma. Players start with some gold now as well, which is also affected by your charisma. There's even a unique merchant placed somewhere within the game (ok... he's in Cindemere), who has an inventory of powerful magic items to buy (or steal - more about that below).

You can also sell items to merchants as well, for a far lower price than you'd pay to buy the same item, but the option is there. It's also affected by charisa.

It's still in a state of flux, but currently, there's no reason why you can't kill and loot a merchant for their whole stock. And of course, merchants aren't particularly tough opponents. So I added bodyguards to make sure that it was a risky enterprise. If you feel confident of defeating the bodyguard, then the merchant is all yours. This might change in later versions if it's too easy to exploit, but that's how the game works currently.

There is only one guildmaster at the moment, with more to come in the future. The plan is to create a roster of unique NPCs to potentially hire and to place them throughout the game. But for now, there is Ingefred the guildmaster in North Warren. She has a collection of hirelings who you can pay to join your party to flesh out your team and cover up and weaknesses. Again, these prices are affected by charisma.

And now behind the scenes: a fair while ago I changed the game's code over from an old version of Python (2.7, I think), to the latest version of Python 3. This actually required a fair bit of rewriting, which was annoying, but it all seems fairly stable. That created other problems though and my workflow of compiling and publishing was ruined because I couldn't get the game to play nicely with my previous setup.

So I switched my compiling over to a project called Nuitka. It seems to be working really well (after a bunch more headaches with compatibility). The benefit to this is that Nuitka apparently brings about some pretty significant improvements in performance, so I actually think that players might notice the game running a lot better than previous versions!

All in all, things are moving forward well and I plan at sticking at it for a while yet and putting out regular updates. Any feedback is more than welcome!