Character Races

Script Wrecked · 07-04-08, 10:42 PM

This follows on from Serrisa's and Gulnyr's remarks.

But to ask the obvious question first, because it doesn't look like its been posed yet, what will the character races be? Will they be the standard(1) fantasy races? Human, elf, dwarf, gnome, halfling?

Or will they be something more... exotic(2).

Will there be subraces? Will they be standard? Will we be having Dark elves, deep dwarves, deep gnomes, et cetera?

Or perhaps, will the base races be "standard", and the subraces be (more) unique?

Regards,

Script Wrecked.

(1) and the standard probably comes from D&D, due to its prevalence
(2) I would have pointed you to their homepage, but its not available, atm.

OneST8 · 07-07-08, 08:42 AM

Just a quick note, due to the nature of Layonara being independent of D&D in many respects, Layonara is striving to be familiar but unique so as to not infringe on copyrights. So things like "dark elves" and "deep gnomes" et al will most likely not exist as such. As for your actual questions, I cannot answer those myself but perhaps the big L can shed some light (if that's even something we can do at all at this time).

Serissa · 07-08-08, 12:43 PM

I hereby formally give permission to use white elves, if such is needed, and any other notions I might come up with.

Script Wrecked · 07-08-08, 10:45 PM

Quote:

The evil serrisan elves of Bineau live in the deep and dark recesses of the the underground. They are phenomenally white of skin, almost to the point of translucence. Their red eyes mark them as albinos.

Those that have appeared on the surface are almost always heavily shouded in hoods and robes, always appearring only after dusk and disappearing again before dawn. It seems they have a special sensitivity to sunburn.

They make excellent archers, and seemingly are not without compassion, having an unbound compulsion to heal things they come across that may be injured.

...

Serissa · 07-09-08, 09:06 AM

*giggles*

HooD!uM · 02-11-10, 11:01 PM

how about renaming them to black elves or shadow elves? or would black be labelled as a racist remark?

Hellblazer · 02-11-10, 11:15 PM

You know I'm a bit unfamiliar about the D&D copyrights and US copyrights in general (being that I deal mostly with the Canadian copyrights for my own work), but a few of the things in there were already taken from public domain free of copyrights. That's basically when the copyrights ends after 50 years past the death of the copyright owner (in Canada) or anything published before 1923 in the US.

An example here is the wemics. Even though the name it self comes from D&D, the very existence of the wemics predates the game and was part of the mythologies.

The same goes with elves, and dark elves.

I'm pretty sure a thorough search would reveal that most of the creatures already used in Layonara NWN versions would be lawful (copyrights free) to use in the MMO.

EdTheKet · 02-12-10, 12:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Script Wrecked

This follows on from Serrisa's and Gulnyr's remarks.

But to ask the obvious question first, because it doesn't look like its been posed yet, what will the character races be? Will they be the standard(1) fantasy races? Human, elf, dwarf, gnome, halfling?

Or will they be something more... exotic(2).

Will there be subraces? Will they be standard? Will we be having Dark elves, deep dwarves, deep gnomes, et cetera?

Or perhaps, will the base races be "standard", and the subraces be (more) unique?

Regards,

Script Wrecked.

(1) and the standard probably comes from D&D, due to its prevalence
(2) I would have pointed you to their homepage, but its not available, atm.

While I cannot go into your questions directly, I can tell you that the recent updates to some of the race pages LORE: Elf LORE: Human LORE: Dwarf LORE: Gnome were done with the MMO in mind.

We'll not comment yet about which would be playable and which wouldn't be.

And as for subraces, need to get the "base" races finished up before we'll move there, so I cannot comment in detail at this time here either.

geloooo · 02-12-10, 07:30 AM

Maybe a race of evil albino elves that live on the surface! Pale white skin and hair as white as snow! An evil magocracy of sorts that separated from Voltrex in a separate island. I'm just rambling :P

Hellblazer · 02-12-10, 11:01 PM

Just saying that Dark elves are from public domain, so no reason to bust your heads on that one.

ycleption · 02-13-10, 08:28 AM

Without speaking specifically to Layo, and with the understanding that this is not legal advice.....

Intellectual property in general is a fuzzy area - there are seldom "bright line" standards, where something is clearly one way or the other, instead everything is complicated multi-factor balancing tests, which often make it difficult to be sure from the outset what is a violation and what isn't.

Yes, a dark skinned evil race dwelling below ground is probably scenes a faire in the fantasy genre and not copyrightable... but it is also probably prudent to not invite looking enough like a copyright violation that a suit could go to trial. Suits are expensive, even when you are in the right and you win. Much better to avoid anything that looks like it might be a copyright violation, so you don't get sued in the first place, or win on summary judgment.

Hellblazer · 02-13-10, 12:46 PM

I was saying that because in the norse mythology, they were called dark elves, hence that name can not be copyrighted.

And even the story of residing underground is from that mythology, so there again, that is usable by all.

ycleption · 02-13-10, 01:04 PM

I understood your point HB, and before I had a rigorous legal education, and worked in the courtroom, I would have agreed with you.

But again, sometimes its worth being cautious with regard to copyright, even if you're 99.99% sure you would win if somebody tried to sue you. (And obviously, I'm not speaking for the team, or the team's lawyers, just trying to give you an idea of why they might decide from a business perspective to abandon dark elves or whatever).

Hellblazer · 02-13-10, 02:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ycleption

But again, sometimes its worth being cautious with regard to copyright, even if you're 99.99% sure you would win if somebody tried to sue you. (And obviously, I'm not speaking for the team, or the team's lawyers, just trying to give you an idea of why they might decide from a business perspective to abandon dark elves or whatever).

Yep that's absolutely true.