DotA2 the Boardgame: The in(STALL)ment

Okay let’s be completely honest, I hit a bit of a rut with my game development, purely because I started thinking about copyright issues. I honestly hadn’t given a thought to it in the slightest, thinking about this game as more of a little hobby project instead of considering it an official concept that would be presenting for commercial sales. Am I allowed to just keep going with it as a hobby project, because otherwise I feel like Valve is gonna come knocking at my door and take my computer as collateral in the lawsuit…

Anyway, seeing as I’m focused on my final product being essentially a polished manual for how to play the game, complete with lore etc (think Dungeons and Dragons DM Handbook, with illustrations and everything) except because of the shorter timeframe in which to do it, I was simply going to use existing DotA art, because not only are my illustration skills somewhat lacking, but even if I was to try I’d get too caught up in that aspect of things instead of the game itself. This is the main reason I was concerned when I saw the word ‘considerations of copyright’ come up in the description of things you should in include in your project dossier. Going to have to discuss this with Chris because the whole point of mine was to re-design the game into another format, but still keep the game itself intact, focusing on the redesign and reformatting primarily instead of creation.

In terms of rules and progression on the game itself, have cemented in using dice rolls similar to DnD for determining outcomes of combat, but the rest of the game will go in a turn based system, where each player can choose to make one move on each turn. Creep movement will be standard, with them advancing up each lane after every turn. (Considering making it every second or third turn, so that players would need to plan which of them will be required to go defend towers from creeps depending on whose turn it falls on that they reach the tower). Would also make creeps spawn further apart to make up for this.

Considering taking out the tower’s inbuilt defence purely for the game, so that someone is forced to go and defend a tower when creeps arrive at it, instead of being like ‘eh the tower can deal with it,’ as this is essentially a tower defense game at heart. Wouldn’t mind people’s thoughts on this ^