Subterranea - Update# 8, Games Ruleset

Cloud Nine Games has a new update for Subterranea that talks about the games ruleset.  As for funding the game still only has $2,953 of the $12,500 goal.

Subterranea Ruleset

Anyone familiar with the rules of Dungeons and Dragons (D&D), especially the 3.5 edition, will see many recognizable rule features in the Subterranea videos and screenshots. That is because Subterranea is based on an "open" version of the D&D 3.5e ruleset - this update gives the history of that open version and how it relates to Subterranea.

In 2000, the owners of the D&D license, the Wizards of the Coast (WotC), released the Open Game License (OGL) v1.0a. The OGL allowed licensees to implement most of the D&D 3.5e ruleset in Pen and Paper RPGs (PnP RPGs) or Computer RPGs (CRPGs), with the following main caveats:

* No affiliation or compatibility with D&D, WotC, D20, etc. can be claimed.

* Certain copyrighted content of WotC (named as Product Identity in the OGL) cannot be used - this includes setting and character names like Forgotten Realms and Elminster, and certain monsters like Beholders. The rest of the content (game mechanics, most monsters and items, etc.) was labelled Open Game Content (OGC).

* For CRPGs, all rules used by the engine must be exposed in a human-readable form. The follows the principle of most open licenses where open content that is used and enhanced should also be made open for others to benefit from.