Question about basing a game on the series

[Dragon420]

I've been toying with the idea of creating a game (or rather a visual novel) based on the series and I was wondering some things. I suppose the first question would be; Can I? For example, it would be based in a PSW and all the characters' names would be changed, of course. I wanted to base it on a character I've used for years in various roleplay settings, although that itself is based on a couple of the names from the actual series kind of. Toram Eldin. Toram Riatin is where I got the first name, and the Eldin part was from a couple of people from Emond's field. 

 

I wouldn't be selling it at all, merely accepting donations and the like on patreon or some other similar service. There would also be a disclaimer right at the beginning that I'm not affiliated with the copyright holders in any way.

 

Also, would I be able to use city/nation names or would I need to change that? The same goes for saidin/saidar, one power, etc. And would the old tongue be able to be used in it?

[SinisterDeath]

If you use anything from the novels, it probably violates copyright laws.

 

If you rename everything, that's a different matter. 

[KakitaOCU]

I would STRONGLY recommend changing everything from the get go.  If just to save headaches later.

Example of said headaches.  About four years ago my wife started a D&D campaign based on the Legend of Zelda.  She just used a version of the world, kept all the races in (using 5e races as stand-ins) and changed things to fit a group dynamic vs a lone hero.   Within 4 months she had made SIGNIFICANT changes to the world and lore, not to mention adding tons and tons of her own plot, world building and details.

Well, now it's spread, the campaign itself has lasted the full four years and still going.  Side campaigns have sprung up that touch on this world and make a fairly large connected world between about five campaigns.

We started toying with putting it together as a book in the vein of a Campaign Setting, who knows, maybe it would do well as a third party book or a DM's Guild piece.   But as we've written, well, SO much has to change, and ever single piece has to go through screening to make sure it's not borrowing.  Example of a hassle is there is an NPC who was originally a Lionel (The Centaur Lion monsters) who was an inventor savant.  Very quickly lionel in her world evolved to two legged creatures (Using Leonin stats) and became much smaller.   Nothing about her or her background even connected to the original source, but she was called a Lionel in every single instance.   We still periodically find the word in our notes somewhere and have to correct it.

[LarryRowland]

Thanks for the suggestion :)