Some people here seem to know a good deal about legal issues...what if an iOS developer were to develop a sabaac game that could allow people to game together in a session via bluetooth? I know I couldn't charge for it, but would I be violating anybody's copyrights if I offered it for free? The rules seem to be public in Wookieepedia...

10/10 would play.

I would also love an easy way to play Pazak or Dejarik as well!

Pretty sure you'd end up with a cease and desist (best case) from Disney lawyers.

Pretty sure you'd end up with a cease and desist (best case) from Disney lawyers.

Yeah, I think you're right. I certainly couldn't use any art that hints at Star Wars. Maybe I'll call it "Space Poker", and base it on a terrestrial Tarot deck. They can't come after me for mechanics, can they? I mean, if the target is still 23/-23, but I call the Idiot's Array a "Fool's Journey"...?

I'd love to see a decent mobile Sabacc deck. Heck, for that matter, I'd love to see FFG make a physical Sabacc deck.

Pretty sure you'd end up with a cease and desist (best case) from Disney lawyers.

Yeah, I think you're right. I certainly couldn't use any art that hints at Star Wars. Maybe I'll call it "Space Poker", and base it on a terrestrial Tarot deck. They can't come after me for mechanics, can they? I mean, if the target is still 23/-23, but I call the Idiot's Array a "Fool's Journey"...?

I would have a look and see if I could get contact details for Disney and ask them, at least that way you know. Lets be honest if it is close enough to sabaac for the players to recogise it then the suits will too. You never know they may give you some good news.

E

You can't copyright game rules*, do some research but as long as you're not making people believe it's Star Wars (and you never market it as such) then you should go ahead and make it.

*I'm not a lawyer and this should not be taken as legal advice.

I've seen printable Sabaac cards on the internet, but I don't have anywhere near the wherewithal to actually put them together. XD

You can't copyright game rules*...

I had no idea about that, doing some research it appears to be true. So those old WEG rules could be adapted for "Space Poker"...

I feel I should clarify, I'm not looking to rip anybody off. I don't think I would charge anything for "Space Poker" anyway.

I am loving the idea of space poker, I would be interested to see how you work in the randomising part of the game.

Good luck with this buddy.

Thanks, I was thinking the randomness is controlled by the dealer, who could set it Off, or have a slider adjusting frequency. One thing I don't think is terribly accurate about sabaac is it's described to be like poker, but with the randomness it's more like blackjack. But even then it doesn't make sense. I can't see why you would commit more and more resources as the bidding goes around to a hand that you essentially have no control over. This means you can't really bluff, because everybody knows that what you started bidding on could be completely different in the next round. If each round is random, then everybody is always bluffing all the time...which is the same as yanking a lever on a slot machine.

So IMHO even if the dealer maximizes randomness, it will still be infrequent...though frequent enough that putting the cards into an interference field will still be desirable.

As for the randomness itself, it would be simple card-swapping, ie: in a deck of 52, you could only have a max of 26 swaps. Anything outside of an interference field would be available for swapping, but once swapped the card can't be swapped again in that round.

Any other input is welcome, with the caveat that it's all in the design stage at this point. Also, my aging Mac Mini isn't really up to running the latest XCode, and I'm kind of thinking of waiting for the new Mac Pro to come out. 12 cpus, 64GB of RAM...what's not to drool over?

Thanks, I was thinking the randomness is controlled by the dealer, who could set it Off, or have a slider adjusting frequency. One thing I don't think is terribly accurate about sabaac is it's described to be like poker, but with the randomness it's more like blackjack. But even then it doesn't make sense. I can't see why you would commit more and more resources as the bidding goes around to a hand that you essentially have no control over. This means you can't really bluff, because everybody knows that what you started bidding on could be completely different in the next round. If each round is random, then everybody is always bluffing all the time...which is the same as yanking a lever on a slot machine.

So IMHO even if the dealer maximizes randomness, it will still be infrequent...though frequent enough that putting the cards into an interference field will still be desirable.

As for the randomness itself, it would be simple card-swapping, ie: in a deck of 52, you could only have a max of 26 swaps. Anything outside of an interference field would be available for swapping, but once swapped the card can't be swapped again in that round.

Any other input is welcome, with the caveat that it's all in the design stage at this point. Also, my aging Mac Mini isn't really up to running the latest XCode, and I'm kind of thinking of waiting for the new Mac Pro to come out. 12 cpus, 64GB of RAM...what's not to drool over?

As I recall, a player can fix the cards value by placing it face up intan interference field on the table. This does however mean that all the other players can see the card.

E

FYI, copyright laws typically cover only items that are less than 11% different from the copyrighted material. More than 11% is usually acceptable. That's why so many blatant ripoffs happen. Check into specifics, but that's usually how it goes. If they copyrighted each rule, you'd be screwed, but if the entire thing is copyrighted as one item, you should be fine.

You can't copyright rules. Most game ripoffs work because they don't look similar or a reasonable person can not confuse them with the real product, regardless if its (from a rules perspective) functionally the same.

Also still not a lawyer, this isn't legal advice

I want Bioware to release a standalone Pazaak game. If they do that I will throw cash money at them. And probably my underwear.

What?!? There is no way in hell I'm supporting all this frivolous Star Wars mini-game nonsense . . . without an Android version.

Heh, I do Java programming for my day job, so I'm sure it won't be much problem to port the logic from Objective-C. I'm just not touching the fragmented Android UI. When it comes time I'll put out a call for somebody who knows it.

Programming for Android is easy and OS Fragmentation really doesn't exist from the programmers side if you understand even the basics of application development.