Dungeon Crawl Movie

[Dingbat]

Hi guys, how's it going.

Wanted to run an idea past the tavern -- I might be little late on this. Haven't been on here in years, kinda sad that with the lack of activity. Well, either way, I'm going to make my pitch.

When I was in college, I was obsessed with DCSS. Never beat the game, but I still loved it. Farthest I got was a couple runes with a MfGl^Hep. That was a good day. The game inspired me so much, I thought: "who would want to quest for the Orb, and why?" So I came up with some characters and gave them backstories. Then I wrote a screenplay.

Took me two years and bit to complete the script. Well, I say "complete" when it's really just the 9000th draft. I took some liberties with the gameplay and wrote up some lore. Really haven't been keeping up with latest releases since I haven't been playing Crawl, so the stuff featured in the script are a little out of date. But with Crawl updating all the time, I believe it's best to leave the story as is.

The main thing that kept me playing was the "flow state", as they say in modern psychology. It's a term that describes the feeling you get when your level of skill is matched by the level of difficulty when trying to accomplish something. I would describe it as a mixture been excitement and interest that is invoked when one progresses within the game. I believe there's not enough fantasy content in the movie business, with LOTR, HP, GOT and Marvel holding a monopoly over the genre as big-name franchises. If we can make that feeling of fun more accessible to audiences the world over while providing an alternative to the above mentioned titles, then I think we will have succeeded as a community.

Spoke with some devs on IRC a couple years ago, asking about the licensing. I would love to pitch the project to a film producer via Stage 32... unfortunately DCSS's license states that while it is okay to make a derivation of the game, all derivations must be free of chatge. And of course nobody in Hollywood wants to make $0 on a film they've invested in, so that could be a problem. Plus I would need to get the permission of all the people involved with making Crawl, both past and present, so I'm no stepping on anyone's toes in terms of copyright.

So my question to the tavern is, would you be interested in seeing DCSS be made into a Hollywood film/tv/streaming production?

That's all I've got to say. Thanks for reading this. Cheers.

[andrew]

Where does the license say derivations must be free of charge? The code is under GPL v2, which requires derivations to be, among other things, freely licensed; but your proposed movie wouldn't really be a derivative work of the code, I wouldn't think. But IANAL.

[advil]

The GPL doesn't preclude selling derivative works as long as source code is released in a way that obeys the license. I would also add that every part of the project, note just code, where it is not explicitly stated otherwise is covered by the GPLv2 (so, mainly, some of the art is CC0). It's a very weird license for such things though, so hard to know what exactly you need to do to comply (does a movie script = source code? does it place any constraints at all? no idea..). But it's not at all obvious to me that you'd have to relicense it or get individual contributor permission or anything like that.

[Dingbat]

Hmm yeah I definitely plan on talking to a lawyer as soon as I can scrape together some cash. Coulda sworn that when I read the license way back when that it explicitly said "derivation must be free of charge". But despite being an arts guy I still can't read for shit, lol.

If anyone's interested, I can post an excerpt from the early scenes in the script.

[advil]

Coulda sworn that when I read the license way back when that it explicitly said "derivation must be free of charge".

The crucial part of the GPL (v2) reads:

2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:

a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change.
b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.
c) If the modified program normally reads commands interactively when run, you must cause it, when started running for such interactive use in the most ordinary way, to print or display an announcement including an appropriate copyright notice and a notice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you provide a warranty) and that users may redistribute the program under these conditions, and telling the user how to view a copy of this License. (Exception: if the Program itself is interactive but does not normally print such an announcement, your work based on the Program is not required to print an announcement.)

However, this has to be read in tandem with:

3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it, under Section 2) in object code or executable form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following:

a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code, which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code. (This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)

The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable. However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable.

a challenge with the GPL and non-software is always, what is analogous to "object code or executable form", and what is analogous to "source code" / "the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it". I have no idea about this for this case, and it may even be hard to find a lawyer who is going to be in a position to give a useful opinion.

Re charging fees, here's the FSF's official position on this. As long as "source code" (as defined above) is distributed in a way compatible with license, there's no limitations on this.

[advil]

By the way, because tavern registration is closed and has been for a few years now, most activity has just moved elsewhere (e.g. reddit, discord).

[Gongclonker]

Well, if you do get a DCSS video/webseries/thing going, you know who to contact for the music.