I was considering my next project, and I think I want to break out of making companions (well, that will be part of the big mod, but I digress) and start making something totally new. A non skyrim game using the engine. Obviously, I don't have the resources or time to actually do the design, I'd just be re-making something existing. But therein lies my problem, my original idea of making the first Baldur's gate fell through because i almost certainly would get sued, but what about Torment? While it wouldn't be strictly legal to make a Skyrim engine torment, as far as I'm aware no one could actually file suit because no one else owns the IP either. It's sort of in limbo. Does anyone have information I should be aware of?

Torment is http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/planescape_torment so the IP is definitely owned.
In these days of life+70 as-soon-as-written copyrights it's a safe bet that everything is unless you made it yourself or it's specifically declared otherwise.

Darn I forgot about that. Well, it couldn't hurt to ask the folks there if they'd mind if I made my mod. They seem like good people.

General rule of thumb... If you do not own the rights to it, then it's probably not a good idea to do it.

If you have the time to rip off the concepts of someone else's IP, then you have the time to develop your own.

Do something loosely based on it but different enough? So even the people that have played it would have a new experience? If you were realistically thinking of doing a smallish complete conversion, this shouldn't be a huge hurdle I wouldn't think.

Yeah, I just don't know what kind of things I would have to do to make it "different enough". Hmmm...

Oh, and GB Jackson, your statement makes literally 0 sense. The point of "ripping off" someone's IP is precisely that it saves time, so saying that if you have time to do one you have time to do the other is blatantly logically fallacious.
Furthermore, it is unfathomably unlikely that I could by myself create a story as rich and engrossing as one of the best video game storylines of all time, which is what I wanted to give to players. Just a 3D new graphics take one it.

You still have to take the time to figure out how to make the other party's IP fit within the scope of Skyrim, what elements of Skyrim you can use and what elements must be created from scratch. Using someone else's IP is not creativity. It is akin to taking a sheet of tissue paper, putting it over someone else's drawing, tracing it, and then calling it your work. You put forth the effort and go through the motions, but the end result is not original.

I can only speak for myself, if I were to put forth the time and effort towards something like this, I would want to be able to take pride in the fact that it is MY work.

And don't sell yourself short by saying things like, " it is unfathomably unlikely that I could by myself create a story as rich and engrossing as one of the best video game storylines of all time." You never know. You may come up with a storyline that is just as engrossing to an entirely original audience. The only true failure is the failure to try.

Are you underestimating how long it takes to make things in the CK? lol He's actually pretty right. Making an "Act" of one of those games would take months depending on how exactly you implemented it. The required extra time to write a story in the similar spirit, but fundamentally different, would be negligible in comparison. If the story is that they had to go recover an artifact or kill a bad guy, switch the elements up to the opposite, or make it so you have to fake being evil and show the guy that your pocketbook really is pink like you said. You're not gonna get pegged for having it be similar in the sense that... a guy went to a dungeon, and went through some wilderness, and killed a guy, and went to a store, and then went to a dungeon.

If you have the time to rip off the concepts of someone else's IP, then you have the time to develop your own. - truth in this case.

Edit, was ninja'd lawl. That's kinda my point too, If you're inspired, do it, you modify later, you sure as hell can't get sued for a mod amongst friends... who probably own the games in question. Change it if it needs changing later.

I highly doubt any legal action would be taken. People make mods of other games all the time! Do you know how many Star wars and Star Trek "total conversions" of games there are out there? As long as you are not copying proprietary code or copying exact images or anything, or selling anything for money, its fair game. You are making a likeness. Give credit where credit is due and nobody will lift a finger.

If he writes the story and dialogue himself and makes all the meshes and textures from scratch, then it is fine.

If he uses meshes from the game, or directly uses story/dialogue, then that's not okay. If anything, it's Bethesda that will be knocking at your inbox, and the Nexus that will ban you. They aren't at all tolerant of that kind of behaviour and quite rightly so.

I wish people would stop doing undescriptive thread titles

In any case, you could always try asking. I'm a level designer for the Crysis Wars mod Mechwarrior: Living Legends, and we most certainly don't own the IP of Mechwarrior. We managed to get a non-commercial liscense to use the IP though, which is why the mod is able to legally exist without the team getting lawyer notices

Though it's worth noting the project founders both worked at game companies (a bit of know-how and a pedigree to get them some leverage), and I think the IP at the time belonged to Microsoft, who probably saw benefit in allowing MWLL to exsist in order to push sales of "Crysis", a Windows "system-selling" IP at the time. So there was a lot of things going for MWLL to get a liscense, not to mention the fact that the whole process took quite a bit of time to legally clear (think somewhere around half a year to a year I bet).