Hasbro and copyrights..

Is anyone worried about Hasbro coming around and slapping folks around with the law stick? I still have nightmares about what happened to that other site...

We have a while before Hasbro would even see us. We have a total of about 49 members. Looking at the times things happened on the other site I would say it was around 2008. That's a couple of years after they started isn't it?

There are still other pretty decent sized sites out there to play risk that are completely copying Hasbro's Risk map and everything.

So currently we are going to just wait things out for a bit while we grow. When we start getting more members and start having premium accounts then I will most likely consult a lawyer in real life and see what options we have and what we would need to fix. I can imagine this might be what happened to the other site, and they were told to change certain things and changed them quick. So we will most likely follow in their footsteps regarding this situation.

I think though we have a couple of years, depending on how quickly the site grows, before we have to start worrying. If things end up needing to be changed we will change them and still make the site flippin awesome.

a quick preemptive measure would be to remove the word "risk" from just about everything

the biggest issue on this front is the world map, there's really no way around that copyright problem except to utterly change the map, so its probably a good idea to start thinking about/working on a different version of it that gets rid of territory names and changes up the look of the map. 
As you said we're a good long time from having to deal with this so theirs plenty of time to brainstorm on how to change it, if I think of anything I'll post it. 

Maybe you should have a couple of plans just in case they come around sooner than expected. To change cards/dice/classic map to something that bears resemblance, but isn't going to infringe on copyright.

oh right, I forgot about the cards thing. That's a pretty simple fix though, just change the name, something like "Inheritance" or "Treasure" possibly?

Yeah, we can start working on how we will change things when the time comes and we need to.

Dice I called rolls. Example: "Attacker gets 3 rolls" instead of "Attacker gets 3 dice." If anyone has any opinions on that or alternatives, please do share, that's what I have been using for now in the Tutorial though.

Cards. Some ideas brought up were calling them Reputations. Such as Bravery, Honor, and Mercy or something.

Map. I agree, we should probably start thinking of a new version. We can keep the old one until the day we receive the notice and then switch though, as the classic map will bring us more players.

I agree you will likely have some time before you are on ?Hasbro's radar, but I think that with D12 being better looking and more professional than other sites, you make LOOK like more of a contender than you are in the beginning.

definitely agreed on the keeping the current world map as long as possible and having a new one waiting in the wings. 

Another thought on cards, how about calling them "Dominations" since the sites called Dominating 12. 

we would need to have a reason for it. Like what would dominations be? With reputations it would be like "The people of Kamchatka recognize you for bravery" so we can work it in that way. How could we work in Dominations?

Maybe the people of ____ have a low/medium/high fear of your domination.

Then the types would be low, medium, and high instead of red,green,blue.
My example isn't very good, but just an example.

that's actually not too bad, I didn't understand what you meant by reputations, but when you put it that way it works. call it Reputations, each color is a different one, we'd need to come up with good ones. 
(I like Bravery, Wisdom, Strength, Honor, Valor, Spirit)

The reputations thing also makes sense for turning in, you have to be widely recognized, either for a variety of things (ie the set of 3 different colors) or for one thing (as in the case of having all one color)

Yeah, however I don't know if there would ever be a point where you could write on the log "the people of ____ recognize you for your..." because it would give away what your cards are. The only time I can ever imagine using that is in the game instructions.

very true, it is a good back story to explain the name though

I agree, this reputations idea is quite appealing

Alright, so what reputations? we need a weak one, medium one, and high one, and then a wild card.

Then a color to represent each. using red, green, blue will be too much like that other site.

Maybe in this order: Bravery, Valor, Wisdom and the wild card Honor.

we can use colors like orange, light blue, dark red like the logo, perhaps for the wild card.

bravery-yellow (weak)
valor-red   (medium)
wisdom-blue  (strong)
honor-white  (wild card)

hows that?