Wait isnt DnD 3.5 open? Or this applies only for a paper version? What about Pathfinder then?
Also - if it would still needed the NWN1 to be installed - wouldnt that count only as a fan mod rather than new game?
There must be way around that...
The big obvious thing with this engine clone idea is that you are only cloning the engine. If you don't release it as a dnd-based engine, and you don't actually release the original NWN content with it, then it is not actually within their ability and rights to claim you can't do it.
As an example, say you take everything we know about aurora engine from the outside, without any of us but maybe two people having any knowledge of the actual code inside the engine. Since we are not actually using their protected code (engine code, not script in game), then we are safe because it has to be entirely written from scratch. Furthermore, we don't have access to their exact engine specs, so for like Xoreos, the graphics engine has to be build from scratch and no matter how close it looks to NWN, they can't own it or get you for it.
So then what you do is release one of our custom content modules with the open source so it can be used, or alternately, offer no out of the box module at all.
What I would also suggest doing is offer multiple engine specs that could be modified, and those specs alone could correct some of the various variants NWN has in relation to DND 3.0/3.5. Also, by offering a set of specs you can choose from, some being similar to Steve Jackson games, or some being similar to d20, or some custom stuff similar to old Final Fantasy engine specs, you could very easily avoid the entire possibility that you might step on WoTC/Hasbro toes.
Since bioware released the file specs for their own file formats, there is nothing that says we can't have a 3rd party program that can open their files. Nor did they ever specify that we could not write their file types. Furthermore, there is nothing that says we cannot modify and improve their file types by adding a footer, or header extension, instantly making their file type into our custom file type, removing it from speculation.
As 3RavensMore has mentioned, a big hurdle may be finding the set of people who can actually stomach putting work into a clone of an old engine. I know of at least one who has attempted to tackle that very thing before. Others apparently did the same around the same time and I never knew them. Had we simply shared resources during that time, we'd already have been done.
Back in early 2000's, I used the Aurora file type descriptions to further chop away at the inner workings of their old Infinity engine. Some of the file types were almost exactly the same. What I did was then create a duplicate of the infinity engine, in nothing more than visual basic 6, with no better graphics assist than directX. It had a few +1's to the infinity engine, in that I could scale BAM animations, and as long as they started as images of even integer sizes, and ended the same, everything was fine. I also improved the conversations a bit, and made some modifications to how equipable items worked in relation to applied effects. After I got bored with that final, but not quite perfect engine, I moved onto trying to duplicate the Aurora, but didn't get as far as the guys working on Xoreos.
I am not certain Xoreos is the best choice, but as anybody looking at it can see, it is basically finished minus animation sequences and scripting(er...well...the engine graphics could be much smoother and shaded properly). I know of quite a few people that could get a c# script engine going fairly quickly by simply absorbing those in other open source projects. The NwScript library is fully documented, so duplicating its base functions should be very easy. I would go so far as to change the entire script set and then duplicate NW's functions as secondary calls. Many prefer a more object oriented approach, where you simply ask for data via object.subclass.variable and have set/get methods build for everything, with certain exceptions where needed to prevent misconduct during play. Actually, the work they put into the NwScript engine was actually made harder many fold by dumbing it down and locking certain aspects away from the user (like crit hooks, and direct access to object collections).
Edit: oh and network solutions are missing, as well as code to handle object ghosts
In all seriousness, I find writing code to produce a larger product more personally rewarding than I do making a 3D model, and doing models gets me pretty happy.
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