copyrighting.

My understanding of this (having been in an industry where licensing is common for over 10 years) is that every person pretty has the rights to control their unique image. So, if you are using a picture of ANYONE famous, you will most likely run into some problems, via a concerned family member, or whoever the current rights holder is. The only exception to this rule seems to be politicians, who, by sheer definition of being a public servant, seem to lose this capability.

However, using just their names probably is somewhat nebulous, depending on how they are being used. If you are doing a music trivia game, using the name, say "Elvis Presley" as an answer to one question, is clearly different than calling the game "Elvis Presley Trivia." (I just happen to be working a an Elvis product right now). Also, it gets worse, as different people will sometimes hold the rights to different aspects of that personalities works. For example, while you might think Elvis Presely Enterprises holds the rights to everything Elvis, they unfortunately don

I'd imagine this would be quite expensive. FIFA is a huge orginization with a vested interest in protecting its assets. If your game will not be distributed to many people (i.e. 500 copies), you might be okay. If you're looking to make a serious profit on this, you should look very closely at the legal side of it.

There's another wrinkle to this. I know that in American sports, the players' unions are very powerful. A company looking to make a game based on baseball would have to make a deal with Major League Baseball to have rights to all the team names, logos, stadiums, uniforms, etc. But they also need to strike a seperate deal with the players' union (in this case, the MLBPA) to include all player names and likenesses.

I don't know if FIFA's players are unionized, but if they are, you may have to go to them if you want to use real player names. If you want to use club names, you may have to go to FIFA seperately.

Obviously, I'm not a lawyer, and I can't affirm that the above is true. But it's the best of my knowledge.

I don't know. The Dragonlance series is very popular, so again, there's a vested interest in protecting that asset. I'd imagine that if you went in through the front door and asked Weis' and Hickman's agents, you'd get a very high price. That's their job: to make money for their clients. Perhaps if you stress that this is not a large release, and is being done out of a home as a labor of love, you could negotiate your way into only having to pay royalties; but there's obviously no guarantees of that.

If there were a way to contact Weis and Hickman directly, you could pitch the game to them. If they liked the idea, they could veto their agents and try to help you with the release of the game. Of course, you'd have to get in line with all the fans who are trying to contact the two authors themselves. :)

Still, the "medival fantasy" setting is so accepted, you can have a game with plenty of dragons and not worry about any copyright infringement. I'm not familiar with Dragonlance, so I don't know what sets it apart from others in the genre. But if you use it as a starting point, perhaps you might wind up in an original, royalty-free world of your own.

Anyway, help would be appreciated immensely.

Sorry, can't help you there. :)