Hi, everyone. It took me awhile to get through to the right person regarding the lingering question of 'are we allowed to do this'. But I finally did, and I finally have an answer. Unfortunately it's not what I think anyone would want to hear:
WotC would be very uncomfortable with this sort of activity, non-profit or not. So they would like us to not proceed with it.
But! To their credit I got a *reason* for the request!
Atari holds the rights to all DnD related games - including those of the Planescape Setting. So if we released a game, it would actually step on the relationship between Atari and WotC. Hence the "please don't" answer I got.
At this point - it's a great idea, but it's gonna be a no-go most likely.
If one of the project managers for Planescape: Online wants to try to get this back up in the air - I think talking to Atari about the fan-work and getting ourselves listed as an official fansite for Planescape: Torment may be the way to go. Unfortunately, I have no contacts over at Atari so those effort may be long in the making.
If someone does have contacts over there, or wants to start trying to make someone please PM me so we can start coordinating the effort!
**FYI, I was one of the people involved in PSOnline, but I pulled a name change here, on the WotC boards and at ENWorld for personal reasons so I am up to speed on this project**
Their answer really doesn't suprise me although it is nice to see that their primary reason is actually their relationship with another company as opposed to their copyright. Let's face it, that no could have come down a lot harder. Now it will be a lot harder to get a hold of someone at Atari who will actually care enough to do more then automatically say no to a game based on something they have rights to and actually investigate, but becoming the official fansite for Torment shouldn't be too hard. We're already indorsed by WotC as the official Plansescape site, it would only make sense for us to handle Torment too since the part of Mimir dedicated to that went down ages ago. From there, I guess we'll see.
So I guess that this is encouraging for me. The legality of a fan-based game is likely the going to be the biggest challenge we face, and not something that will be resolved quickly. This is a solid first step.