D&D 5E Strixhaven's Quandrix College of Numeromancy

Bolares · Nov 26, 2021

Look, that's just a copy of hogwarts!

sevenbastard · Nov 26, 2021

And Hogwarts is a blatant rip off of the Towers of Highsorcery from Dragonlance.

The White Sorcerer · Nov 26, 2021

sevenbastard said:
And Hogwarts is a blatant rip off of the Towers of Highsorcery from Dragonlance.

Nonsense, it's clearly a ripoff of Miss Cackle's Academy for Witches.

jgsugden · Nov 26, 2021

They're all The Worst Witch rip offs - which goes back to 74.

EzekielRaiden · Nov 26, 2021

jgsugden said:
They're all The Worst Witch rip offs - which goes back to 74.

Alternatively, A Wizard of Earthsea, which did get some grumblings that Rowling took too much liberty in copying, and that was 1968.

Edit: I should note, not merely the copying, but for Le Guin herself, the problem was Rowling being credited with originality in her tale, when it has a lot of both high- and low-level similarities to AWoE other than the "set on Earth" aspect. She didn't mind Rowling writing a story that bore such resemblance to hers, what she did mind was the implication that no works prior to Harry Potter had done things of this kind, erasing her own work.

Paul Farquhar · Nov 26, 2021

Rowling and Murphy both got the idea from Enid Blyton - Mallory Towers (1946). Read it, the similarities are obvious, down to the characters.

Le Guin was writing on another continent in a genre that Rowling at least admitted hating. Neither Rowling nor Murphy had read her books - probably never even heard of her until later. Likewise, Le Guin is unlikely to have been influenced by Blyton because of the "other continent" thing*. She wrote on a similar theme for a very simple reason: the theme is BLINDINGLY OBVIOUS.

Likewise, British critics would be unfamiliar with US writers, particularly writers in a genre they looked down their nose at. It's only in modern times that books have freely travelled across the Atlantic. I remember having to seek out specialist booksellers to find imported US fantasy as late as the early 90s.

*It's also worth mentioning that some of the "cruelty" Le Guin mentioned in HP is also in Mallory Towers - if Le Guin had ever read Mallory Towers she would have referred to that.

Parmandur · Nov 26, 2021

Paul Farquhar said:
Rowling and Murphy both got the idea from Enid Blyton - Mallory Towers (1946). Read it, the similarities are obvious, down to the characters.

Le Guin was writing on another continent in a genre that Rowling at least admitted hating. Neither Rowling nor Murphy had read her books - probably never even heard of her until later. Likewise, Le Guin is unlikely to have been influenced by Blyton because of the "other continent" thing*. She wrote on a similar theme for a very simple reason: the theme is BLINDINGLY OBVIOUS.

Likewise, British critics would be unfamiliar with US writers, particularly writers in a genre they looked down their nose at. It's only in modern times that books have freely travelled across the Atlantic. I remember having to seek out specialist booksellers to find imported US fantasy as late as the early 90s.

*It's also worth mentioning that some of the "cruelty" Le Guin mentioned in HP is also in Mallory Towers - if Le Guin had ever read Mallory Towers she would have referred to that.

On that note, Strixhaven is very much not channeling the British boarding school vibe, but American undergraduate collegiate tropes. The card designers didn't even realize how specifically American a lot of the College experiences they described actually were until the cards came out in Europe and players there experienced culture shock!