OSR Plagiarized OSR Game "Unconquered" Back Up On Drivethrurpg

Two years ago, blogger Marcia B. wrote a post alleging that OSR creator Noora Rose had plagiarized from several indie creators for her game, Unconquered. She included many citations and examples, and it did indeed appear as though material from Luka Rejec's Ultraviolet Grasslands, Leo Hunt's Vaults of Vaarn, and Andre Novoa's 17th Century Minimalist had been used without permission or attribution. Luka wrote his own blog post about the matter.

Unconquered, along with everything else from Rose's company, Monkey's Paw Games, was hastily pulled down from drivethrurpg, and her blog and social media were either deleted or abandoned.

Several days ago, the entire Monkey's Paw Games catalog was made available again, including Unconquered, which doesn't appear to have been updated.

Luka rejec commented on this matter in a recent reddit thread, saying:

"It’s really sad to see my stolen work on sale again. It would have taken so little to clean it up before publication, file away the “serial numbers” where things were copied and attribute as necessary. In the two years since the thefts were reported, there was time to rework things again — yet again basic decency and a willingness to do fair work was missing.

I must admit that in some ways, in this time of AI slopworks, it is a little bit pleasing to still see human-crafted plagiarism.

I’ll report it as plagiarized as soon as I can. I appreciate anyone else who can also report it to drivethru."


Leo Hunt spoke on it as well:

"I will just comment briefly to say I’m aware of the republished book. I’d reiterate that Vaults of Vaarn is published under Creative Commons and the book text encourages you to remix, edit, reuse the content. I only ask that attribution be given to me as original author, which Unconquered notably doesn’t do. I’m not even listed as an inspiration.

I personally think this sucks because I deliberately set such a low bar to repurpose my writing and it still wasn’t met. The only conclusion one can draw is that Rose wanted people to think it was her work rather than mine. I don’t think people who paid for hardcover copies of Unconquered knew they were buying reworded dice tables copied from a free zine.

Someone down thread said there wasn’t much harm done. I disagree. There was plenty of harm done, not least to Noora. She denied herself the satisfaction of doing original creative work, denied her readers the pleasure of reading original work by a writer they presumably liked, and discredited everything else in the book alongside it, even the material she did write. Plagiarism is a mask that eats your face."

Another reddit user pointed out that several pages of tables from Intruders, another of Rose's OSR games, were tables from Judges Guild Ready Ref Sheets, copied verbatim.


It's highly unlikely that most creators, especially indies, are making a living solely from their RPG work. It's always disappointing to see this kind of callous and blatant thievery.

Speaking of low bars, c’mon Drivethrurpg!!!

Dannyalcatraz said:

Speaking of low bars, c’mon Drivethrurpg!!!

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It looks like it's down now.

The post above doesn't go into exact timing. I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt that a minor delay in getting the material down could be attributed to a combination of when formal reports were made, due diligence, and bad timing with holidays and people's schedules.

The whole thing seems like a really weird move from Monkey Paw. Did they really think no one involved before would notice, but somehow enough people would also notice for actual sales to happen? Either someone was really desperate or really stupid. Maybe both?

I can't find that product on DTRPG. Perhaps it has been taken down again? I tried googling it and there's a hit from the cache, but it does not lead to a product.

Looks like Unconquered, along with Intruders, both from Monkey's Paw Games (and both containing plagiarized material) have been taken down.

What was plaguarized?

It's very easy to claim Plaguarization, but when it comes to math, numbers, and game rules (unless you quote the rules exactly), it is a lot less clear.

I haven't read any of these games, so I have no idea, but if she is just copying tables and math items (which I may say, there is an awful lot of that in the Indie scene between games, if it is just tables, math, and rules than I'd say over 75% of the games, probably inclusive of the ones claiming they've been plaguarized...are guilty of the same "crime.")

I'm not defending anyone here, but as someone who's had many items which rpg's have used in their own systems much later (I could claim being copied, but I doubt most had even heard of my games much less used them, but I think I may have had one of the first games using 2d12s as a core, and 1d12 as a core for the system for example, from back in the 80s and 90s), I'm curious what they are claiming was plaguarized (and if it's true, if they used any of my systems, knowingly or unknowingly I could also accuse them or their accusers of doing the same thing with)?