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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mannahnin" data-source="post: 9733969" data-attributes="member: 7026594">Note that we (and Jon) didn't find out about how much and how directly Chainmail <a href="https://playingattheworld.blogspot.com/2016/01/a-precursor-to-chainmail-fantasy.html" target="_blank">borrowed from an amateur Middle Earth wargame</a> until four years after Playing at the World was released.  Gary's story was that he borrowed from Tolkien due to popular appeal, but that hasn't entirely been supported by the facts.Chainmail expands on Patt's game, but monsters from Middle Earth still make up a large fraction of its units, and the two biggest sources of monsters in OD&D, correspondingly, are Tolkien and classical mythology.When TSR put names from Tolkien in OD&D and then published the unauthorized Battle of the Five Armies wargame directly based on The Hobbit, The Saul Zaentz' company's Tolkien Enterprises (which held Tolkien licenses, but is an <a href="https://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2020/08/tolkien-enterprises-vs-tsr.html" target="_blank">outside company, not the actual Tolkien Estate</a>) did threaten to sue TSR and made them stop publishing the wargame and change a few creature names in D&D.So there were multiple borrowings, direct and indirect, from Tolkien underpinning Chainmail and D&D.I'm sure Gary was sincere that he wasn't a big LotR fan and preferred The Hobbit, and that Vance and Leiber, Howard and Anderson and so forth were much more inspirational to him in terms of fantasy.  He was saying that even <a href="https://grognardia.blogspot.com/2010/01/gygax-on-tolkien-again.html" target="_blank">back in '74</a> before the cease & desist/legal threats.  But it absolutely makes sense that he'd be defensive given his multiple borrowings from Tolkien and getting his wrist slapped by Zaentz.</blockquote>

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