Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ibrandul" data-source="post: 8528408" data-attributes="member: 6871736">While this is true, there's also a very great deal of pre-Hobbit lore they are not permitted even to mention: anything that is not mentioned between the covers of The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings, the licensing of which is controlled by <s>Tolkien Enterprises</s> (now called Middle-earth Enterprises, which licenses games rights to Sophisticated Games), from whom Free League acquired their sublicense to produce the RPG.This means that, for example, the name Morgoth can appear in a TOR book, but his name in Quenya, Melkor, cannot, because the latter doesn't appear in either of the books that form the basis of their license. Khamûl cannot be the name of a Nazgûl in a TOR book. And, like Jackson's films, TOR can mention that there are a total of five Istari, because that is mentioned in LOTR, but they cannot give the two missing wizards' names as Pallando/Rómestamó and Alatar/Morinehtar. The Tolkien Estate is very protective of the boundary between the two IP clusters, because they don't own the Hobbit and LOTR licenses and need to preserve their rights to everything else (and their ability to profit from those rights). For Middle-earth Role-playing, back in the '80s and '90s, Iron Crown Enterprises had a (limited) agreement with the Estate in addition to their main license from Tolkien Enterprises, which is why Pallando and Alatar could be included in their games. (They also frequently overstepped this limited license, usually without repercussion because the Estate wasn't monitoring things quite as closely back then.)One silver lining is that Free League's license does include the LOTR Appendices, where a lot of lore that doesn't make it into those two books' main narratives can be found. The other silver lining is that we're mostly only talking about lore rather than missing mechanics, and, well, if a TOR GM cares enough about Middle-earth lore then The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales are sitting on their shelf, and those basically just are the lorebooks that Free League isn't allowed to publish.We will most likely soon enough see a second Middle-earth RPG, probably from a different publisher, based on The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, etc., licensed from the Estate rather than <s>Tolkien</s> Middle-earth Enterprises. Unless The Rings of Power bombs badly.</blockquote>

Verification