Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mannahnin" data-source="post: 9036457" data-attributes="member: 7026594">Obligatory note that it was not the Tolkien Estate (his family, controllers of the books), but the Saul Zaentz company AKA Tolkien Enterprises, which held licensing rights for derivative works.Yes.  It's important to remember that virtually none of them were professionals.  They were hobbyists, and when you're making, say, a Diplomacy variant set on Middle Earth to distribute via fanzine and play with a few friends across the country, it's not an issue to just rip stuff directly from Tolkien.  Any more than it is when and if we do it for our home D&D campaigns.  Gary and co didn't initially expect D&D to be big enough to attract any notice from the copyright holder or licensing rights holder for LotR, or Burroughs' Martian stories.  Although they still should have known better, since they were selling the books, not distributing them to friends for free.There's certainly some truth to this, but Dragonlance and most other Heroes' Journey template fantasy don't contain QUITE so many direct character analogues and borrowed plot points from LotR....[ISPOILER][URL unfurl="true"]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sword_of_Shannara[/URL][/ISPOILER]</blockquote>