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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jerik" data-source="post: 8912339" data-attributes="member: 7039785">For whatever reason, TSR was far laxer in enforcing its IP in video games than in other media.  The early Final Fantasies used loads of D&D monsters besides mind flayers; there were, for instance, also sahagin (just one letter missing from the sahuagin they were based on) and the ochu (in later Final Fantasies retconned to be plantlike to make it more of its own thing, but originally very obviously the D&D otyugh with the name altered by transliteration to Japanese and back).  Even then, though, there may have been some limits; the monster in the original Japanese Final Fantasy called a "bihorudaa" (beholder) was renamed to an "Evil Eye" when the game was localized outside Japan (and the graphic changed to something less obviously copied from a Monster Manual illustration).It wasn't just Final Fantasy; the early Ultima games included a lot of D&D monsters too, most with the names slightly changed, like mind flayer to mind ripper and xorn to zorn.Heck, it's still been going on under Wizards of the Coast; D&D gnolls have found their way into Everquest and World of Warcraft, and as far as I know no one at WotC has objected.  (There were monsters called "gnoles" in a 1912 book by Lord Dunsany, but they weren't described; gnolls as hyena people are original to D&D.)  I'm not sure if it's because WotC wasn't paying as much attention to video games, or because video game companies are rich enough that WotC didn't think it could take them on, but for whatever reason video games have long gotten away with using D&D content that pen-and-paper publishers might have gotten into trouble for.</blockquote>

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