Post #2814946

2026-04-04 17:54 UTC

@mhd@tilde.zone Your posts remind me of the old internet where people would write interesting things and not devolve into "i am right, you are wrong". I personally, feel, there is something different about Tolkien ripping off old Norse legends, Beowulf, Anglo-saxon stories, and even Wagner's Ring of Nibelungs. Mainly, time (and a little bit of context in regards to Wagner). People who were into fantasy novels, read Lord of the Rings, which were published in 1954, and got super popular in the late 60s, early 70s. Then Dragonlance publishes a derivative as a novel in the mid 80s, in the same sort of media, format. So the people reading it, are much more familiar with the details between the two. Now, the crux of the matter gets into "How much can you copy something?" and "How long do you have to wait until you can copy something?" which are very subjective. A court has never even ruled on are the various D&D derived rules acceptable (Dangerous Journeys comes to mind).

Replies (1)

@mhd@tilde.zone 2026-04-04 19:06

@randomwizard@social.vivaldi.net I think gaming rules are an interesting point of view here. If I remember correctly, the big legal issue here is where you're drawing the lines between "just rules" (which can't be copyrighted) and their artistic expression. There once was a trial about some version of Tetris, and it was quite interesting for which details the distinction was made (certainly not intuitive to a non-lawyer). As a side note, it's quite likely that the LotR wouldn't be so popular without some serious breaches in copyright anyway ;) I would say that if we're going by similar rules for the DL background/novels, I think most of the more blatant ripoffs aren't on the shoulders of Weis/Hickman, but Gygax/Arneson. I mean, D&D probably was the ground zero for "EDO fantasy", simply by being popular and then this snowballing into "everyone is doing it" justifications for fantasy authors, never mind a few of them probably playing the game. But for the DL novels, not doing that never was an option. As for their own Tolkien-adjacency, I'd rate that a lot less than some of the "challengers". The party setup is different (they're all adventuring veterans, so neither the upper crust of hero-dom or bumbling everymen as in LotR), the quest structure, too. Sure, you got some balls (erm…) and a bumbling wizard, but neither are exactly Tolkien's most pure innovations. And the cosmology/ideology have both common items and some major differences, just like the Catholicism and Mormonism that influenced them do. And that's why I wouldn't call Weis/Hickman to be the most egregious copycats. But neither are they ones who did more interesting things with the subject matter, even back then (that "award" probably goes to the Thomas Covenant series). Their crimes against module-writing are much worse ;)

Open ##2814947