Re: (TFT) fiction, unreasonable DXs, gems as arrowheads

["Craig W. Barber" <craigwbar@comcast.net>]

My first guess would be that "orc", like "halfling", was not original to JRR
Tolkien but rather came from his source material, the Nordic myths.  I vaguely
recall reading a piece by one of the old school fantasy writers, circa 1975 or
so, commenting that you could even find names like "Gandalf", "Thorin",
"Balin" and so on as well.

Otherwise, hmm, "orc" may simply be too small a copy to count as copyright
infringement.

I wanna hear more about the Zulu Herder-Kings.  I'm still LOL about that one.
DX31 and no weapons skills!

Who here would lay claim to the highest DX character ever?  I once built an
archer up to an adjDX in the 30's, but I'm sure others here have beaten that
standard by a mile.

Actually, my little innovation was arming him with arrows tipped with all the
various kind of combat gems.  Some twelve die exploding gems, some summon
gargoyle gems, some seven hex wall gems and so on.  Reverse missiles you say?
Not a good enough defense against this guy!  A big enough exploding gem does
damage IN THE ADJOINING HEXES, and I've never heard a GM claim that a *normal*
reverse missiles amulet had an effect that covered more than one hex.  So...
my guy would shoot at the floor (DX bonus!) in the hex next to his target.  7
hex wall can neatly encapsulate someone that way (6 hexes around the figure, 1
hex over the top to complete the enclosure), a large exploding gem would put
damage on someone in another hex, a summoned 7 hex dragon makes a pretty good
wall and so on.  Presumably his opponent is able to crash out of a TFT wall in
one action, but, fiendish cackle, my archer gets to do it all again a second
time at the end of the turn (Archer 2nd shot, right?), say another 7 hex wall
and then my archer goes first again on the new turn and adds a new
complication to the picture before the opponent gets his next action.

Not claiming he's undefeatable, this is TFT after all!!  Just unreasonably
hard to cope with.  My version of the Paladin with 12 pages worth of loot...



  ----- Original Message -----
  From: David O. Miller
  To: tft@brainiac.com
  Sent: Friday, September 15, 2006 10:28 AM
  Subject: Re: (TFT) fiction ?


  I always wondered about the name "orc" myself. I asked some higher ups
  at TSR once about their usage of that name and character type and they
  told me that they'd prefer not to talk about it to loudly. I think they
  were flying under the radar screen with the Tolkien estate and trying
  not to draw too much attention to it. So how many game companies could
  they close down for the use of this term? Of course now it seems that
  the term orc has been added into our language, at least pop culture
  language.

  --David O. Miller

  > Game to book copyright issues:
  >
  > I'm not sure the issue has ever been litigated, but I'm just about
  > sure that
  > if you file off the serial numbers (get rid of really distinctive
  > terms like
  > "Armor Class" or "Prootwaddle" or "Hobbit"), then you could flog a
  > book.
  > There's another theory that might work too, that the book or
  > screenplay is a
  > "derivative work".   BTW, I don't know how it came out in the end, but
  > 30
  > years ago TSR got in trouble over the term HOBBIT, but they located
  > Halfling
  > in the original Nordic myths Tolkien drew from, so they switched all
  > references in the books to "Halflings".  Of course years later after
  > D&D got
  > bigger and richer than the Tolkien estate, they may have just licensed
  > the
  > term back!
  >
  > Finally, I suspect that in market terms, it would LOWER a book's value
  > if it
  > had references that were too clearly geared towards a particular game
  > system:
  > most potential readers wouldn't be players and would find the
  > references lame.
  > So, the typical publisher would ask for, and the typical author would
  > write,
  > "generic" fantasy novels... which is pretty much a description of the
  > publishing world right now anyhow.
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