A closer look
Dungeons and Dragons originally included Hobbits, Ents, and Balrogs in its first edition until the estate of J.R.R. Tolkien threatened to sue the absolute pants off the game's creators for blatant copyright infringement. Rather than pay licensing fees or admit any creative bankruptcy, Gary Gygax and his team simply employed the finest legal strategy known to man: finding a thesaurus. They hastily renamed the creatures to 'Halflings', 'Treants', and 'Type VI Demons', thereby dodging a massive lawsuit while still totally ripping off Middle-earth's entire fantasy aesthetic. This legally mandated vocabulary shift established the foundation for almost all modern tabletop and video game fantasy tropes, proving that you do not actually need to be original to invent an entire genre. All you really need is a slightly altered naming convention and enough twenty-sided dice to distract the nerds from realizing they are just playing an unlicensed Lord of the Rings simulator
