Battle of the Five Armies (TSR 1977)

When D&D co-creator Gary Gygax penned the original D&D books, he took fantastic creatures and magic from every source he knew and added them to the game. He never considered who owned the ideas. Surely a few references to hobbits in a game that originally reached a minuscule number of hobbyists would pass unnoticed. So the first D&D books and supplements included references to hobbits, ents, nazgûl, and balrogs.

In April 1977, TSR went too far by releasing an unlicensed game based on The Hobbit called Battle of the Five Armies. A note under the title said, “From ‘The Hobbit’” and revealed that TSR had applied to trademark “The Battle of the Five Armies.”

The board game reached hobby shops just as marketing started for a television adaption of The Hobbit. Perhaps, TSR figured that the game could benefit from the movie publicity, while escaping the notice of any lawyers. This calculation proved wrong. Worse for TSR, the board game drew legal attention to D&D.

Hobbit (TV Movie 1977)

The Hollywood production company behind The Hobbit owned the non-literary rights to Tolkien’s works, and that included games. The man running the production company, Saul Zaentz, would later gain fame by suing John Fogerty for plagiarizing his own songs. (Zaentz owned the songs Fogerty wrote for Creedence Clearwater Revival, so when one of the artist’s new songs sounded too much like “The Old Man Down The Road,” Zaentz took Fogarty to court. Fogarty would strike back by penning the song “Zanz Kant Danz.”) Zaentz‘s company sent TSR a cease-and-desist notice.

TSR killed the board game and cut words coined by Tolkien from D&D. They used synonyms while leaving the fundamental concepts unchanged. Hobbits became halflings, ents became treants, and nazgûl became wraiths. The Eldritch Wizardry supplement dropped the note that said Type VI demons were sometimes called balrogs. Eventually, the D&D version of the demon would become balors.

Next: Number 8