Duplicates
Several readers recently pointed
out similarities between one of the
new dragons described in DRAGON®
issue #l46 and a small dragon-like
creature that appeared in several SF
novels by Alan Dean Foster. We
were not aware of the similarities
and have no evidence that the new
dragon was derived from the one in
the novels. We do our best to avoid
the unfair use of copyrighted materials
in DRAGON Magazine, but with
the enormous growth of fantasy and
SF in recent years, we cannot always
tell if a submission is wholly
original or not.

Most role-playing games abound
with materials and items that were
based in part on other sources. The
works of J. R. R. Tolkien, Jack Vance,
Poul Anderson, Gordon Dickson,
Robert Heinlein, Larry Niven, and
Jerry Pournelle (not to mention Star
Wars and Star Trek) have served as
inspiration for hundreds of ideas in
the field of role-playing games. Such
inspiration is fine, but there is a
limit to what you can borrow before
it is considered theft-and thus
legally actionable.

To complicate the issue, we regularly
see cases of independent invention,
in which two or more writers
independently create monsters,
magical items, spells, characters,
and even adventures that are extremely
similar. While everyone
would like to think his ideas are
unique, your magazine editors can
tell you that certain themes do appear
over and over. We have seen
many interesting duplicates of
witches, shape-changing NPC <Berserker>
classes, unusual vampires, Oriental
martial-arts NPC classes, aliens and <Escrimador, Sumotori, Samurai, Battle Dancer>
demons that resemble the creature
from Alien, and certain types of
dragons, golems, and giants. It is not
unusual to see two or three monsters,
spells, or magical items with
identical names and powers from
different writers over the course of
a year (e.g., glass and wood golems,
thunderclap spells, rings of quasi-elemental
or para-elemental command).
It is difficult, if not nearly
impossible, to develop a truly original
idea.

Sometimes we have published
independently created items if they
work well together (see DRAGON
issue #103, "The Centaur Papers,"
and DRAGON issue #115, "The Ecology
of the Harpy"), but more often
we just pick out the best such item
and return or discard the others.
Sometimes we discard all duplicates
to avoid overkill on a particular
topic or to avoid dealing with the
situation. (We rejected all samurai
and ninja classes sent to us for years
before the AD&D® Oriental Adventures
tome came out simply because
we knew no one would be pleased
with anything other than an "official
-- version of either class.)

We have a very healthy respect
for proper usage and fairness, and
we believe the majority of our readers
share the same respect. Everyone
takes pride in creating something
entirely on his own--well,
almost everyone.

The extreme was reached by the
writer who sent a short story to
AMAZING® Stories a few years ago.
The story was quite good and was
on its third or fourth reading when
it was discovered that the story was
a plagiarized copy of Arthur C.
Clarke's "The Nine Billion Names of
God." One word had been changed
early in the tale, but otherwise it
was identical to the original. We
won't discuss the legal horrors that
befell the "author" of the story, nor
the academic horrors that befell the
student who plagiarized "The Ecology
of the Minotaur" from DRAGON
issue #116 and turned it in to his
high-school teacher for an assignment.
His teacher was already familiar
with the AD&D® game and called
our offices to ask about the story.

Borrowing, independent invention,
and copying will always be
around, but steps can be taken to
reduce their effects. Writers can
consult the appropriate legal
sources to protect their rights to
their materials, and we?ll keep our
records in order and count on our
readers to look for things we might
miss. With a little effort, we can
share the best of our readers' creative
works to benefit the entire roleplaying
hobby.

But please, don't send any more
brown, gray, rainbow, stone, rock,
or purple dragons to us. We have
lots, thanks.