Lord of the Rings Campaign?

[rpeters]

I would absolutely love creating or playing someone's version of Lord of the Rings. It could come in three campaigns,

Fellowship of the Ring

The Two Towers

The Return of the King.

I don't know how to program campaigns and it would take a while for me to learn, and I don't have much time at the moment. I would be willing to help organize the story, create authentic music, and try my hand at the art if someone would be willing to program it.

Of course the campaign would have to follow the books fairly closely, but would we be able to use the names of the characters or is that copy right infringement?

Let me know if this is a bad or good idea, thanks!

[Dixie]

As far as I know, unit name taken from the book or not, such a campaign would be copyright infringement, and wouldn't be accepted on the add-ons server, sorry

[rpeters]

If all names were creatively changed including the title would that be acceptable? It would just follow the general story of the three books.

[Dixie]

I don,t know, someone more savvy should be answering you, sorry. You'd really have to change all character, places and some races (hobbits) names, and probably some other stuff I haven't thought about off the top of my head. Still, good luck with your project You can still create it for your personnal pleasure and not upload it to the add-ons, if you really want to.

[rpeters]

That's true too. Thanks for your reply.

[PeterPorty]

No, it wouldn't, why would we copy a decent book into an awesome game? that would be like changing nosferatu for twilight as the 'usual vampire'... oh wait, that already happened, well, anyway, short story; no, copyright, long story, I'm too lazy to write, someone else will say.

[rpeters]

Well reenacting an awesome book in an awesome game sounds like a lot of fun to me. But you are right, there would be so much copyright we'd have to avoid that it will just end up sounding like delfador help three little folk trying to destroy the forbidden sword or something along those lines. Probably not worth it in the end.

[norbert]

I would absolutely love creating or playing someone's version of Lord of the Rings.

Many have suggested a campaign based on LoTR as you can read here and here (under 9; more explanation), but it would be copyright infringement. In 2004, someone created a Middle Earth MP map, but the attachment is gone. Two years later, Kharn created a LoTR campaign and era. The link in that thread no longer works, but the content was moved to this website. It seems the campaign no longer worked after the era was changed to be compatible with Wesnoth 1.3.3. As you know the current (stable) Wesnoth version is 1.8.4, so things (install_Middle_Earth_era.exe and Lotr_Campaign.zip, whatever they contain) will need lots of tweaking.

[boru]

Tolkien had a unique vision and created a classic story. Why not copy the man instead of his books? Most of us are not creative geniuses like Tolkien but we can try our best to come up with something unique and fresh.

[Hulavuta]

Hmm, http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=26789

I think what TSI is trying to say is that you can probably dodge copyright by changing things, but if it's really obvious that you're changing it simply to avoid copyright, it's bad. Maybe you should follow the basic plot (There is an super powerful {ITEM} that needs to be taken to a special place to be destroyed). However, it's a bad idea to just change everything, for example: the "group" meets in {ELVISH_CITY} and decides to take the {ITEM} to {ORCISH_CITY} to destroy it. But they go through {DWARVISH_CITY} and run into {REPLACEMENT_FOR_BALROG}.


That would make it a little too obvious. Keeping the basic plot wouldn't, since a lot of things already use that plot anyway. However, if you wanted to do a PARODY of LotR, you could probably pull it off.

[artisticdude]

Tolkien had a unique vision and created a classic story. Why not copy the man instead of his books? Most of us are not creative geniuses like Tolkien but we can try our best to come up with something unique and fresh.

Bravo.

Although I must say that it is very, very difficult to come up with an original fantasy story. The old cliche "save the world/country/princess from the dragon" can only be twisted so many ways before you begin to see stereotypical plotlines all over the place. However, coming up with an original story is not altogether impossible, and it would certainly be better to at least attempt to do so before following the well-trodden path of banal plotlines.

[terakay273]

Well, I think you could straight-out ask the Tolkien headquarters if you could do it; then it would be possible to make a Lord of the Rings campaign without strategically renaming things. Although considering how difficult it was for Peter Jackson to get the rights for the movies, I doubt you would be able to do this easily...

[boru]

But, but that would mean writing out an original letter of request. Surely Tolkien or someone wrote a similar letter that could be copied.

[Iris]

Stop kicking the dead horse.

Locked.