Reply To: WHtOW – fluff and does it make sense ?

[wolfie65Participant 1238xp 0]

It seems that IPing only started to become a factor in the GW business model after they replaced all the creative and talented gamers, artists, sculptors and other beer&pretzel types with stock holders, lawyers and accountants.

You can’t patent the word ‘Orc’ – the earliest mention of it I’ve found is in a French fairy tale and refers to a humanoid sea monster – but calling them ‘Orruk’ or other such silly nonsense isn’t going to stop people from substituting horrendously overpriced models with more affordable ones – or simply ones they like better from a sculpting point of view. I, for one, pretty much stopped buying new Citadel stuff about 20 years ago because I just don’t like the way they look anymore.

You can’t patent the word ‘Elf’, it comes from proto-Norse and means ‘white’, referring to our ancestors.

You can’t patent the look of a Landsknecht, the word ‘halberdier’, the word ‘knight’ and so on.

None of this had apparently bothered them – or any other company – until sometime in the 2010s.