D&D Accidentally Stole A Race From The Creator Of Game Of Thrones

D&D Accidentally Stole A Race From The Creator Of Game Of Thrones

The name of the githyanki race from the Dungeons & Dragons multiverse was actually taken from a George R. R. Martin novel without his knowledge.

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D&D Accidentally Stole A Race From The Creator Of Game Of Thrones

The races in Dungeons & Dragons come from a number of different places, but one of them came from an unexpected source, as the githyanki were invented by George R. R. Martin of A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones fame and their name was taken without his knowledge.

In the Dungeons & Dragons multiverse, there are different planes of existence that exist parallel to each other, and characters can move between them with the aid of magic. The astral plane connects to the prime material plane, and it’s a place where the power of thought rules over everything, which is why so many of its inhabitants are skilled in psionics. One of the races that reside on the astral sea is the githyanki, who escaped from the servitude of the mind flayers and colonized the plane. The githyanki will play an important role in the upcoming Baldur’s Gate III. It has been confirmed that one of the new party members in Baldur’s Gate III is a githyanki fighter named Lae’zel.

The githyanki are one of the most prominent species in Dungeons & Dragons outside of the ones that appear in the Player’s Handbook, yet their name was taken without the creator’s permission. The name of the githyanki was first mentioned in a novel called Dying of the Light, which was written by George R. R. Martin and released in 1977. The story would have ended it there, if British sci-fi/horror author Charles Stross hadn’t read Dying of the Light and used the name for a race that he used in his homebrew Dungeons & Dragons campaign. According to Bell of Lost Souls, Stross submitted the githyanki to the Fiend Factory section of White Dwarf magazine, at a time when it published Dungeons & Dragons material.

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The githyanki were then published in the first edition of the Fiend Folio and one of them even appeared on the cover of the book. Since then, the lore of the githyanki has been expanded upon in the Dungeons & Dragons tabletop game, most notably in the Planescape line of books, which dealt with the multiverse at large. The Planescape Torment and Neverwinter Nights video games explored the story of the githyanki even more. The creators of Dungeons & Dragons have changed the names of creatures in the past (such as devils and demons becoming baatezu and tanar’ri), yet no attempt has ever been made to rename the githyanki.

For Martin’s part, he is seemingly unbothered by the use of the githyanki in Dungeons & Dragons, especially as it was only the name that was taken. Unlike the Tolkien estate and it’s Dungeons & Dragons lawsuit, neither Martin nor his representatives have pursued legal action against the creators of the game. The A Song of Ice and Fire novels have borrowed numerous names from works by other authors, including H.P. Lovecraft (Dagon Greyjoy, the city of Carcosa), J.R.R. Tolkien (Oakenshield, Ser Theodan the True), and Mervyn Peake (Titus Peake and Gorman Peake). Wun Wun the giant was named after an NFL Quarterback and some of the ancestors of House Tully are named Elmo and Grover, which shows the range of sources that Martin has referenced in his works. Martin might have named the githyanki, but other writers fleshed them out and made them a memorable part of the Dungeons & Dragons multiverse.

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Link Source : https://screenrant.com/dungeons-dragons-game-thrones-githyanki-race-dying-light/

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