tanstaafl wrote:
Gygax got around this particular copyright-infringement threat by spelling it “mithral”, with an “a”, throughout 1st Edition AD&D.
So, you’ve got this stronger-than-steel, lightweight, silvery, and incredibly valuable metal, but one of the vowels is different? That doesn’t seem like enough to avoid a lawsuit, to me. And in second edition, it was definitely “mithril”, spelled properly, but “hobbit” and “treant” weren’t (and aren’t) changed back.