An Interview with Laurie Battle
How did Middle-earth Role Playing come to be? This is a question we shall be exploring in the next few issues of Other Hands through a series of interviews with some of the people who helped make it possible. I thought it valuable to begin, then, with Laurie Battle, Licensing Director of Tolkien Enterprises. In the following discussion (the transcript of an on-line interview), I've asked Laurie to tell us something about the big picture: how did it all begin on the legal end of things?
Chris: Just so our readers will know who is talking here, could you let us know a little about yourself? What role do you play as Licensing Director at Tolkien Enterprises? How (or when) did you first get involved in the Middle-earth role playing license?
Laurie: I'm pretty much a conduit through which matters pertaining to Tolkien flow in our company. I work fairly independently, from a home office, and balance my Tolkien work with a variety of other activities. I read and enjoyed Tolkien as a junior high school student in the '60's and again in college, but wouldn't classify myself as a hard-core fan. My personal interests are eclectic and range from politics to women's spirituality to popular culture to chaos theory to alternative education. I think Tolkien was a brilliant scholar and writer. My personal interests in his work focus more on the cultural significance of what he accomplished, how his writing created and continues to create a very real sense of magic for so many people; and on some of his lesser-known writings such as the essay "On Fairy Stories." I've been doing the Tolkien licensing for about ten years.
Chris: Since the role playing license is presumably only one facet of its larger work, could you say something about Tolkien Enterprises itself? How is it related to the Tolkien Estate?
Laurie: Tolkien Enterprises is a division of the Saul Zaentz Company, an independent film company best known for its films "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and "Amadeus." George Allen & Unwin sold film, merchandising and assorted other rights to United Artists while Tolkien was still alive, and I believe they sat on a shelf there until the mid-70's when SZCo bought them and subsequently produced the Ralph Bakshi film of "The Lord of the Rings." Tolkien Enterprises is not related to the Tolkien Estate.
Chris: When and where did the initial impetus to license role playing games based in Tolkien's world come from? Was it Tolkien Enterprises that pushed for the idea, or was it ICE that took the initiative?
Laurie: ICE initiated the role playing games license.
Chris: Was ICE the only gaming company that applied for the license, or were their other candidates?
Laurie: Prior to ICE's request to be licensed, no one else had expressed interest in a role playing games license.
Chris: What factors prompted the decision to issue a world-wide exclusive license for Tolkien-based role playing games (rather than to make such a license available to more than one company)? Is this standard practice with other (i.e., non-role playing game) licenses, or were special considerations involved?
Laurie: Each situation is different. Business deals always boil down to what scenario is likely to make the most money. In some cases having two or more non-exclusive licensees makes sense, and in others it doesn't.
Chris: What is the origin of the stricture that ICE only set its products in the Third Age of Middle-earth, and that it therefore officially be based only on The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, but not The Silmarillion?
Laurie: We only own the rights to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings; therefore our licensees are restricted to material contained within these books.
Chris: I understand that ICE is able to "contract out" to other gaming companies. For example, their Wizards card game was originally envisioned as a project to be executed by Wizards of the Coast. How does this power relate to the exclusive nature of their license? Does Tolkien Enterprises ever take a hand in "approving" ICE's relations with other game companies, or is that their own affair?
Laurie: We have product approval rights and some oversight capability. However, we generally give licensees wide latitude to handle their own affairs. Other than that, for this I would defer to Pete Fenlon's judgment of how much of the contractual terms he wants to make public.
Chris: In ICE's official announcement of its "Perestroika" reform of its Middle-earth series (published in the very first issue of Other Hands), I detected a certain apologetic undertone to Pete Fenlon's bold pronouncements about the projected revision and improvement of the MERP line (and I strongly sense that this was directed as much to Tolkien Enterprises as it was to the general reader). How have the second edition MERP releases been received by Tolkien Enterprises? Is the general feeling that improvement or progress has been made towards a better quality product?
Laurie: To be honest, our eye is focused on royalty income rather than on the finer details of the games themselves. None of the people on our business end is personally involved in playing these kinds of games. I look through the Iron Crown releases to keep a sense of the general overview of what they're doing, and I pay attention to feedback from various sources including people such as yourself, but I don't engage at a deeper level than that.
Chris: Thank you very much for your time.