* Much confusion has resulted from Creator/BlizzardEntertainment's popular ''VideoGame/{{Warcraft}}'' franchise being heavily "inspired" by Games Workshop's comparatively obscure ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'' tabletop war game. A new round of this ensued when a ''Warhammer'' {{MMORPG}} was announced with, unsurprisingly, more than a few similarities to the mega-popular ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' prompting [[http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/04/10 this Penny Arcade strip]]. In fact, the similarities are so close that there are persistent unfounded rumors how ''Warcraft'' started as a ''Warhammer'' game, but Blizzard couldn't gain Games Workshop's support and dropped the IP (and Warcraft has moved quite far away from Warhammer Fantasy Battles a while now).
** Naturally, both drew on others as well. ''Warhammer Fantasy'' took from [[Creator/JRRTolkien Tolkien]] and ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons''.
** One of the odder names in the ''40k'' lore is that of the Primarch Lion El'johnson, of the Dark Angels chapter of the Space Marines. This is actually a GeniusBonus: The real Lionel Johnson was a poet, whose most recognized work -- The Dark Angel -- is all about the pain of his struggle between his homosexuality and his devout Catholic faith. Given that the DA's backstory is all about how half of their brotherhood fell to Chaos, and that the Imperium is Super-Catholicism on steroids (complete with its own Inquisition), you do the math.
* The similarities between ''VideoGame/StarCraft'' and ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'' are likewise often cited as the source for their comparisons; in truth both were created independent of each other. They did however draw from the same sources, like [[Creator/RobertAHeinlein Heinlein]], ''Franchise/{{Dune}}'', and ''Literature/StarshipTroopers''.
** In addition to this, the whole concept of ''Warhammer 40,000'' was initially a ''parody'' of grimdark settings in general and ''Warhammer Fantasy'' in particular. Unfortunately, the joke was so subtle that many people [[MisaimedFandom reveled in the dark and serious atmosphere of the new game]], and somewhere along the line even the writers seemed to forget that the Imperium were not supposed to be the good guys. [[GoneHorriblyWrong This had the unfortunate result of attracting bigots and neo-fascists]] who [[MistakenForRacist thought they were in good company]].
* ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'':
** The displacer beast (a catlike monster with tentacles sprouting out of its back) is based off of an alien called Coeurl from A.E. Van Vogt's short story ''Black Destroyer'' (later compiled into the novel ''Voyage of the Space Beagle''). So are the "coeurl" enemies in the various Franchise/FinalFantasy games (although they've generally got elongated facial barbels rather than back-tentacles), and Mughi from ''Literature/DirtyPair''. Perhaps ironically, the displacer beast is not included in the open game content.
** It's common for people to assume that the D&D "gorgon" is a case of SadlyMythtaken, as it (a metal-scaled bull with petrifying breath) bears very little resemblance to the gorgons of Greek myth, and the more classically-styled gorgons are named "{{Medusa}}s." However, the idea is actually much older than ''D&D'', with the bestiary ''History of Four-Footed Beasts and Serpents'', published in 1698, describing a very similar creature. The writer apparently identified the mythical gorgon's traits with those of the catoblepas (a bull-like creature native to Ethiopia with poisonous breath), and theorized that they were the same creature or closely related--hence, the "gorgon", as shown off in the book, is essentially a composite of the two myths. The only real changes made for ''D&D'' were removing its bowed head and changing the poison breath to petrifying breath.
** The illithid are also counted as "product identity" and you can get sued for using them... Gygax got the idea from a creature on the cover of Creator/BrianLumley's ''The Burrowers Beneath'', which was, needless to say, inspired by Creator/HPLovecraft's most famous character, Cthulhu.
** The meenlock is a direct lift from the 1973 film ''Film/DontBeAfraidOfTheDark''.
** The D&D "frost worm" is identical to a wormlike monster fought by Franchise/ConanTheBarbarian in his original adventure novels -- specifically the short story "The Lair of the Ice Worm" by Creator/LSpragueDeCamp and Creator/LinCarter. The remorhaz, as evidenced by its name -- the original Conan Ice Worms were also known as Remora -- draws inspiration from the same source.
** Xill are based off of Van Vogt's Ixtl (right down to the very similar name), which can be found in the same anthology as Coeurl.
** Some 4th edition versions of the vampire that do not die in sunlight, including the class, have been accused of ripping off ''Literature/TheTwilightSaga'', even though Literature/{{Dracula}} didn't die in sunlight either.
*** [[OurVampiresAreDifferent Most folk vampires]] were capable of being active in the daylight. They were simply unable to use their powers or were weakened.
*** Even ''within'' D&D, sun-immune vampires had been part of the CD&D rules since the introduction of the nosferatu variant, and the TabletopGame/{{Ravenloft}} setting had them ever since AD&D 2nd Edition.
** Tarrasque, often considered a D&D invention, is a medieval mythical beast. It had to be pretty popular if there was even a type of cannon named after it, but it simply wasn't used as often by fantasy authors as griffons and dragons were. Ditto for catoblepas and the dragon turtle.
** It's assumed that since 4th-5th edition added so many playable races (plenty of which being traditionally "monster races"), that it was the first module to really allow players to play something non-human or a "monster race". Except that fan favourite races such as tieflings and Drow were originally "monster races". Splatbooks giving non-homebrew stats for playing ''as'' a "Monster PC" have existed since ''Advanced Dungeons and Dragons''.
** 5th edition added "Leonin" and "Loxodon" to Dungeons and Dragons. These were actually from ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'' - not made up for ''5th edition''.
** And finally, the game itself has been played since the Seventies, and has since then managed to exert its influence on both video gaming and fantasy literature.
* Some newer gamers complain that ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'' rips off ''TabletopGame/{{Pokemon}}'' and ''TabletopGame/YuGiOh''. ''Magic'' was first printed in 1993, ''TabletopGame/{{Pokemon}}'' in 1996, and ''TabletopGame/YuGiOh'' in 1999; in fact, the card game of ''Yu-Gi-Oh!'' was clearly a BlandNameProduct version of ''Magic'' upon its introduction.
** ''Magic'' was not the first TradingCardGame; a baseball card company published rules to a game you could play with baseball cards...in ''1904''.
** In June 2020, Wizards declared that overtly racist or offensive ''Magic: The Gathering'' cards [[https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/news/depictions-racism-magic-2020-06-10 would be banned from all sanctioned play, and the art scrapped from their website]]. This is not new; for example, they did a similar "purge" for Fourth Edition in 1994-1995 in which they stopped printing and created soft bans (e.g. no longer legal in Standard) for cards with questionable content. Examples include banning cards directly dealing with demons (e.g. Demonic Hordes), or have questionable art (e.g. Earthbind, where there was a naked female that had translucent {{wing|edHumanoid}}s, bound BDSM-style). Also one card, Unholy Strength, was [[{{Bowdlerise}} bowdlerized]]: older editions up to Revised had a pentagram in the background; Fourth Edition onward did not.
* The first modern wargame (i.e. close simulation of a real battle with set rules of conduct) was "A Tactical Wargame" designed by Lieutenant Georg von Reiswitz in 1812. It was actually not a pastime but an educational tool for officers. It also featured a modular board (that looked much like modern "Carcassonne": http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-42723-2.html), arbiter (gamemaster), multiplayer mode (up to 10 players) and both constant (tables) and random (dice) elements.
** The first truly recreational wargame, designed for that purpose, was published as Little Wars by Creator/HGWells in 1913.
* Players of the ''TabletopGame/YuGiOh'' card game think that the concept of "hand-traps", as they are commonly called (as in cards, usually monsters, that a player can activate from his hand during his opponent's turn, like [[http://yugipedia.com/wiki/Honest Honest]], [[http://yugipedia.com/wiki/Maxx_%22C%22 Maxx C]], and [[http://yugipedia.com/wiki/Effect_Veiler Effect Veiler]]), is a relatively new concept that started in the GX-era with Honest. In truth, there are a few that appeared before that one, and even [[http://yugipedia.com/wiki/Kuriboh Kuriboh]], a card that was included in one of the ''first available boxed sets'', has an effect that qualified.