D&D 5E Which parts of D&D came from Tolkien?

billd91 · Nov 22, 2017

Lehrbuch said:
I'm not sure that it does predate Tolkien? The idea that a race could have an alignment, and be an inherently evil (or good) race, seems quite unusual to me. Especially for "humanoid" races. Pre-Tolkien fantasy literature obviously has inherently evil individual creatures (dragons, for example) but not so much with entire humanoid species.

The white martians of Edgar Rice Burroughs were pretty thoroughly evil and they predated Tolkien's publications by a couple of decades.

lowkey13 · Nov 22, 2017

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Shasarak · Nov 22, 2017

Parmandur said:
You just, but...actually, the LotR mojo is strong in 4E. I would postulate the 4E Warlord also comes from wanting to play Aragorn, movie Aragorn rather than book Aragorn.

I cant remember the movie Aragorn shouting anyones hand back on?

Parmandur · Nov 22, 2017

Shasarak said:
I cant remember the movie Aragorn shouting anyones hand back on?

He got them off their Duff and granted bonus attacks at Helms Deep, though.

Parmandur · Nov 22, 2017

lowkey13 said:
No.

OD&D was clear that the system was Law/Chaos. This was a different trope than what was used in Tolkien, and was borrowed from Anderson/Moorcock (you also see it, later, in Zelazny).

Good/Evil were added later by Gygax because people struggled and confused law and chaos. There was an article he wrote in '76 or something trying to explain it. So when he got a re-do (AD&D, 1e) he expanded the system to the Law/Chaos, Good/Evil manichean system we use today.

The whole law/chaos thing, BTW, is why there was the emphasis in Greyhawk on neutral characters (keeping the balance) which makes more sense when you trace the antecedent roots to Law/Chaos as opposed to Good/Evil.

Finally, Tolkien shouldn't take the "credit" (really, blame) for either a good/evil dichotomy, or racial essentialism, both of which far, far, far pre-date him.

Tolkien wasn't a cosmic dualist, either: in his world, all evil is corrupted good, and all good beings can be corrupted. His moral and metaphysical vision was not simplistic or radicalized. Even the Orcs are tragic and sad.