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<blockquote data-quote="Remathilis" data-source="post: 7265974" data-attributes="member: 7635"><p>This is a very tricky question to navigate.</p><p></p><p>When Dave and Gary were making D&D, they were mashing together elements of the fantasy they knew; Tolkien, Vance, Moorcock, Howard, etc. Some of the stuff is quite literally "serial-numbers filed off" stolen, while others were more in spirit of. Either way, since then D&D has grown into its own genre of fantasy, and as it does the "serial numbers filed off" approach has lessened. I mean, the 2e ranger was (supposedly) modeled off a popular character from a D&D novel, rather than the novel character the 1e ranger was based off. A lot of the more modern elements then tend to come from the ideas from D&D itself rather than continuing to absorb fantasy novels, movies, and games and mix them in. For example, the dragonborn was an idea spawned not from some interesting draconic race in fantasy but from a desire to allow a "PC dragon" based character. (In fact, the closest example of draconic humanoids in popular fantasy lit would be draconians, which were designed for... D&D!) Aasimar, Tieflings and Genasi all hail from Planescape and a desire to have "PC half-outsiders". Warlocks hail from playing a spellcaster with alternate mechanics than the wizard, sorcerer exists for much the same reason. </p><p></p><p>Ironically, I'd say Pathfinder is much closer these days to the spirit of "file the serial number off" style of content acquisition than D&D is. The Pathfinder bestiaries have all sorts of stats for more "modern" monsters like Mothman, Chupacabra, or Nosferatu, and has experimented more with popular archetypes from fantasy having classes built around them (such as Summoner being heavily influenced by Final Fantasy style summoners).</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Remathilis, post: 7265974, member: 7635"] This is a very tricky question to navigate. When Dave and Gary were making D&D, they were mashing together elements of the fantasy they knew; Tolkien, Vance, Moorcock, Howard, etc. Some of the stuff is quite literally "serial-numbers filed off" stolen, while others were more in spirit of. Either way, since then D&D has grown into its own genre of fantasy, and as it does the "serial numbers filed off" approach has lessened. I mean, the 2e ranger was (supposedly) modeled off a popular character from a D&D novel, rather than the novel character the 1e ranger was based off. A lot of the more modern elements then tend to come from the ideas from D&D itself rather than continuing to absorb fantasy novels, movies, and games and mix them in. For example, the dragonborn was an idea spawned not from some interesting draconic race in fantasy but from a desire to allow a "PC dragon" based character. (In fact, the closest example of draconic humanoids in popular fantasy lit would be draconians, which were designed for... D&D!) Aasimar, Tieflings and Genasi all hail from Planescape and a desire to have "PC half-outsiders". Warlocks hail from playing a spellcaster with alternate mechanics than the wizard, sorcerer exists for much the same reason. Ironically, I'd say Pathfinder is much closer these days to the spirit of "file the serial number off" style of content acquisition than D&D is. The Pathfinder bestiaries have all sorts of stats for more "modern" monsters like Mothman, Chupacabra, or Nosferatu, and has experimented more with popular archetypes from fantasy having classes built around them (such as Summoner being heavily influenced by Final Fantasy style summoners). [/QUOTE]
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