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Worlds of Design: Reassessing Tolkien’s Influence
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<blockquote data-quote="SteveC" data-source="post: 9211353" data-attributes="member: 9053"><p>This is really interesting stuff. The thing with Tolkien's influence is that it comes from things that were in happening in literary culture at the time when D&D started. There was a time when LotR and Tolkien were not very popular, and were in fact looked down upon pretty heavily. One of my professors (who taught the Silmarillion) had a huge poster of subway graffiti that said "Frodo lives!"</p><p></p><p>The fact that our games owe so much to Tolkien comes in large part because there was a Renaissance for the books when D&D was starting. If that didn't happen, we'd have much more influence from Howard and similar authors (Leiber comes to mind as well) as well as other authors like Moorcock. </p><p></p><p>Since Tolkien, I'd say there have been very few writers who have been that influential in fantasy. Martin was one of them, I remember my dad giving me a photocopy of an article which called him the "American Tolkien" but I would say his influence is failing. The other author I think who could have similar effects is Rowling, but she hasn't been interested in turning her works into RPGs.</p><p></p><p>You can count on Tolkien's influence coming from the interest at the time the game was created, along with no other writer being able to take that title from him since then.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="SteveC, post: 9211353, member: 9053"] This is really interesting stuff. The thing with Tolkien's influence is that it comes from things that were in happening in literary culture at the time when D&D started. There was a time when LotR and Tolkien were not very popular, and were in fact looked down upon pretty heavily. One of my professors (who taught the Silmarillion) had a huge poster of subway graffiti that said "Frodo lives!" The fact that our games owe so much to Tolkien comes in large part because there was a Renaissance for the books when D&D was starting. If that didn't happen, we'd have much more influence from Howard and similar authors (Leiber comes to mind as well) as well as other authors like Moorcock. Since Tolkien, I'd say there have been very few writers who have been that influential in fantasy. Martin was one of them, I remember my dad giving me a photocopy of an article which called him the "American Tolkien" but I would say his influence is failing. The other author I think who could have similar effects is Rowling, but she hasn't been interested in turning her works into RPGs. You can count on Tolkien's influence coming from the interest at the time the game was created, along with no other writer being able to take that title from him since then. [/QUOTE]
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