D&D 5E Why D&D is not (just) Tolkien

Sacrosanct · Nov 2, 2017

Caliburn101 said:
It's one of your 'facts'.

When you say someone doesn't have the mental equipment to engage in a debate, that's literally the definition of attacking them personally.

I don't make strawman arguments - so if you advocate people wasting their personal time mulling over thread posts by others to prove their point like they are writing a paper on it - pull all the non-existent strawman arguments you claim I repeatedly make and publish a book or something..

Just in this thread alone, you said I made the argument that giant eagles in Arabian myth benevolently rescued the sailors. I did not make that argument. I said they rescued them. Which they did. Benevolently or accidentally is a distinction I never made. And then just above, you said I always accuse people of attacking me personally if they don't agree with me. I never made that argument either, and when I asked you to show examples if it does happen all the time like you accused, all you have is this response. No examples noted.

Personally, I'm getting the impression that you're so caught up in your own self importance and conceit and contempt for anyone you think isn't as smart as you, that you're engaging in the most basic of fallacies, and slinging out accusations that you can't back up.

Using big words doesn't win over an argument. Avoiding the most basic of fallacies and backing up your accusations does.

Tony Vargas · Nov 2, 2017

lowkey13 said:
People have tried to uncover the history of turn undead, and if you follow that link that I previously gave (or look around), a lot of good and hard work was put into it, and into establishing it came from Arneson's Blackmoor campaign. AFAICT, no one has found any link to Bombadil. So it is exceptionally surprising that Gygax, who never credited Tolkien with anything unless it was at gunpoint, would credit this to him ...

Maybe EGG was just even more reluctant to give Arneson any credit than to give Tolkien any?

lowkey13 · Nov 2, 2017

*Deleted by user*

billd91 · Nov 2, 2017

Salamandyr said:
Yes, the party of dwarves and hobbit kind of look, if you squint sideways, like an adventuring party. But it's not like group of interesting characters going on a quest is unique to that book.

An aside I do find interesting; the Hobbit is pretty clear that neither dwarves nor hobbits are suited to Heroic deeds, which are properly the domain of Men, but they couldn't find a Hero on short notice, so they decided to go for a burglar. One of my pet peeves with D&D is how dwarves have become a default "strong warrior race". If Thorin and company had D&D stats they wouldn't have needed Bard and Bilbo to take care of the Dragon for them.

Maybe you should check some of the appendices in LotR. It isn't just D&D that turned dwarves into a strong warrior race. It's right there in the goblin wars, as well as the Battle of Five Armies.
The dwarves in the Hobbit were, narratively speaking, what they were for the purposes of Bilbo's story. Gandalf's quote at the end about Bilbo's adventures and escapes not being for his soul benefit are, of course, somewhat ironic to the reader since, as a story in which Bilbo is the protagonist, they certainly were.

Parmandur · Nov 2, 2017

billd91 said:
Maybe you should check some of the appendices in LotR. It isn't just D&D that turned dwarves into a strong warrior race. It's right there in the goblin wars, as well as the Battle of Five Armies.
The dwarves in the Hobbit were, narratively speaking, what they were for the purposes of Bilbo's story. Gandalf's quote at the end about Bilbo's adventures and escapes not being for his soul benefit are, of course, somewhat ironic to the reader since, as a story in which Bilbo is the protagonist, they certainly were.

Yeah, I was going to say, that is a strange reading of the Hobbit: Bard's exploits are not because he is Human, but because of his royal blood. Dwarves as depicted in Tolkien are very similar to the D&D bellicose artisans.

Salamandyr · Nov 2, 2017

billd91 said:
Maybe you should check some of the appendices in LotR. It isn't just D&D that turned dwarves into a strong warrior race. It's right there in the goblin wars, as well as the Battle of Five Armies.
The dwarves in the Hobbit were, narratively speaking, what they were for the purposes of Bilbo's story. Gandalf's quote at the end about Bilbo's adventures and escapes not being for his soul benefit are, of course, somewhat ironic to the reader since, as a story in which Bilbo is the protagonist, they certainly were.

And yet, it's repeated, in several places that the dwarves aren't up to fighting the Dragon, but a human Hero would be. And, in Fellowship, both Aragorn and Boromir are called on to perform feats of strength that their smaller (dwarven and hobbit) and wussier (elven) companions could not accomplish.

Not saying dwarves couldn't fight, but they couldn't hold their own against Men.

Yaarel · Nov 3, 2017

Salamandyr said:
And yet, it's repeated, in several places that the dwarves aren't up to fighting the Dragon, but a human Hero would be. And, in Fellowship, both Aragorn and Boromir are called on to perform feats of strength that their smaller (dwarven and hobbit) and wussier (elven) companions could not accomplish.

Not saying dwarves couldn't fight, but they couldn't hold their own against Men.

It seems Gary Gygax even plagiarized the nonhuman maximum class level limits from Tolkien.

Coroc · Nov 3, 2017

[MENTION=88539]LowKey[/MENTION] #169 Turn undead - i believe it is rather from some dracula story when some priest is turning the vampire by displaying a cross, this for sure is not from Tolkien

Lanefan · Nov 3, 2017

Coroc said:
[MENTION=88539]LowKey[/MENTION] #169 Turn undead - i believe it is rather from some dracula story when some priest is turning the vampire by displaying a cross, this for sure is not from Tolkien

This is also where I'd always thought 'turn undead' came from: priests vs. vampires.

Parmandur · Nov 3, 2017

Specifically, one of Arneson's Blackmoor players wanted to play a vampire, Sir Fang, and one of the players on the other team (because Blackmoor was split between antagonistic teams of players) made a Van Helping with Arneson to counter Sir Fang, and so the Cleric was born.

I think it's interesting that playing a vampire didn't make it into the published game, but the Cleric did.

D&D 5E Why D&D is not (just) Tolkien

How influential was Tolkien on early D&D, on a scale from 1-5?

1. Not influential/ minimal influence.

2. Very little influence / no more important than other fantasy writers.

3. Moderate influence.

4. A great deal of influence/a large amount of D&D is borrowed from him.

5. Exceptionally inflential/no D&D without him.

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