D&D's Influences

[mmadsen]

John Rateliff gives A Brief History of Tolkien roleplaying games, which includes a brief history of D&D and its influences -- many of which are obscure to newer players:

The original D&D was clearly based in equal parts on JRRT & on Rbt E. Howard's Conan stories,[1] with a magic system inspired by Jack Vance (The Dying Earth) and John Bellairs (The Face in the Frost) and an attitude copped from Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser series, w. bits of Pratt & de Camp's Incomplete Enchanter, Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions, and various pulp stalwarts thrown in. Most of these influences were openly acknowledged, both then and later—see, for example, the final appendix in the 1979 Dungeon Masters Guide, 'Appendix N: Inspirational and Educational Reading' (DMG page 224)—which makes it odd that the profound influence of Tolkien on D&D is generally overlooked and downplayed. This was certainly not the case in the dawn of roleplaying, as we'll see in a minute.​

 

[rkwoodard]

swingy

John Rateliff gives A Brief History of Tolkien roleplaying games, which includes a brief history of D&D and its influences -- many of which are obscure to newer players:

The original D&D was clearly based in equal parts on JRRT & on Rbt E. Howard's Conan stories,[1] with a magic system inspired by Jack Vance (The Dying Earth) and John Bellairs (The Face in the Frost) and an attitude copped from Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser series, w. bits of Pratt & de Camp's Incomplete Enchanter, Poul Anderson's Three Hearts and Three Lions, and various pulp stalwarts thrown in. Most of these influences were openly acknowledged, both then and later—see, for example, the final appendix in the 1979 Dungeon Masters Guide, 'Appendix N: Inspirational and Educational Reading' (DMG page 224)—which makes it odd that the profound influence of Tolkien on D&D is generally overlooked and downplayed. This was certainly not the case in the dawn of roleplaying, as we'll see in a minute.
​

Then again, there is an animosity toward LOTR as well, early on. In one early article in The Dragon (and reprinted I think in Best of. Vol 1), it states pretty clearly that if you are trying to emulate LOTR in your games your playing it wrong.

RK

 

[Bumbles]

I think some of the distancing from LOTR and Tolkien is because of the lawsuits that happened back in the early days of D&D. Another part might be because of the potentially overpowering influence that Tolkien might have. How many millions of dollars did those movies rake in? I can imagine the concern that letting that influence the game might have, as it'd put a potentially big crimp in things, as too much playing to the crowd could have a negative impact in the long run.

 

[Storm Raven]

Then again, there is an animosity toward LOTR as well, early on. In one early article in The Dragon (and reprinted I think in Best of. Vol 1), it states pretty clearly that if you are trying to emulate LOTR in your games your playing it wrong.

Well, to be perfectly fair, without major house rules, 1e D&D doesn't work very well for a LotR based campaign. There's too much magic. There's too much treasure. The monsters are from a wild variety of mythologies. And so on. You could change all that, but as I said at the outset, that would require a lot of house rules.

 

[Mallus]

This is a tricky subject. Some people have been using D&D to emulate Tolkien from the very beginning. But the original D&D rules suggest the game is really about robbing the sh*t out of things, which isn't very Tolkienesque, when you think about it. No matter how much window-dressing they might swipe from the Lord of the Rings.

So I think it's more accurate to say Tolkien had a big impact on the game-as-phenomenon, and less real influence on the game-as-product (including supplements) for quite some time, elves, dwarves, and Balrogs-with-the-serial-numbers-filed-off notwithstanding.

Until settings like Dragonlance, which fully embraced Tolkien in the D&D idiom.

 

[Jack7]

Some people have been using D&D to emulate Tolkien from the very beginning. But the original D&D rules suggest the game is really about robbing the sh*t out of things, which isn't very Tolkienesque, when you think about it. No matter how much window-dressing they might swipe from the Lord of the Rings.

Although I never much played the game as a Robber-Baron's effort, and even my original settings were more Tolkienesque than Conan, I think you've got a point here.

More form than function was borrowed from sources like Tolkien, generally speaking, as far as the overall game structure is concerned.

And although I think "idealized character types" like the Paladin and Cleric were meant to balance out Thieves and Assassins, on the whole, the game was more amoral in structure than Tolkien like. Because players could be Thieves and Assassins whereas in a moral background such people would only be "main characters" if they were undergoing a process of reform. Otherwise they would be the enemy. Servants of Mordor, or just plain old self-interested criminals.

 

[mmadsen]

Then again, there is an animosity toward LOTR as well, early on. In one early article in The Dragon (and reprinted I think in Best of. Vol 1), it states pretty clearly that if you are trying to emulate LOTR in your games your playing it wrong.

Rateliff addresses this later in his history:

The reasons for this disparagement of Tolkien's influence on D&D, and thus ALL roleplaying games, are I think twofold. First, there's the simple fact that Tolkien's innovations are so great that they have, ironically, come to be considered "generic". In fact, they only appear that way because the genre of Modern Fantasy is something Tolkien himself largely created: he is the exemplar that defines the category. The very idea of a player character party—a group of diverse individuals of differing races with differing talents and specialties who set off on an adventure together—is a uniquely Tolkienian innovation, unprecedented in earlier fantasy, where we either have a hero, or a hero & a sidekick.[2] In other words, Tolkien influenced fantasy and gaming so profoundly that we take his imprint on other authors for granted. His impact has become invisible—just look how many people spell "elves" and "dwarves" with a 'v' rather than elfs and dwarfs: elves may be partly due to Dunsany, though I doubt this, but dwarves is Tolkien's invention, which others use without even recognizing their indebtedness.

Second, there was a deliberate attempt in later years by Gygax and others, continuing to the present day, to play down Tolkien's influence, most notoriously in Gygax's famous editorial from the March 1985 issue of Dragon magazine (issue #95, pages 12¬–13). Titled "The influence of J. R. R. Tolkien on the D&D® and AD&D® games: Why Middle Earth is not part of the game world", it argues that Tolkien had NO discernable influence on the development of D&D, aside from a few surface similarities based on Gygax's drawing on the same sort of sources as Tolkien himself had used.

Now, there are three theories regarding this claim, which was met with incredulity at the time and more or less universally dismissed ever since, being belied by the evidence both past and present. The first is what we might call the cocaine theory, the widespread belief that years of rumored drug abuse during E. Gary Gygax's time heading up TSR's Hollywood branch had addled his brain. The second is that Gygax simply forgot by the mid-eighties how he'd created the game in the early seventies; certainly his story changed a number of times over the years, and the general trend of those changes is to shift credit away from others (e.g., Arneson) and onto himself. So maybe he simply resented sharing credit with JRRT. The third is, in a word, lawyers, and a salutary fear of lawsuits if any good case could be made for D&D's debt to Tolkien's work. And, as we'll see, he had excellent reason based on personal experience to believe this was a very real threat, which might explain why he was so adamant about denying any Tolkien influence in his 1985 piece, which freely admits to influence from a number of other lesser writers.​

 

[Glyfair]

Some people have been using D&D to emulate Tolkien from the very beginning.

In fact, I first found about D&D from an article in the newspaper about a local group who played D&D. They used D&D to replay LotR. I later became good friends with them and found out they did it every few years they enjoyed it so much.

This was about '77.

 

[Dire Bare]

Heh, I laugh at those who try to convince me that LotR does not have a serious influence on D&D. The adventuring party, the archetypal races of elf, dwarf, man, and halfling (which were originally called Hobbits in the earliest D&D books). My favorite shout-out to Tolkien that some of my friends aren't able to see is the classic halfling-thief role. Who originated that role? Yep, Bilbo, that's who!

As pointed out above, Tolkien has had such a huge impact on the modern fantasy genre, of which D&D is a large part, that it can sometimes seem invisible for those not familiar with tropes of the genre before Tolkien.

 

[Cyronax]

Well, to be perfectly fair, without major house rules, 1e D&D doesn't work very well for a LotR based campaign.

This is quite true. Just look at the endless debates about how to stat out Gandalf, the preeminent example of a wizard in Middle Earth (others include the Five, possibly Worm Tongue, and only a handful of others). Of course there's that old Dragon article about him being a 5th level Magic User (or something close to that), but you know what I mean .....

C.I.D.