Survivor Appendix N Authors- LEIBER WINS!

[squibbles]

Bellairs, John 11
Burroughs, Edgar Rice 17
Carter, Lin 14
de Camp & Pratt 11
Dunsany, Lord 17
Fox, Gardner 13
Leiber, Fritz 18+1=19
Merritt, A. 18
Offutt, Andrew J. 14
Pratt, Fletcher 12
St. Clair, Margaret 14
Tolkien, J.R.R. 7-2=5
Wellman, Manley Wade 14
Williamson, Jack 18
Zelazny, Roger 17

Leiber, Fritz - Probably the most responsible (out of those remaining) for the more toxic corners of gaming (though deliberately so than Howard).

Mind explaining a bit? Having read his first collection of stories (I can't remember if i read any others), it didn't seem particularly toxic.

 

[Gradine]

Mind explaining a bit? Having read his first collection of stories (I can't remember if i read any others), it didn't seem particularly toxic.

It's less the works themselves (my vague memories of them being exemplary if not exactly subversive takes on the genre, fitting in the sense that he basically (co-)invented it), and more that the style of play exemplified by the S&S genre in general (the mercenary-at-best, murderhobo-at-worst "hero") tends to bring out the worst in the worst sorts of people. It's less my disdain for Leiber as an author and more for the Sword & Sorcery genre in specific (or at the very least, what S&S means to a certain subset of player).

My general take (and approach in this thread) has been that we may not have had such a hardcore base of virulently toxic individuals resisting any changes to make the game more inclusive beyond straight white dudes bemoaning the loss of chainmail bikinis had Gygax been less inspired by Howard/Leiber et. al. and more inspired by Tolkien.

That may be inaccurate, but then this is a Survivor thread and not a peer reviewed journal, so it's good enough for me

 

[Invisible Stalker]

Bellairs, John 11
Burroughs, Edgar Rice 17
Carter, Lin 14
de Camp & Pratt 9
Dunsany, Lord 17
Fox, Gardner 13
Leiber, Fritz 19
Merritt, A. 18
Offutt, Andrew J. 14
Pratt, Fletcher 12
St. Clair, Margaret 14
Tolkien, J.R.R. 6
Wellman, Manley Wade 14
Williamson, Jack 18
Zelazny, Roger 17

 

[Nikosandros]

Bellairs, John 11
Burroughs, Edgar Rice 17
Carter, Lin 14
de Camp & Pratt 7
Dunsany, Lord 17
Fox, Gardner 13
Leiber, Fritz 19
Merritt, A. 18
Offutt, Andrew J. 14
Pratt, Fletcher 12
St. Clair, Margaret 14
Tolkien, J.R.R. 7
Wellman, Manley Wade 14
Williamson, Jack 18
Zelazny, Roger 17

 

[werecorpse]

Bellairs, John 11
Burroughs, Edgar Rice 17
Carter, Lin 14
de Camp & Pratt 7
Dunsany, Lord 17
Fox, Gardner 13-2=11
Leiber, Fritz 19
Merritt, A. 18
Offutt, Andrew J. 14
Pratt, Fletcher 12
St. Clair, Margaret 14
Tolkien, J.R.R. 7+1=8
Wellman, Manley Wade 14
Williamson, Jack 18
Zelazny, Roger 17

 

[Tyler Do'Urden]

Bellairs, John 11
Burroughs, Edgar Rice 17
Carter, Lin 14
de Camp & Pratt 7
Dunsany, Lord 17
Fox, Gardner 11
Leiber, Fritz 19
Merritt, A. 16
Offutt, Andrew J. 14
Pratt, Fletcher 12
St. Clair, Margaret 14
Tolkien, J.R.R. 9 “Let this be the hour when we draw swords together. Fell deeds awake. Now for wrath, now for ruin, and the red dawn. Forth, Tolkienists!”
Wellman, Manley Wade 14
Williamson, Jack 18
Zelazny, Roger 17

 

[Maxperson]

No one? No one has been upvoting Tolkien?

Voting for? Sure. No COLLUSION at all, though. Everyone doing so was doing so before the emails and nothing changed afterwards. It was just some guys who were already voting for Tolkien having fun at playing at being a Fellowship. A bunch of guys got together to downvote Tolkien afterwards, though. That's the irony and amusement I speak of.

 

[Maxperson]

This is a strawman, and not what he/she is arguing. I don't know how many times we need to have this discussion, and every time, people like to resort to strawmen to try to make their point. Squibbles said that Gary consistently argued that D&D's foundational inspiration came from other sources. That is true. Gary has said that. Gary never said that Tolkien wasn't an inspiration, like what you're arguing.

Um, not only is what I said not a Strawman, you just demonstrated that you have no clue what it was that I said. I never argued that Gary said Tolkien wasn't an inspiration. I've never seen a Gary comment one way or the other.

In fact, he said he was, primarily because that's what people were most familiar with and thus he wanted to give something to those gamers. It's entirely possible for something to have an influence, even a big one, without being the fundamental influence. Especially since we also know much of what Tolkien is credited with creating, he didn't. We had a thread about this less than a year ago. Tolkien pulled heavily from existing myth and folklore. In fact, that was his entire point, to create a unified anglo saxon set of mythology by pulling all these bits and pieces from various sources together into one. And since we know that Gary was well versed in mythology and folklore and fantasy literature that predated Tolkien, it's assured that he knew this as well. Many things they pulled from the original source, but many people who only know Tolkien assume that Gary lifted it from Tolkien instead of the original source.

This would hold weight, IF Gary hadn't mentioned Tolkien specifically by name in Chainmail three times, and referenced multiple other Tolkien specific names like Hobbits and Balrogs, as well as other things from Tolkien's world. Heck, he even said "Most of the fantastic battles related in novels more closely resemble medieval warfare than they do earlier or later forms of combat. Because of this we are including a brief set of rules which will allow the medieval miniatures wargamer to add a new facet to his hobby, and either refight the epic struggles related by J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, and other fantasy writers; or you can devise your own "world", and conduct fantastic campaigns and conflicts based on it."

Recreating Tolkien's world to conduct fantastic campaigns was part of Chainmail.

 

[Maxperson]

Tolkien would kindly explain to you (in between puffs on his pipe) that this is unsurprising, given that so many stories draw on the same mythological roots. In particular, The Hobbit being based on part three of Beowulf, which lies at the root of all Anglo-Saxon literature.

Have you read Beowulf? Personally, I prefer Seamus Heaney's translation to Tolkien's more scholarly version.

And yet Beowulf isn't mentioned once, where Tolkien is mentioned three times and Hobbits, Balrogs, etc. are mentioned.

 

[Yardiff]

Voting for? Sure. No COLLUSION at all, though. Everyone doing so was doing so before the emails and nothing changed afterwards. It was just some guys who were already voting for Tolkien having fun at playing at being a Fellowship. A bunch of guys got together to downvote Tolkien afterwards, though. That's the irony and amusement I speak of.

Other than this Fellowship you speak of, you have proof that a bunch of people 'got together' to down vote a particular author?