D&D General What is the appeal of Tolkien fantasy races?

embee said:

You want a Dadrock fight? You're gonna get a Dadrock fight...

Zeppelin is better than, not only the Beatles, but also The Who. By a factor of one quadrillion to the fourth power.

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Zardnaar said:

Rolling Stones laugh at all of you.

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Mercurius said:

As for the thread topic, I think Tolkien is the big reason, but that only goes so deep. Elves and dwarves are derived from mythology, and thus have a certain kind of psychological and archetypal resonance. Unlike, say, shardminds.

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Minigiant said:

But by that train of thought, there should be a Greco-Roman or Egyptian race in the PHB by now as Greek and Eqyptian Myth match or surpass Norse and Celtic ones in recognition.

Satyr and Jackalman should have been staple races if you go by popularity,

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Minigiant said:

But by that train of thought, there should be a Greco-Roman or Egyptian race in the PHB by now as Greek and Eqyptian Myth match or surpass Norse and Celtic ones in recognition.

Satyr and Jackalman should have been staple races if you go by popularity,

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Mercurius said:

I wasn't talking about popularity. D&D, at least in its inception, was mostly based upon European Medieval mythology and folklore, as well as the quasi-European fantasies of Howard, Anderson, Brackett, Tolkien, Moorcock, Moore, etc.

Dwarves and elves are rooted in the European mythic tradition, which is relevant both ethnographically and psychologically.

Tolkien's depictions of elves and dwarves was, of course, relative to humans as the default. Elves were the fairer, more perfect beings, and in some sense were the third and lowest of immortal beings, after the Valar and Maiar. Dwarves were created by one of the Valar, not Eru, and thus are, in some sense, of a different order.

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Minigiant said:

Rome and Greece are in Europialand though.

I learned about Greco-Roman myths way before Tolkien, Moorcock, etc.

My party's fighter shoulda be a Heracles and clubbed the hell outta the monster that killed us. Not a dwarf. Why dwarf? I wanna an Aesir Paladin protecting the frontlines

Again, the original makeup of the racial lineup seems to be just the chance fandom of the designer's group. If they were horror fans, it would be half-vampires and lycantroopes.

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Mercurius said:

There's a significant cultural difference between northern and southern Europe, and perhaps I should have specified northern/British Europe.

But I don't think it is just chance, thus the emphasis on archetypal and mythic. I mean, the simplest explanation is Tolkien, and I think that may be enough to explain why elves and dwarves. Tolkien fandom was HUGE in the late 60s and 70s, and thus loomed large in the halcyon days of D&D.

Similarly, I don't think ideas are intrinsically equal in terms of how deeply they touch and inspire, in the same sense that it isn't random that Tolkien's work became so beloved. There's a reason that shardminds are dead and forgotten, and that other races haven't come close to the popularity of elves and dwarves. I see it as something to do with the deep structure of our collective consciousness, thus the use of archetype (Jung's archetypes being essentially deep structural forms of the collective unconscious). Tolkien seemed to really tap into that, with his world-building.

Now most people don't role-play elves like Tolkien's elves, who are truly different from humans. But I think people are drawn to playing make believe to the best of their ability, and Tolkien's races are extremely evocative.

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