D&D General D&D Archetypes that spread out to other settings and media

J-H said:

I think D&D probably popularized green orcs with tusks (more porcine) over Tolkien's monochrome/pale goblins and orcs.
At least, I'm pretty sure D&D had that before Warcraft did.

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Definitely not.

Games Workshop did that. Green orcs with tusks are 100% a GW thing. They had them from the mid-1980s or earlier, and D&D continued with pig-orcs and grey orcs as the main approach for a very long time after that.

A lot of Warcraft is taken from Warhammer Fantasy because Warcraft 1 was originally developed with the intention of getting licencing from GW. However GW were so difficult and unreasonable that Blizzard decided to just replicate Warhammer Fantasy in an "legally distinct" way instead (which at least one person at Blizzard had wanted to do even before they found GW unreasonable). Warcraft does have significant D&D influence as well, often blended with Warhammer - for example, Warcraft Paladins are basically a blend of D&D Clerics and Warhammer Sigmarite Warrior-Priests (leaning more to the powers of the former and the aesthetics of the latter). Oddly enough D&D Paladins didn't really become much of an influence until WoW when they needed to expand what they could do (and Diablo 2 Paladins which have their own complex derivation, mostly from D&D, also factor in).

Warhammer Fantasy is interesting here because it has some D&D influence but a lot more direct Moorcockian influence. Like I think it's probably reasonable to say Moorcock was the biggest early literary influence on Warhammer Fantasy (40K is a complex one), with Tolkien next, and D&D third. D&D itself was influenced by those two as well, just to make things messier!

The most enduring D&D-specific influence generally I can think of is the concept of the heavily armoured but healing-oriented holy warrior, which derives from both Clerics and Paladins, and which D&D ginned up from a combination of Bishop Odo, Van Helsing and Biblical prophets, and is fairly original. Characters like that appear in a lot of videogames post-D&D, and whilst many are inspired by other videogames, the ancestor is D&D.

Similarly, the only idea of healing spells that every instantly gets you back on your feet and ready to rock is I think largely D&D derived. There are previous instances but I do think we can credit D&D for this.

Ruin Explorer said:

Warhammer Fantasy is interesting here because it has some D&D influence but a lot more direct Moorcockian influence. Like I think it's probably reasonable to say Moorcock was the biggest early literary influence on Warhammer Fantasy (40K is a complex one), with Tolkien next, and D&D third. D&D itself was influenced by those two as well, just to make things messier!

The most enduring D&D-specific influence generally I can think of is the concept of the heavily armoured but healing-oriented holy warrior, which derives from both Clerics and Paladins, and which D&D ginned up from a combination of Bishop Odo, Van Helsing and Biblical prophets, and is fairly original. Characters like that appear in a lot of videogames post-D&D, and whilst many are inspired by other videogames, the ancestor is D&D.

Similarly, the only idea of healing spells that every instantly gets you back on your feet and ready to rock is I think largely D&D derived. There are previous instances but I do think we can credit D&D for this.

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I'd split the difference; the aesthetics of Warhammer were definitely taken from early 80s D&D because Warhammer originated as a way for GW to sell overstock D&D miniatures before they even created their own fantasy IP.

But in creating the "substance" of the IP; the lore, story, characters, they had a much different media diet than guys like Gygax and Arneson, so initial Warhammer looked like D&D but never felt like it, and it moved away from D&D quickly due to the influence of its lore.

Ruin Explorer said:

Definitely not.

Games Workshop did that. Green orcs with tusks are 100% a GW thing. They had them from the mid-1980s or earlier, and D&D continued with pig-orcs and grey orcs as the main approach for a very long time after that.

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I've always wondered where the Star Wars Gamorreans fit - were they just coincidence drawing on similar inspiration or did the Star Wars creature designers maybe share an ale with the people at Games Workshop? Return of the Jedi came out in 1983 so they were contemporaries

the one transfer I noticed early on was that the idea of 'priests healing people' got ported into the decidedly non-fantasy "Age of Empires" computer game....