D&D = American + European Fantasy

Dungeons & Dragons draws on a rich mythology from the works of European authors like J.R.R. Tolkien and Michael Moorcock. And yet D&D was also influenced by American authors like Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, H.P. Lovecraft, and R.E. Howard. The end result is that D&D's tone sits somewhere between the two. Photo by Jorge Martínez on Unsplash European Folklore The bones of D&D have obvious...

Dungeons & Dragons draws on a rich mythology from the works of European authors like J.R.R. Tolkien and Michael Moorcock. And yet D&D was also influenced by American authors like Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, H.P. Lovecraft, and R.E. Howard. The end result is that D&D's tone sits somewhere between the two.

disney.jpg

Photo by Jorge Martínez on Unsplash
European Folklore

The bones of D&D have obvious roots in European myths and legends; we see it in the dwarves, elves, hobbits, and orcs of J.R.R. Tolkien and the fairies, giants, and dragons that are scattered throughout the Monster Manual. Colleen Gillard explains how British fantasy flourished by staying in touch with its pagan roots -- and was even influenced by the landscape:

Landscape matters: Britain’s antique countryside, strewn with moldering castles and cozy farms, lends itself to fairy-tale invention. As Tatar puts it, the British are tuned in to the charm of their pastoral fields...

But D&D has many influences, not the least of which are co-creators Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, who brought their own American sensibilities to the game. For a fantasy role-playing game that is distinctly European, look no further than Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, now in its Fourth Edition.

American Influences

American fantasy, like the Europeans, was influenced by its terrain:

America’s mighty vistas, by contrast, are less cozy, less human-scaled, and less haunted. The characters that populate its purple mountain majesties and fruited plains are decidedly real...

But perhaps the strongest difference is a sense of control over one's destiny. This belief, carried over with America's earliest settlers from Europe, reinforced that self-enrichment was a moral right, as outlined by Max Weber:

...Weber wrote that capitalism in Northern Europe evolved when the Protestant (particularly Calvinist) ethic influenced large numbers of people to engage in work in the secular world, developing their own enterprises and engaging in trade and the accumulation of wealth for investment. In other words, the Protestant work ethic was an important force behind the unplanned and uncoordinated emergence of modern capitalism.

No wonder then that Gygax strongly adhered to a leveling system in which heroes can rise to success through the accumulation of wealth at significant risk. This was how heroes like Conan, Fafhrd, and the Gray Mouser did it, and it draws on a long tradition of American folklore:

Popular storytelling in the New World instead tended to celebrate in words and song the larger-than-life exploits of ordinary men and women: Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Calamity Jane, even a mule named Sal on the Erie Canal. Out of bragging contests in logging and mining camps came even greater exaggerations—Tall Tales—about the giant lumberjack Paul Bunyan, the twister-riding cowboy Pecos Bill, and that steel-driving man John Henry, who, born a slave, died with a hammer in his hand. All of these characters embodied the American promise: They earned their fame.

Unlike in European fantasy where boys become kings (or in Harry Potter's case, orphans become wizards), characters in D&D aren't usually born heroes; the very nature of leveling systems and experience points ensures they earn it.

A Motley Mix

Adding these two influences together creates Dungeons & Dragons, a rich tapestry of fantasy that draws on the works of European authors and then throws in American sensibilities where the heroes are in control of their destiny -- or at least their skills and attributes.

For all their American influences, D&D heroes are still small in the weave of the world. In early D&D games, they died by the handfuls at the whim of dice, a lesson distinctly at odds with American determinism.

D&D has come full circle to influence the fantasy that created it. You can see its motley pedigree's fingerprints on sweeping fantasies like Game of Thrones. As the fantasy genre continues to flourish and the world becomes more interconnected, it seems likely that we'll see more works that draw on other cultures...D&D included.
 

log in or register to remove this ad

Michael Tresca

Michael Tresca

rmcoen

Adventurer
The "World of Prime" books by MC Planck are an attempt to envision a medieval world that follows the "rules" of a D&D world. "XP" is a real harvestable thing (from brains, so yeah, by killing things) - and the nobles take the lion's share (and are taxed on it by the King). Nobles stay in charge by virtue of the power of having Levels. apprenticeship and journeyman/master status in Guilds is cemented by earning "NPC Expert" levels. The Nobles keep careful watch on the levels of the Guilds - but can enforce their will with actual magical and martial force, despite political power the Guilds might try to amass.

The "real world" of ours has never had a frontier filled wih monsters. Nothing more dangerous than a bear, a pack of wolves, or a particularly rabid weasel. All these things can kill you, of course, as can the weather. But no human society has has to defend itself from NONhuman intelligent threats, and certainly nothing that was Truly Evil (despite how religious and/or secular leaders might paint their HUMAN enemies).

From that perspective, then, D&D is no more American (east, west or middle) than European, Japanese, Mongolian, Kenyan, or Aboriginal. GMs might flavor their campaigns with data/situations taken from any number of cultures, though, and that's where you get flavors of adventure. Paint the Scots as grimlocks and the heroes as Sherriffs and Knights of England; or honorbound samurai doing a (hexcrawl) settling of the hostile continent (China) and its oni inhabitants; or a politcal intrigue background where Coyote / Anazasi / Spider is manipulating the conflicts between Chiefs / Guildmasters / Nobles....
 

log in or register to remove this ad

This is likewise why I find Eberron so compelling. Though Eberron is sometimes regarded as atypical magepunk fantasy - especially given its World War I/Turn-of-the-Century conceit - it also has heavy medieval/Renaissance elements in its blending of historical eras.

You can see the feudalism and where it is increasingly breaking down amidst tensions between the rising merchant class and a growing sense of nationhood that emerged largely as a byproduct of warring feudal claimants. A war rooted in feudalism ironically marks its decay as an institution. Sure, the remaining four nations still have their kings and queens, but cracks are showing under the pressures of modernity. The Dragonmarked Houses create a relatively small subset of powerful guilds that vie for power between themselves, within nations, and between nations. And though some religions seem apolitical, like the Sovereign Host, others like the Church of the Silver Flame are highly political.

I never really have seen it this way, but you are absolutely right. Maybe that is the reason why I find that Eberron hast this feel of a really living and breathing setting.
 

Shasarak

Banned
Banned
The "real world" of ours has never had a frontier filled wih monsters. Nothing more dangerous than a bear, a pack of wolves, or a particularly rabid weasel. All these things can kill you, of course, as can the weather. But no human society has has to defend itself from NONhuman intelligent threats, and certainly nothing that was Truly Evil (despite how religious and/or secular leaders might paint their HUMAN enemies).

When you say there was nothing truly evil then how do we explain societies like the Ancient Assyrians? Its like the guy who tried to explain how great slavery was.
 

rmcoen

Adventurer
When you say there was nothing truly evil then how do we explain societies like the Ancient Assyrians? Its like the guy who tried to explain how great slavery was.

I'm not saying any given person can't be Evil (however anyone defines it), just that "Real Life" doesn't have handy alignment labels for entire races. I think most people would agree that Hitler was Evil, but was the average German soldier? or citizen? (I won't argue Secret Police or SS.) But in D&D, we accept - depending on GM fiat and worldbuilding - that "Orcs are evil", "Giants prefer elves as snacks", and "Meddle not in the affairs of Dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup". Everything out in the wilds really is out to kill you, your friends, your neighbors, and generally tear down everything you know and love. How is that - to tie back to the article concept - a uniquely American viewpoint? Other posts have comments on the different cultural viewpoints of the heroes, but I haven't seen one analyzing the worlds in which those heroes move. Voldemort, Sauron, Shiva, Malsumis, Crnobog, Iago, Moriarty, Randall Flagg, or Medea - these people/gods/spirits just want to destroy. None of them are American, all of them make good BBEGs (some a little more epic than others), and your heroic fantasy can revolve around "zero to hero", "heroic because", or "heroic in spite of" as you or your GM chooses.

[EDIT: Randall Flagg is American, my bad.]
 

Voldemort, Sauron, Shiva, Malsumis, Crnobog, Iago, Moriarty, Randall Flagg, or Medea - these people/gods/spirits just want to destroy. None of them are American, all of them make good BBEGs (some a little more epic than others), and your heroic fantasy can revolve around "zero to hero", "heroic because", or "heroic in spite of" as you or your GM chooses.

[EDIT: Randall Flagg is American, my bad.]

Sorry to be so pedantic, but Shiva is to this day worshipped by many as a supreme (good) god. Yeah, he has this thing with destruction, but that's more in a metaphysical way of destroying and rebuilding creation after a specific cycle of aeons. See it as a "circle of life" philosophy, if you will. He has a lot of temples in Southeast Asia and very many devotees which go there regularly on pilgrimages. Worshipping Shiva is not so popular as worshipping the other big god Vishnu, but still he is considered one of the good and benevolent supreme beings. So, just to put this into context.

Back to the discussion about frontiers:

You are right, that we in our world never had any "real" evil beings that lurked on humanities frontiers, like orcs or armies of hobgoblins.

But, you know, there were other things threatening human communities: Nature itself was a threat. The forrest was terrifying. Bad weather could kill you when you were on the road. Sickness could strike you. Everything unknown was bad. In rural societies, everything that wasn't tamed by humans meant possible death. If the river flowed where it wanted and wasn't tamed, then it could swallow your houses. When you didn't look out, the wolves ate your cattle. And don't you go into the woods and stray away from the (often lousy) road.
People did what they could to hack away the woods, tame the beasts, make the rivers flow straight, and so on. That was the frontier. Up until the end of the 19th Century in parts of central Europe even. Have you maybe been to the Alps? Even 150 years ago, when snow did fall and closed the mountain passes, you wouldn't be going anywhere for at least 4 months, if not longer.

Tl;dr: Nature was a frontier for humans and was often regarded as (at least possibly containing) evil.
 

Starfox

Hero
Trigger warning - Xenophobia. Also, all of this is opinions, I am not a scientist in the field.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Xenophobia - that is what the monsters are. Until you get to know them, your neighbors are monsters. In RPGs, we hide this by making the monsters non-human, but these are really latex masks for "the other" that exists out there. People we don't know. And RPGs are by no means alone in this - what is a zombie movie but a fantasy of legitimately killing the people around you as they reveal their true monstrous nature? Look at tribal conflict in the past. heck, lock at tribal conflict *today*, and you'll see savagery that in RPGs is channeled into orcs and goblins.

Now, this makes RPGs and horror films sound as if they were awful, but I absolutely do not think they are. Because xenophobia is a part of the mentality we inherited from our animal ancestry (or from original sin, if you prefer), and to channel it in harmless ways is a great thing. RPGs and zombie movies are harmless outlets that help us get rid of such mental baggage.

This is why I am against the "emancipation" of hostile races in RPGs. We need to tell these stories, to channel these impulses, in order to get rid of them. And its a whole lot better tog get rid of this aggression by bashing imaginary creatures than by terrorizing our neighbors that happen to look/speak/worship/think differently from us. If we emancipate orcs, we instantly have to re-invent them as something similar to have as a scapegoat if we are to tell these stories.

A counter argument is this; can't people learn this backwards, starts by bashing orcs, find they like it, and go on to bash their neighbors? Sure, it can happen. But these people would likely have gone rogue without RPGs or zombie flicks. Many more are saved than are turned into maniacs. This is the video games scare of the 80s, or the jazz scare of the 30s.

As an aside, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is associated with a lack of REM sleep (aside from the triggering trauma). I saw the explanation (some TED talk I cannot now find) that in REM sleep we run various scenarios, variants of the traumatic events, that allow us to work past the trauma. REM sleep sounds to me a lot like a role-playing game - running scenarios in your head that lets you work around problems that could cause mental disorders.

I said I couldn't find the TED talk. I did google it, and this is the closest I found:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcWkxczP0sE

As a finalé, let me say "don't try this at home". In my teens, I tried to bring up some real-life psychological issues in RPGs to get a handle on them. Lets just say it wasn't a good experience. Leave actual, intentional psychology to the psychologists. But RPGs are still a very intense form of the conversation with friends and peers that in many ways are the foundation of sanity and a stable society.

Again, this is opinions, I am not a psychologist.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Starfox

Hero
Even 150 years ago, when snow did fall and closed the mountain passes, you wouldn't be going anywhere for at least 4 months, if not longer.

Its amazing to me that skis were not used in the Alp region until it was introduced by Scandinavians in the 19C. And skis are still mostly used for going downhill there. Then again, Scandinavians learned skiing from Finns and Sami, it was known among other groups but slow to break trough.

A fun fact about medieval nobles in Sweden - a large number of them died by drowning. How did this happen? The season to travel by land in Scandinavia has always been winter - snow turns lakes and streams into highways for sleighs. But such waterways are treacherous. Nobles were the people doing most of the traveling. The rest follows naturally. This travel was done by horse sleigh, not skis.


Ok, this was a tangent - and a way for me to relax form the more depressing thing I posed above.
 

Starfox

Hero
When I went to Europe and visited the various museums I learned how important trade guilds were during the medieval times and realised how little D&D focuses on it.

Museums might over-emphasize this piece of history. Partly because towns and guild became very important later, partly because this fits a marxist view of history that is still in vogue in Europe.

During the dark ages cities were basically artifacts of Roman times. The roman city was a center of administration and power. It didn't really serve the rural communities around it, it governed those communities and was a safe haven to take refuge in in times of crisis.

Around the year 1,000 market towns, that had craftsmen that actually catered to the needs of the surrounding rural areas became common, and this is the ancestor of the modern industrial city. Not merely a place of power, but just as much a provider of goods and services.

Don't read this to say ancient cities did not have industry (they did), but it was not their core function. Such industries generally catered to the military and made luxuries for the elite.
 

Museums might over-emphasize this piece of history. Partly because towns and guild became very important later, partly because this fits a marxist view of history that is still in vogue in Europe.

Haha, I'm wondering what you might mean with "a marxist view of history that is still en vogue in Europe", but alas, I have been told earlier that we should not discuss politics here. ;)

About the point with xenophobia and "the other". Yeah, I would share your sentiment on that topic for the most part. My favorite example of this dynamic is the following one:

There is this Indian epic called Ramayana. Its a long poem about the fight of a king/god Rama and his rival, the demon king Ravana. So, in this story Ravana is the king of the Rakshasas (that's where the D&D monster got his name from, btw). The Rakshasas are a bunch of demons with fangs and horns and mostly ugly, annoying dudes. The live in the south of India. More specifically in Sri Lanka. The hero fights his way down from north India, where his home is, down to the south to Sri Lanka. There he fights those Rakshasas and saves the day, I won't go into detail.
Now, the question is: What was up with those who lived in the south? Where are they in this story? The story only tells us about those strange Rakshasa monsters, not about human kingdoms or at least cities inhabited by humans.
Wait... do you mean that this north Indian epic suggests that in south India (where they speak languages from a quite different language family then in the north and are also mostly darker skinned) there have been no people, just... monsters?

That's what I would call, making your neighbor into an orc.
 

pemerton

Legend
Everything out in the wilds really is out to kill you, your friends, your neighbors, and generally tear down everything you know and love. How is that - to tie back to the article concept - a uniquely American viewpoint?
I would say- compare the ethos of the western to the ethos of Arthurian romance and you'll get part of your answer.

(It's not uniquely American - something similar can be found in other settler colonies - but the way both the western and D&D put fighting front-and-centre seems to have a distinctly American flavour.)
 

Split the Hoard


Split the Hoard
Negotiate, demand, or steal the loot you desire!

A competitive card game for 2-5 players
Remove ads

Split the Hoard


Split the Hoard
Negotiate, demand, or steal the loot you desire!

A competitive card game for 2-5 players
Remove ads

Top