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

[SkidAce]

Lord Vader finds your lack of faith disturbing.

Star Wars was probably as big an influence on Dragonlance as Tolkien was. But the general point is that none of this stuff happens in a cultural vacuum. D&D is in a constant dialogue with popular culture.

True, but there are certainly tropes that while not entirely sourced from DnD, DnD greatly contributed to the spread and saturation of said tropes.

 

[SkidAce]

A capybara is already a dire guinea pig, which is a dire miniature giant space hamster, so that would be a dire dire dire hamster. And have you noticed that capybaras are everywhere all of a sudden?

Even Enshrouded. (video game)

 

[Scribe]

It is my recollection that the looks of Warcraft orcs was a pretty distinct evolution of the Warhammer orc rather than the D&D one.

That old story that Warcraft 1 was supposed to be a Warhammer game, the deal fell through, and we got the Warcraft franchise instead.

 

[Reynard]

That old story that Warcraft 1 was supposed to be a Warhammer game, the deal fell through, and we got the Warcraft franchise instead.

Here is a link: The Inside Story of the Making of Warcraft, Part 1 - Kotaku

Tl;dr version is that they wanted to get the license, could not secure it, and were better off for it.

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

Definitely a dire situation to be addressed in a D&D adventure path.

Speaking of, I always wished that there was a "frivolous" statblock to go with the "dire" statblock. Like you could have a "frivolous t-rex" which is reduced CR and is actually just a chicken. Or a frivolous wolf which is a chihuaha.


I guess a we already have "Frivolous giant space hamsters" when you think about it.

 

[Distracted DM]

Since we're talking about origins of DnD media.. I have a recent one to share: The King of Elfland's Daughter.

Been listening to a lot of Loot the Body recently: Which tickled a memory: hey, DCC has King of Elfland as a patron- didn't they have an adventure with that title? Nope, it's the Queen of Elfland's Son.

I then go and look at Loot the Body's song description, oh hey it's inspired by an original story from the early 1900's.

So of course DCC had an adventure inspired by it, they're very Appendix N-minded folk. This is some ur-fantasy stuff we're looking at here. Obviously TKoED is inspired by earlier mythology, but a lot of stuff sprang out of authors reading TKoED.

 

[cbwjm]

Since we're talking about origins of DnD media.. I have a recent one to share: The King of Elfland's Daughter.

Been listening to a lot of Loot the Body recently: Which tickled a memory: hey, DCC has King of Elfland as a patron- didn't they have an adventure with that title? Nope, it's the Queen of Elfland's Son.

I then go and look at Loot the Body's song description, oh hey it's inspired by an original story from the early 1900's.

So of course DCC had an adventure inspired by it, they're very Appendix N-minded folk. This is some ur-fantasy stuff we're looking at here. Obviously TKoED is inspired by earlier mythology, but a lot of stuff sprang out of authors reading TKoED.

Not half an hour ago I came across this story while trying to recall the name of another author of the time (Clark Ashton Smith, he Lovecraft, and Howard all shared or borrowed ideas). Apparently, the writing style of Lord Dunsany who wrote the TKoED was inspirational to many other weird tale authors of the day.

 

[Reynard]

Not half an hour ago I came across this story while trying to recall the name of another author of the time (Clark Ashton Smith, he Lovecraft, and Howard all shared or borrowed ideas). Apparently, the writing style of Lord Dunsany who wrote the TKoED was inspirational to many other weird tale authors of the day.

As an aside, CAS is cleary the most innovative writer among them. Howard is probably the best writer from a purely skilled prose and storytelling perspective. Lovecraft is the most aggravating, I guess.