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

[Willie the Duck]

It's a chicken or the egg scenario. As mentioned later, D&D absorbed a lot of myth and fantasy and regurgitated it into other media. For example, the monk class is clearly based on all manner of kung fu pop culture, but unarmed Eastern fighting types being common in all manner of RPGs from Final Fantasy to Warcraft comes from their inclusion in D&D.
...
Popularized rather than invented, but even the fact druids have moved from Celtic pagan priest to generic shape changing nature mage is due to D&D's influence.

Thinking along there lines, something else that D&D certainly did not invent, but amplified and added its own influence to was just the depiction of medieval people (adventuring people in particular).

Recently Penn and Teller performed at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival to celebrate their having met there 50 years prior. This caused me to look at some picks of the costumes there from that era. I've also (because my brother's kids are of the right age) seen the Disney Robin Hood and a lot of the old Looney Toons, including the ones with Bugs and Daffy and Porky as being/conflicting with Robin Hoods or knights or whatnot.

Media from the 70s and before depicted Ye Olde Days with a lot more knights on horseback with lances and full helms with clamshell visors (of one style or another). For unarmored men, a lot of primary color two-tone garb (often crossed, with the same color on the lower left and upper right, and converse), often with tights as the legware. For unarmored women, a lot more dresses and conical hats. Lots of pointed shoes. Lots of jester outfits. Lots of livery. Wizards wore robes with moons and stars and a pointed hat.

Since then, there's been a lot of shift towards a different aesthetic. More earth tones. More leather. A lot more 'light' armor -- some of it leather or studded leather, but even just less metal armor and more form-fitting-looking stuff. More open faced helms. More footmen. Unarmored folk have ditched the bright colors and men have ditched the tights (and more women are showing more leg and certainly more women are wearing armor).

Now none of this is pure and straightforward. All of it has been around forever -- we wouldn't even have studded leather if Gygax (and his sources) didn't have existing depictions to misinterpret. There certainly was less complete (than full harness) armor used at many times/places, so this is just an expansion of what was depicted. Likewise, the trend in that depiction didn't start with D&D. Frank Frazetta and Roger Corman get as much credit as Gygax. Pulp novel covers, comics, and later B-movies shifted depiction of the era from Hollywood soundstages and the like as much of more than D&D. Still, I think D&D did a lot to help shift some of that stuff strongly towards a different look and feel.

But then you have an issue of tracing. Someone saying that, though media had barehanded martial artists aplenty for years, Final Fantasy got its version specifically from D&D, and not also from those other sources? That's a hard claim to substantiate.

The martial artist in particular, yeah that's hard. But moreso than other things we might mention, Akitoshi Kawazu and the rest of the creative team behind FF1 have been upfront about it being their own version of Wizardry/Ultima and a love-letter to AD&D. That's a lot more direct that much of what we have.

 

[Remathilis]

And, I'm fine with that.

But then you have an issue of tracing. Someone saying that, though media had barehanded martial artists aplenty for years, Final Fantasy got its version specifically from D&D, and not also from those other sources? That's a hard claim to substantiate.

Well...

Final Fantasy 1 (the original NES game) borrowed very heavily from D&D as D&D was (for a brief time) a giant influence on Japan's idea of Western fantasy. The influences on D&D were fairly unknown, but D&D's distillation of them was. More people in Japan probably read Record of the Lodoss Wars's original serialized recaps than read Conan.
So yeah, FF in particular has a LOT of fantasy tropes that one can guess made it in because it was in D&D. It ranges from the obscure (Red Magic being a take on bards) to the overt (the most powerful summon in nearly every game was a dragon named Bahamut). FF1 has beholders, mind flayers, dark elves, liches, giants, dwarves, and other MM staples.
And the original six classes in FF1 are warrior (fighter), Thief (thief), white mage (cleric), black mage (magic-user), black belt (monk) and red mage (a bard-like character who uses black and white magic). They are modeled off the D&D classes (though clearly not 1:1) and one can gather that the fact that monk was the only Asian inspired class in Basic and Advanced and thus familiar that it was popular with the native audience. If the monk wasn't in D&D though, one wonders if FF would have had a different sixth class.

 

[Remathilis]

Thinking along there lines, something else that D&D certainly did not invent, but amplified and added its own influence to was just the depiction of medieval people (adventuring people in particular).

Recently Penn and Teller performed at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival to celebrate their having met there 50 years prior. This caused me to look at some picks of the costumes there from that era. I've also (because my brother's kids are of the right age) seen the Disney Robin Hood and a lot of the old Looney Toons, including the ones with Bugs and Daffy and Porky as being/conflicting with Robin Hoods or knights or whatnot.

Media from the 70s and before depicted Ye Olde Days with a lot more knights on horseback with lances and full helms with clamshell visors (of one style or another). For unarmored men, a lot of primary color two-tone garb (often crossed, with the same color on the lower left and upper right, and converse), often with tights as the legware. For unarmored women, a lot more dresses and conical hats. Lots of pointed shoes. Lots of jester outfits. Lots of livery. Wizards wore robes with moons and stars and a pointed hat.

Since then, there's been a lot of shift towards a different aesthetic. More earth tones. More leather. A lot more 'light' armor -- some of it leather or studded leather, but even just less metal armor and more form-fitting-looking stuff. More open faced helms. More footmen. Unarmored folk have ditched the bright colors and men have ditched the tights (and more women are showing more leg and certainly more women are wearing armor).

Now none of this is pure and straightforward. All of it has been around forever -- we wouldn't even have studded leather if Gygax (and his sources) didn't have existing depictions to misinterpret. There certainly was less complete (than full harness) armor used at many times/places, so this is just an expansion of what was depicted. Likewise, the trend in that depiction didn't start with D&D. Frank Frazetta and Roger Corman get as much credit as Gygax. Pulp novel covers, comics, and later B-movies shifted depiction of the era from Hollywood soundstages and the like as much of more than D&D. Still, I think D&D did a lot to help shift some of that stuff strongly towards a different look and feel..

I've done a lot of thinking on how the aesthetic of medieval times has moved from the more colorful costumed look to the grimmer and modernistic appearance of the 90s on. I think that has more to do with Hollywood than anything, but D&D art and aesthetic certainly follows the trend. As an example, imagine Peter Jackson's LotR in Camelot/Robin Hood inspired dress. Aragorn in tights, Gandalf with the conical hat. It feels silly to us because we view that style of dress as silly, period accurate or not. So Aragorn gets not only proper pants, but a badass longcoat. Things that while still fantastical and vaguely medieval, appear to resemble something a modern man would wear.

(And don't get me started on Renn Faires. I realize that period accurate dress is pretty low on the cosplay list of importance, but the bodices and skirts many attendees wear would have them burned as witches or cast out as strumpets! But it's the modern era so cleavage and bare legs are not the scandal they were and more comfortable under the hot sun of your typical Ren faire).

 

[tetrasodium]

It's unlikely that the original NES final fantasy 1 monk inspired much because of some coding mistakes that were corrected in later games and addressed in some of the later releases with charges like bumping the level cap from 50 to 100 where it could eventually be useful to have the unique calculations ff1 monk had.

Spoiler: details

In the original NES version of Final Fantasy 1, there is a well-known bug regarding the Monk (and its upgraded class, Master) that affects their defense and, indirectly, their effectiveness. Furthermore, the game contains a specific, counter-intuitive mechanic regarding unarmed damage that is often misunderstood.
The Core Damage "Error" (Actually a Mechanic):

• Unarmed is Best: The Monk/Master deals damage based on Level × 2 when unarmed.
• The Trap: If a weapon is equipped, the damage formula changes to Weapon Attack + (STR / 2) + 1.
• Result: Due to high-level unarmed damage scaling and a doubling of hits, equipping a weapon (even powerful ones like the Masamune) often results in significantly lower damage output in the NES version.

The Actual Programming Error (Defense Bug):

• The Bug: In the NES version, the game checks if the Monk has a weapon equipped to determine if they should be using the "unarmed" defense formula (which is equal to their Level).
• The Error: If a Monk has no weapon equipped, but does have armor on, the game mistakenly sets their defense to their level, ignoring the armor's actual defensive value.
• The Fix/Exploit: To get the maximum defensive value, you must have no armor and no weapon equipped (which gives defense equal to level), or simply check the armor screen from the menu after equipping gear to recalculate it correctly.

Key Takeaways for Monk Damage:

• Unarmed: (Level) x 2 damage, double hits.
• Armed: Weapon Attack + (STR/2) + 1.
• Tip: Never use weapons on a Monk in the original game for maximum damage.

Link

 

[Seramus]

Except when we see stories set in Istar (including the original Legends trilogy) the Istarians do not call them that at all.

I believe the authors have been adamant that they are not connected at all.

 

[Distracted DM]

And Warcraft has a Tinker class. Which predated D&D's Artificer class.

Which Warcraft has a tinker class?

 

[Corinnguard]

Which Warcraft has a tinker class?

Warcraft: The Role-playing Game for 3e D&D, pages 63-65.

This was the first edition of Warcraft: The Role-playing Game by Sword & Sorcery Studios in 2003. Blizzard Entertainment would later come out with this RPG's second edition, the World of Warcraft RPG in 2005.

Warcraft: The Roleplaying Game - Wikipedia

There were several homebrewed versions of this RPG for 5e on GM Binder.

 

[Mind of tempest]

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?

something like this? or do you mean like a wolf rat?