Felix said:
D&D suffers from Tolkien the same way physics suffers from Einstein.
Does physics borrow a handful of trappings from Einstein and utterly miss the real point of his work?
D&D uses Tolkienian/'High Fantasy' trappings in key points, but the heart of the game (aside from some attempts at moving in a more HF direction during Second Edition) is S&S--"kill things and take their stuff", or, as I've put it in my more snarky moods, playing characters who "plunder, pillage, rob, burgle, slaughter, backstab, lie, cheat, steal, betray, and then call up a demon lord to chat with over a glass of innocent blood".
I prefer the genre breakdown from
Fantasy Hero, 5th Edition: Epic Fantasy (Tolkien--high wonder, low magic), High Fantasy (D&D in its FR or DL mode--high wonder, high magic), Low Fantasy (low wonder, low magic) and Sword & Sorcery (which is described above--Howard, Leiber, and Moorcock, among others--and which edges towards the "low wonder, high magic" corner of the square in spots). (There's also Crossworlds and Urban Fantasy, but those aren't really relevant to a D&D discussion.)
In this model, D&D lies on the borderland between High Fantasy and Sword & Sorcery. My own tastes tend towards Epic Fantasy and High Fantasy, which is probably why I've often been less than enchanted by 'standard' D&D.
