Dwarves don't sell novels

[mhacdebhandia]

A very good question. Tolkien and those other authors I've already alluded to have been vetted as "tried and true" by a combination of their popularity and/or endurance. Sweeping them aside is a kind of hubris on WotC's part.

I see. Straightforward conservatism, is it? "I like your old stuff better than your new stuff"?

I'm personally quite glad that Wizards of the Coast has decided to make D&D its own thing, with its own take (several takes, actually, when you consider the settings they produce as well as the flavour surrounding their "capsystem" books on psionics, incarnum, and the like) on fantasy.

Perhaps I'm biased - well, no, I know I'm biased. You keep mentioning Tolkien as "tried and true", while I'm thoroughly sick of the Tolkien imitations that have choked the fantasy genre for fifty years and am very happy that D&D is not just yet another "tired and through" Tolkien rip-off marching in lockstep with the rest of the logjam.

And I think you're mixing your metaphors.

Quite deliberately.

It's "tilting at windmills" or "clutching at straws". I think you mean the former.

You're tilting at windmills which are also strawmen - see your comments re: robots and spaceships in D&D. You're making nonsense up and raging against it.

 

[Turjan]

A very good question. Tolkien and those other authors I've already alluded to have been vetted as "tried and true" by a combination of their popularity and/or endurance. Sweeping them aside is a kind of hubris on WotC's part.

Eh. Even Tolkien had very different views of fantasy races in his different publications. Just look at the elves from "The Hobbit" and compare them to the elves from LotR. Those elves from "The Hobbit" are much nearer to folklore than his later concepts. They live under a hill, dance in the moonlight and drink lots of wine in their constant partying. There's also a distinct cruel streak. This fits very much Irish folk tales as they have been collected by the Grimm brothers in 1826. This is completely different from the elven image in the LotR. In principle, you could accuse Tolkien to have left the ground of folklore, because that's what he did. His LotR elves are his unique creation, and he changed his view of elves as he saw fit.

In the end, Tolkien's view of elves collides with the view of many other fantasy authors. "Sweeping Tokien aside" doesn't mean much. He is one author among many. He has a very specific view of elves, which is bound to his setting (and a different one in his older work). He hardly uses any magic, which is also much different to a lot of other fantasy literature. In this sense, Tolkien represents a very small niche of fantasy literature; a very popular niche, but a niche, nevertheless.

One other point: It is remarkable that none of the LotR RPGs, be it MERP or Decipher's LotR game, have been overly successful. The problem is that LotR as a book makes for a bad fantasy RPG without major changes. This means that the publisher's choice is more or less between a truthful, but boring adaptation of the books, or the introduction of major changes to make the game interesting (like MERP), which in turn upsets the fans.

And this is the gist of the argument: D&D, from its very beginnings, did not take its basic concepts from LotR. It took some of the racial concepts and a bit of window dressing, but the main influences are from distinctly different fantasy sources. And those included electric elevators, flying cars and supercomputers.

 

[Hussar]

For the puposes of what I said earlier, "tried and true fantasy" can be taken to mean fantasy that is very old (e.g. Homer, Beowulf, Spenser) and/or very popular (e.g. Tolkien), i.e. pretty much everything on this page up to and including LotR.

So, we should ignore the VAST amount of fantasy literature of the past 50 years? There were more fantasy novels produced since 2000 than have been produced in the 20th century. Even if many are crap, sheer volume means that there are some real gems in there. The sun doesn't rise and set on Tolkein. Thank goodness for that.

A very good question. Tolkien and those other authors I've already alluded to have been vetted as "tried and true" by a combination of their popularity and/or endurance. Sweeping them aside is a kind of hubris on WotC's part.

Pardon? Tolkein was popular? What was Tolkein's first bestseller? The Silmarillion. And he didn't even write that one alone. The ONLY reason we even know who Tolkein was is because he was an Oxford don who got his books put on reading academic reading lists.

Do I love the books? Of course I do. I play D&D after all. But, to try to say that Tolkein was some sort of iconic writer of fantasy is ludicrous.

Try this one. Name ten fantasy authors from the 1970's without looking them up. We're fantasy FANS. We should know these things. We don't because there was so little material to work with.

What possible reason is there to limit D&D to dead writers? With the huge number of VERY VERY good fantasy being written today, to stick our heads in the past is just a very good way to kill the hobby as younger generations who couldn't care less about the Hobbit in favor of Harry Potter pass the game by as something played by old people.

BTW, you've mentioned Matthew Sernett more than once. What exactly did he say and where did he say it?

In D&D it's a flesh golem and has been since 1E though the method of creation was more magical and less pseudo-scientific. Depending on how it is used, it can be a creature of horror, as in most films featuring Frankenstein's monster, or fantasy, as in most D&D settings.

Almost forgot this bit. So, D&D skips the source material and twists it and changes it, and that's ok, because.... But, if we are to use the source material as written, then we wind up with something you don't like and that would be bad. Am I understanding that correctly?

I could create a PC race of flesh golems similar to Frankenstein's monster and use them in D&D. Intelligent, sentient beings questioning their existence. Or, I can wrap them up in metal and do the same thing and get Warforged. Granted, they're created magically rather than with "science" (such as it is), but, the end result is the same.

Tried and true - yup. Stands the test of time - yup. Iconic figure that resonates - yup.

What's wrong with the picture?

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

BTW, you've mentioned Matthew Sernett more than once. What exactly did he say and where did he say it?

And what was the context.

Because, frankly, I'm of the opinion that from what has been quoted in this thread it sounds like Mr. Sernett is saying that WotC will move away from the narrow Tolkein-imitation baseline fantasy and return back to the roots of D&D where a broad fantasy genre was explored with abandon.

Forget "Return to the Dungeon" that was 3e's tagline, it'll be "Return to the Roots"!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Tolkien and those other authors I've already alluded to have been vetted as "tried and true" by a combination of their popularity and/or endurance. Sweeping them aside is a kind of hubris on WotC's part.

And the authors we have alluded to (Moorcock, Lieber, Vance, et alia) who frequently meld sci-fi elements into their fantasy works are also "tried and true" by the very same standard you allude to- some dating back pre-JRRT (OMG! PEOPLE WROTE FANTASY BEFORE TOLKIEN?!) and sweeping them aside is no less hubris on your part.

Sure- if I go into B&N or Borders and peruse the sci-fi/fantasy books, JRRT's books outmass any other authors' work save perhaps Asimov's. Why? Because like Stephen King, his works have been made into movies and everyone- even non-fans- knows his name. His stuff sells because of his notoriety. In fact, sometimes I have trouble finding classic authors on those shelves, they are crowded out for want of space...I count 6+ editions of his Magnum Opus on the shelves on a good day, with multiple copies of each. Does that make JRRT more important than Howard or Lieber?

I don't think so.

Do the superior sales of LotR that make that work superior in quality, more important to our hobby?

If it does, then we'd better start rewriting the music ed courses to appreciate the greatness of Britney Spears and Vanilla Ice.

You mention the gnome...

The gnome of D&D- in ANY edition- shares mainly physical stature and name with the gnomes of European legend.

JRRT's Elves? They are his own trope on the pointy ear'd folk- you examine Euopean folklore, and you'll find that "elf" was associated with smallish, very magically oriented beings, who lived apart from humanity, not in the wilderness, but in a "parallel dimension" often referred to by names like "Underhill"- in other words, the creatures that most RPGs call "Fey."

 

[pawsplay]

Pardon? Tolkein was popular? What was Tolkein's first bestseller? The Silmarillion. And he didn't even write that one alone. The ONLY reason we even know who Tolkein was is because he was an Oxford don who got his books put on reading academic reading lists.

The Silmarillion was his pet project, and was never would you would call a bestseller. In fact, it was published posthumously. His bestseller was The Hobbit, a children's book, which had people clamoring for more "stories about hobbits." LOTR was the basically the first mainstream best seller fantasy novel. Tolkien is a magnitude more popular than virtually any other fantasy writer before or since.

 

[Nuclear Platypus]

But, a bit of Googling shows that the Da Vinci bicycle appears to be a hoax though.

However, it's not like the technology for creating a bicycle doesn't exist in the period. It's just that no one did it. Same way as the Chinese had incredibly advanced ships but history conspired to not make them a naval power.

There is a difference between what is possible and what is probable. It's quite possible to create a bicycle in the Renaissance. That we didn't doesn't mean that it couldn't be done.

DaVinci created plans for a robot, er, automaton around 1495 while the Japanese had their own in the 18th - 19th century (karakuri). To me it doesn't seem like much of a leap for these automatons to gain life by some helpful (or malicious) spirit kinda like that little wooden boy we all know and love from animation... Little Wooden Boy. SPOON!

Ok, Pinocchio too.

But there was also the original Golem from Jewish lore, Talos, that bronze minotaur from one of the Sinbad movies, the Shiva statue from another Harryhausen movie, Astroboy (a futurisitic Pinocchio but still), etc.

Fantasy also has several anthropomorphs, mostly modern creations like Usagi Yojimbo, the TMNT, Cerebus the Aardvark, any of Uncle Walt's studio creations, Rocket Raccoon, Flaming Carrot, etc. But that's something like a modern iteration like before Elric, all (ok, majority) heroes were Conan-ish.

Not every fantasy has to involve elves, dwarves, Keira Knightley, pirates, Bo Derek running in slow motion across a beach, some neverending story, some guy with the ability to cloud men's minds who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men, radioactive spider bites or exploding planets named Krypton. It just has to be divergent from what is considered 'normal life'. To me, that's what distinguishes it from science fiction, which might be a vision of the future - H.G. Wells and Jules Verne for instance.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread, already in progress.

 

[Turjan]

The ONLY reason we even know who Tolkein was is because he was an Oxford don who got his books put on academic reading lists.

Sure- if I go into B&N or Borders and peruse the sci-fi/fantasy books, JRRT's books outmass any other authors' work save perhaps Asimov's. Why? Because like Stephen King, his works have been made into movies and everyone- even non-fans- knows his name. His stuff sells because of his notoriety. In fact, sometimes I have trouble finding classic authors on those shelves, they are crowded out for want of space...I count 6+ editions of his Magnum Opus on the shelves on a good day, with multiple copies of each.

You can combine those two points. In Germany, this combination is very obvious. There, fantasy (and science fiction) was some kind of literature that nobody concerned for his reputation would want to be seen with by others. Comes LotR. For what reason ever, it was published by one of the two major schoolbook publishers! The reputable publisher - who had never done SF or fantasy before - was the reason for mainstream people to look into the book and is partly responsible for its success.

 

[Hussar]

The Silmarillion was his pet project, and was never would you would call a bestseller. In fact, it was published posthumously. His bestseller was The Hobbit, a children's book, which had people clamoring for more "stories about hobbits." LOTR was the basically the first mainstream best seller fantasy novel. Tolkien is a magnitude more popular than virtually any other fantasy writer before or since.

According to this site you would be mistaken.

As well as this list which also lists the Silmarillion as Tolkien's only best seller.

This site also agrees.

This one too

I could go on, but I think I've proven my point.

And, as far as popularity goes, I'm afraid the Professor doesn't come anywhere close to Ms Rawlings. Not even in the same time zone in fact. I actually wouldn't be all that surprised if there are a fair number of authors more popular in terms of sales than Tolkien.

 

[rounser]

Forget "Return to the Dungeon" that was 3e's tagline, it'll be "Return to the Roots"!

From what I gather, D&D's roots are the dungeon. Taking the "hero" minis from the battlefield and sending them down into the dungeons of Castle Blackmoor is arguably the first time it stopped being Chainmail. But hey, we weren't there, so that's just speculation based on accounts from those who were.