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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gez" data-source="post: 3022055" data-attributes="member: 1328">Tolkien was a novelist, Homer was an ancient greek storyteller, D&D is a roleplaying game.Saying D&D is not as enduring as Homer is like saying that motorbikes are less enduring than than horse carriage. It's not even apples and oranges, since both apples and oranges are fruits that are grown on trees. More like comparing potato puree with cuban cigars.I've already said I disagree with your lumping of all of fantasy's inspiration sources as fantasy itself. Unless you now claim that, for example, military conquests in the antiquity were just big LARPing events, I don't see how you could pretend that RPGs are, like fantasy novels, something that already existed in Homer's time.RPGs are a niche. Novels are mainstream. You can't compare directly the popularity of an RPG and that of a novel. That's dishonest.And despite that, D&D has certainly been much more influential to today's fantasy culture than Lord of the Rings. Peter Jackson's LoTR elves have pointed ears -- that's taken from D&D, because Tolkien never described elven ear shape. Likewise, the popular depiction of orcs is taken from Warhammer -- big, musclebound, stupid, green, and tusked. Tolkien's orcs were nothing like that. Petty, cruel, violent, and avaricious, yes. Mentally retarded to the point of painting their chariot red because "red goes faster", no.Gamer culture is now omnipresent in fantasy and soft sci-fi novels, comics, and computer games. Even people who've never even seen a D&D book have been exposed to many D&Disms, because they're so prevalent now. Take the fantasy standard view of elves: three main races, the high elves (often with golden skin), the wood elves, and the dark elves (practically always black-skinned, with silver hair, and red eyes). And of course, pointy ears. Does that match up with Tolkien's elves? Nope. Does that match with up with D&D's elves? Completely.</blockquote>

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