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Message: <blockquote data-quote="aramis erak" data-source="post: 9293619" data-attributes="member: 6779310">There are a bunch of things that came together to get D&D caught on...<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The rise of Fantasy literature in the late 1960's<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">This isn't just Tolkien</li> </ul></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The ongoing Vietnam War</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The rising enrollement of ROTC due to said war</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">the rise in miniatures gaming due to increased ROTC enrollment</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">the rapid decrease in cost of small press printing techniques (especially mimeography and typecasters) in the early 1970's</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">the rise of the small press magazines via the Amateur Press Association.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">the rise of individual empowerment by 60's </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The ongoing  series of fantasy films in the 60's<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fantasy_films_of_the_1960s" target="_blank">List of fantasy films of the 1960s - Wikipedia</a></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Note the Harryhousen Greek and Arabic inspired films ('58-'81)... I remember seeing Clash of the Titans in second run in about 1982... And the various Sinbad films on sat afternoon TV.</li> </ul></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">the rise in US disposable income</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">the decreasing relative cost of quality paper</li> </ul>This could easily, if Tolkien hadn't signed the deal in 1968, have resulted in the Greek and Arabian heroes being the model which Dave Arneson adopted. And I'm not the only one to have such thoughts Ollie LeGrande's excellent pseudo-clone, Mazes and Monsters, is great satire as well as a good game.Then there's the more recent Neoclassical Greek Revival by Zzarchov Kowolski...The problem is that the human dominated settings of the Greek and Arabian tales  don't have quite the escapism value  the pseudo-Tolkienian Elves, Dwarves, Halflings have provided. But there are Satyrs, Amazons, and the angelic and demonic beings of the "Near East"...That change would have little lasting impact on the story of RPGs, IMO... We'd likely have seen more overt caricatures of historic ethnic groups until someone nabbed onto the Nordic Alfar and Svartalfar.And Greg Stafford's Glorantha likely would have been the instrumental setting in introducing non-humans. (The setting predates D&D by 5 years.)Another possible source might have been the Nordic mythology, especially the Viking era.</blockquote>

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