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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mhacdebhandia" data-source="post: 3348979" data-attributes="member: 18832">I think that would be hard, considering how little influence Tolkien has on what I actually think contemporary fantasy, as a genre, actually is.Eberron's not really in line with what I think of as true contemporary fantasy, in the literary sense. It's just got the right attitude, applied to the conventions of D&D.Eberron's elves are not perfected humans, and that right there is all the difference you need between Tolkien's elves and Eberron's.Eberron's elves are only Tolkien's inasmuch as D&D's elves are Tolkien's, but they go in a wholly different direction. They're "pointy-ear dudes of magic and swordplay" because of Tolkien, but gee, that's about the only thing they have in common. They're not immortal, they're not forest-dwellers, they're not a lot of things that Tolkien's elves are.I agree. I know for a fact that Keith Baker is fond of The Lord of the Rings. Even if he wasn't, D&D itself would provide all the Tolkienesque grounding one would need.The fact remains that Eberron is different enough that no significant common ground exists between the perfected humans of Tolkien's work and the various elven cultures of Eberron - any more than there was between Tolkien's elves and the desert nomads of Athas.In a larger sense, the nature of elves, orcs, dwarves, and halflings isn't even the biggest problem I have with Middle-Earth. I think it's a pretty damn repulsive cosmology.</blockquote>

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