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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 8110558" data-attributes="member: 8461">If you mean the elf, dwarf, and halfling, then yes. But not so much the half-elf or half-orc.Notice that it played up the struggles, and not the races. There's a reason why that book didn't allow you to play as an elf, halfling, etc. Instead, the one-to-one rules allowed for you to play as a wizard, hero, or super-hero. The wizards also were presented as being akin to artillery, which is far from how Gandalf acted during the mass combat scenes in Tolkien's work. So the name-drop doesn't have much follow-through, besides a few monsters.You should check out the recent "Secrets of Blackmoor" documentary for a more in-depth analysis of what Arneson's game was really like. While Boggs' timeline is impeccable (I contribute to his Patreon), it's important to note other salient points of Arneson's game. For one thing, it was originally a Napoleonic fantasy game, set on Earth, before being ported over to Blackmoor. The players originally played themselves (though it's iffy if that was before or after the switch-over from Earth to Blackmoor), and it was several years before demihuman PCs were introduced (i.e. they were an afterthought).Again, they weren't there when Arneson started his Blackmoor game. But insofar as published works go, they were there from the beginning. So really, the whole "D&D would have failed if it hadn't had them" is a fairly pointless bit of speculation to begin with. That said, other games had those races and more (T&T) and were more accessible than D&D, and still didn't do as well.I believe you'd lose that argument. Being present doesn't mean that they were notable or otherwise significant. As noted, they were a late addition to Arneson's game, and weren't options in Chainmail. D&D allowed them, but only in very limited ways (restricting their class options and available levels, which would last for several editions).</blockquote>

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