LOTR and RPing

[Walter_J]

I find that odd as well. Are you sure?

Well, here's the way I look at it. Did LotR influence D&D? Absolutely. Is D&D based on LotR? Absolutely not. (At quick look at the elves and magic in D&D is proof enough of that.)

A good place to check for an answer straight from the source might be the Gygax Q&A. I tried looking through the post to give you a link, but it is so long and my connection so slow today, that I'd be there forever and a day.

 

[ruleslawyer]

Gary's seminal thoughts on the issue are set out in "Why Lord of the Rings is not D&D," which crops up in an old issue of Dragon magazine (my CD-ROM drive is busted, or I'd have pulled up the issue info).

 

[Mark]

I apologize in advance for the size of the images, but it is necessary given the medium I am using. From Appendix N of the 1E DMG...

 

[Mark]

...continuing...

 

[Mark]

Gary has tired to put the urban legend of LotR being the main influence to bed so many times, I do not think that he or others will mind that I included these images. If so, an Admin or myself will remove them as needs be. Hope this helps.

 

[BigFreekinGoblinoid]

from the horses mouth

from a friend's email to me a few weeks ago - goes along well with Mark's scans:

>I found this on the Hackmaster forum. It's Gary Gygax
>explaining why some of D&D seems to have been inspired
>by J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings
>books.
>
>Gary Gygax (aka Col Pladoh) wrote:
>JRRT's Influence was mainly in regards to marketing.
>That is, while I liked THE HOBBIT a lot, read it at
>bedtime to my children, three times in total as I
>recall, I found the "Rings Trilogy" rather tedious,
>boring in fact. Heretic that I am, I liked the "Harry
>Potter' movie more than the initial Tolkien film as I
>didn't nearly fall asleep in the first half hour of
>the former...
>
>To explain this, I must say I cut my teeth on the
>"Conan" novel when I was about 11, became a hardcore
>fantasy & SF fan at age 12--a950. From that time on I
>collected and read most of the inaginative fiction of
>that sort written from 1940 on through 1955. I haunted
>the used book store I'd make my mother take me to in
>Chicago as often as possible, so as to find back
>issues of pulp zines for my collection. I'd read two a
>day sometimes Then and later, I read a lot of fairy
>tales, myth and lejend, real mythology too.
>
>When I set about writing the D&D game the craze for
>JRRT was rampant, so I added as much material as I
>could to the game so as to capture more players.
>Shameless marketing ploy that it was, its success
>can't be doubted. Now, though, I have to keep
>explaining it, so I am wondering it it was worth it
>
>As a matter of fact, I hoped when I wrote the list of
>inspirational reading in the OAD&D DMG, that appendix
>would obviate the need for me to keep going over this
>ground.
>
>And, I picked up ettin from a fairy tale, not FRRT.
>
>At an I-Con one year in the late 1980s, some young
>female editor form a big publishing house with whom I
>was sharing a panel on fantasy writing and its future
>(or some such) had the timerity to ask, "Why did you
>steal dwarves from Tolkien?" Without a blink I
>responded: "My dear girl (used with malice
>aforethought), I stole my dwarves from the very same
>place the Good PRofessor did, Norse Mythology. At
>least I had the decency to not steal their names from
>that source as well." She avoided me thereafter, Lord
>be praised. Who says I don't suffer a fool lightly?
>
>Cheerio,
>Gary