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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Spindly" data-source="post: 8441670" data-attributes="member: 7032889">Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I think the concerns you raise are fundamental for some questions but not others. The core of AD&D is parties of adventurers defined by their races, professions ("classes"), experience, and possessions (elfin chainmail saves the first-level fighter from the "hobgoblin", er, orc-chieftain's spear) exploring multi-level underground tunnel systems ("dungeons") and encountering monsters. That's Moria, and to my (imperfect) knowledge of the literature, nothing else comes close as a direct precursor to AD&D. As Peterson notes in the podcast, LotR created and dominated the market for "fantasy" (medieval European fable) in the US at the time, and it would be strange if it wasn't the default source for a game set in a reimagined Europe c. 1100. Per Peterson, Gygax had strong legal and emotional reasons not to say "yeah, I wanted to make a LotR game but I tweaked a bunch of stuff"—but that seems to me the null hypothesis we should start with.</blockquote>