Question for the grognards: Why does D&D have dwarves/elves/hobbits etc.?

[Celebrim]

Conan, Merlin, Frodo, John Carter, and the Gray Mouser teamed up together doing battle against Dracula, The Blob, Cthulhu, and King Kong.

Yeah, that's about the size of it.

 

[hong]

Tolkein

Tolkien

Tolkein

Tolkien

Tolkein

Tolkien

 

[Nightfall]

Hong,

It think German spellings confuse them.

 

[Gentlegamer]

Do you mean Fflewddur Fflam or one of the real bards?

Great Belin! Fflewddur was certainly a real bard!

 

[Gentlegamer]

BTW, if you really want to see something that influenced D&D, check out the "Complete Compleat Enchanter" by Decamp. It has everything from Somatic components to cockatrices to Frost Giants.

Indeed, the "Harold Shea" stories, by Pratt and Camp, were the direct inspriation for the G series of modules (based on the story The Mathematics of Magic). Pratt and Camp's sympathetic magic was synthesized with Vance's mnemonic magic for AD&D spellcasting.

 

[T. Foster]

Yeah, I realized in the middle of writing post #53 that I'd been spelling it wrong (at least I didn't manage to misspell it in a post bragging about how big a fan I am ). FWIW, all of the Tolkien references in OD&D vol. II misspell it too (so I at least have Gygax & Arneson to blame for leading me astray! ).

 

[Darklone]

Tolkein was a rouge.

 

[S'mon]

Okay, I have known since almost day one that LotR was not a big influence on D&D

This is an unknown known - you only thought you knew it. In fact Tolkien was clearly a big influence on D&D, as others have explained, especially at the front end - character generation & low-level adventures. Later on the Vancian magic and (eg) Leiberesque, Moorcockian (and some Howardesque) monsters & stuff comes more to the fore. But Tolkien was the best core model because other fantasy literature focussed on a single protagonist, whereas Tolkien's works had teams of heroes working together, with niche protection, a much better basis for a multi-player game. BTW I don't think Tolkien's estate had any good copyright case vs Gygax/Arneson, but the way law works, you don't need a good case, you just need lawyers & a willingness to sue.

 

[tx7321]

Foster: "The quote I use is that D&D really sucks at trying to emulate any single pre-existing fantasy world, but it's absolutely unparalleled in emulating all of them at once -- Conan, Merlin, Frodo, John Carter, and the Gray Mouser teamed up together doing battle against Dracula, The Blob, Cthulhu, and King Kong."


Your correct, the kitchen sink approach does give something for everyone. And that seems to re-affirm Gygax's statement that Tolkien elements were included to attract that fan base to the game (so a marketing strategy). And if this is true, it is one of the reasons D&D is so special; not because everyone has a tie in, but because of the uniqueness of what that combination becomes...and the experiance that it generates. In otherwords, the total is far greater then its parts.

 

[RFisher]

It's an interesting idle speculation to wonder what would've happened had Gygax not (bowed to pressure/been such a savvy marketer) and not included Tolkein elements (or at least no as many and not as prominent Tolkein elements) in Chainmail and D&D [...] ?

I retrodict that D&D would still have taken off, but not as quickly. A knock-off with JRRT elements would have appeared as one of the earliest knock-offs. (Possibly under license, but more likely with the serial numbers filed off.) This game would have proved to be a bigger competitor to D&D than the knock-offs that did appear.

But what if this "competition" was actually published by TSR? A la the Empire of the Petal Throne? Or perhaps segregated in a D&D supplement?

(...I love idle speculation...^_^)

Gygax and co. also wrote a game explicitly based on Tolkien back in the early 70's, but I don't think they were able to get permission to publish the game from Tolkien's estate.

I'm pretty sure TSR did sell a "Battle of five armies" game.