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

[DaveyJones]

On Gnomes: The Illusionist class, IIRC, was not of Gary's invention, instead appearing in early issues of The Strategic Review or possibly The Dragon. You might want to look up those issues and see if the gnome was allowed to be an illusionist in the original presentation, or if Gary added it as an option when he included the class in AD&D.

Cheers!

on gnomes. did any of you look in Chainmail?

the illusionist was in The Strategic Review.

 

[Garnfellow]

on gnomes. did any of you look in Chainmail?

the illusionist was in The Strategic Review.

I believe that Roger Moore once speculated that gnomes may have been heavily influenced by Clifford D. Simak's book Enchanted Pilgrimage (1975), which certainly had creatures very similar to AD&D gnomes -- complete with furry burrowing friends. I don't know that anyone has ever actually established that connection, though.

 

[Desdichado]

Quoting Gary Gygax's article "The Influence of J. R. R. Tolkien on the D&D and AD&D Games: I knew full well that the facade would be dispelled by the actualities of play. I relied on the power of the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS game to overcome the objections which would naturally occur when diehard Tolkien enthusiasts discovered the dissimilarity. This proved to be the case far more often than not. Tolkien fans entered the D&D game fold, and became a part of its eager audience, despite the fact that only a minute trace of the Professor's work can be found in the games. As anyone familiar with both D&D games and Tolkien works can affirm, there is no resemblance between the two, and it is well nigh impossible to recreate any Tolkien-based fantasy while remaining within the boundaries of the game system."

I guess I was the minority he describes. Finding that disparity between D&D and Tolkien--or fantasy that I read in general of any author--was a bit of a shock to me, and turned me off from D&D for a long time. I still played it from time to time, but not much, back in the old days.

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.

I disagree. It only works well at that from the extent that you can at least see vague nods in the direction of each of those influences, but emulating any of them? Not in my book. As long as your vaguely Dracula, Blob, Cthulhu and King Kong like antagonists sit in rooms of a strangely complex underground cavern complex surrounded by a bizarre assortment of traps that are clearly meant more to challenge the players more than the characters and feels very gamish, then your vaguely Conan, Merlin, Frodo, John Carter and Gray Mouser characters can go through a very slow and tedious resource management and "clever trap avoidance" game that is nothing like any of those influences, to eventually confront their antagonists on a square grid and do a number of mechanical wargames like manuevres against them that none of the characters in question would do.

The only thing D&D has ever been excellent at emulating is itself.

 

[T. Foster]

on gnomes. did any of you look in Chainmail?

the illusionist was in The Strategic Review.

Gnomes in Chainmail are directly synonymous with and statistically identical to dwarfs (the entry reads "DWARVES (and Gnomes)"). The only substantive difference is the name the player chooses to use. (FWIW, other synonymous entries in Chainmail are SPRITES (and Pixies), GOBLINS (and Kobolds), ELVES (and Fairies), BASILISK (Cockatrice), and WIGHTS (and Ghouls).)

OD&D vol. II gives gnomes a worse AC (5 vs. 4), greater chance of being found in lair (60% vs. 50%), and worse treasure (Type C vs. Type G) than dwarfs and describes them as follows:

GNOMES: Slightly smaller than Dwarves, and with longer beards, these creatures usually inhabit the hills and lowland burrows as opposed to the mountainous homes which Dwarves choose. They are more reclusive than their cousins, but in all other respects resemble Dwarves.

Supplement I (Greyhawk) goes so far as to imply that gnome PCs are subsumed under the dwarf heading:

Dwarves are about four feet tall, stocky of build, weigh 150 pounds, shoulders very broad, their skin a ruddy tan, brown or gray, and are of various types (hill, mountain, or burrowers) (such as gnomes).

 

[Geoffrey]

Thanks for the quotes, T. Foster. I never liked gnome illusionists. The combination seems incongruous to me. I much prefer gnomes as presented in the Monster Manual. While they are not as similar to dwarves as they are in OD&D, they are still much closer to dwarves than they later became.

 

[Faraer]

This accusing Gary of disingenuity is extremely distasteful. In civilized discussion you don't call people liars without proof.

 

[trancejeremy]

Orcs are probably from Tolkien, but there were pig like humanoids in the novel "House on the Borderlands" which I suspect was the source for the D&D orc's appearance (because Tolkien's orcs weren't pig like, IIRC)

Elves are more complicated. The Grey Elves are from Spenser's "The Faerie Queen", High Elves from Tolkien, and the Wood Elves are probably more from mythology.

Dwarves are from German/Norse mythology. So were Tolkiens.

Halflings are obviously just Hobbits renamed, but they were possibly based on the Dwarves of Arthurian romances. They were pretty common in them, but tended to be small human like people, rather than smiths.

Trolls are from Poul Anderson

 

[kenobi65]

Orcs are probably from Tolkien, but there were pig like humanoids in the novel "House on the Borderlands" which I suspect was the source for the D&D orc's appearance (because Tolkien's orcs weren't pig like, IIRC)

I've also heard suggestions that 1E's pig-like orcs were that way (a) in order to draw an intentional distinction vs. Tolkien, and (b) because "orc" is similar to the German word for "pig". I don't think there's any real substantiation to that, however.

 

[dcas]

Thanks for the quotes, T. Foster. I never liked gnome illusionists.

They're my favorite race-class combination! That, or the gnome illusionist/thief. Woohoo!

 

[thedungeondelver]

Great Belin! Fflewddur was certainly a real bard!

Why, Fflewddur was the best bard in all of Pry- *TWANG*

Err...of course what I was saying was...