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

[Terath Ninir]

Okay, I have known since almost day one that LotR was not a big influence on D&D, despite the fact that it has elves, dwarves, and hobbits. However, it never occured to me to turn the question around: if Tolkien wasn't a big influence, why did Gygax and/or Arneson put 'em in? Was it a marketing gimic? Or what?

A secondary question would be where the !@#$% gnomes came from. Not like the game needs THREE little people races...

 

[thedungeondelver]

Okay, I have known since almost day one that LotR was not a big influence on D&D, despite the fact that it has elves, dwarves, and hobbits. However, it never occured to me to turn the question around: if Tolkien wasn't a big influence, why did Gygax and/or Arneson put 'em in? Was it a marketing gimic? Or what?

A secondary question would be where the !@#$% gnomes came from. Not like the game needs THREE little people races...

...

Uh.

Bec...ause Lord Dunsany? Poul Anderson? Jack Vance? Pretty much every european mythical folktale?

???

 

[Terath Ninir]

The elves, dwarves, and especially the hobbits of D&D are Straight Outta Middle Earth (yo), NOT the versions of folklore. Nor have I ever seen 'em in anything pre-Tolkien. I've read about 50% of Vance's books and enough of Poul Anderson to not see anything like 'em in there.

The game owes more to Dunsany, Anderson, and Vance, but the races don't. How come?

 

[billd91]

The elves, dwarves, and especially the hobbits of D&D are Straight Outta Middle Earth (yo), NOT the versions of folklore. Nor have I ever seen 'em in anything pre-Tolkien. I've read about 50% of Vance's books and enough of Poul Anderson to not see anything like 'em in there.

The game owes more to Dunsany, Anderson, and Vance, but the races don't. How come?

Does it really matter? Certain parts of fantasy literature influence certain parts of the game. Certainly the runaway popularity of the LotR would have plenty of players wanting to play elves, dwarves, and halflings. Consider it giving the audience what it wants.

 

[Terath Ninir]

If it *really* mattered, I would have thought of this question 20 years ago. No, I'm just curious why they picked the races they did -- instead of, say, the races from Vance's Tschai/Planet of Adventure series.

Come to think of it, that might make for an interesting set of races, should I ever run a straight D&D game again...

 

[tx7321]

I agree with Cy, Gygax IMO did base D&D on the LOTR (esp. "the Hobbit"). He won't admit it, but if you look at other things (for instance, alot of the spells cast etc.) OD&D has a very Hobbit feel to it IMO (espl. if you focus only on the first 3 books and ignore outside sources. Wasn't there some legal issues with the Tolkein estate (or publishers) at the time AD&D was being written? I always figured Gygax distanced himself from Tolkein for this reason (to help avoid Copy Write infrindgement accusations down the road).

The ranger is def. out of LOTR, but then that came later.

 

[WayneLigon]

Okay, I have known since almost day one that LotR was not a big influence on D&D, despite the fact that it has elves, dwarves, and hobbits. However, it never occured to me to turn the question around: if Tolkien wasn't a big influence, why did Gygax and/or Arneson put 'em in? Was it a marketing gimic? Or what?

Given that it not only has elves (that use magic and use swords, and live in forests), dwarves (who mainly use axes and live underground), hobbits and orcs but also 'treants', balrogs, and a few others Tolkien-only things, similar enough that there was a lawsuit... I'd say Tolkien was a huge influence on the game world itself.

A few of the concepts can go out to Liber, Howard, etc.. but Tolkien stands head and shoulders over all of those in the eyes of even the fantasy-reading public, especially around the time D&D was written.

I'd say given the existance of so many distinctly Tolkien-esque elements in D&D, that Tolkien did indeed have a large impact on the game regardless of what has been said or claimed by the authors in public venues.

 

[T. Foster]

Because while Gygax wasn't a big Tolkein fan, he was savvy enough to realize that most of the potential market for a fantasy wargame was, so he threw a bunch of familiar Tolkeinisms (hobbits, ents, balrogs, orcs, wargs, barrow wights, etc.) into the Fantasy Supplement of Chainmail, and they naturally found their way into D&D as well. Dwarfs and elves are more of a borderline case, because both of those types exist in folklore and genre literature outside of Tolkein and, especially in the case of elves, D&D's treatment owes as much to the other/earlier sources as it does to Tolkein (read Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword). Including them as PC races (modeling the Fellowship of the Ring) is probably a Tolkeinism, though.

So, in short, "marketing gimmick" pretty much covers it.

 

[thedungeondelver]

The elves, dwarves, and especially the hobbits of D&D are Straight Outta Middle Earth (yo), NOT the versions of folklore. Nor have I ever seen 'em in anything pre-Tolkien. I've read about 50% of Vance's books and enough of Poul Anderson to not see anything like 'em in there.

The game owes more to Dunsany, Anderson, and Vance, but the races don't. How come?

You might want to give THREE HEARTS AND THREE LIONS a skim (if you haven't). There's a whole lotta D&D just in that book alone. Oh and THE BROKEN SWORD.

 

[Mark CMG]

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

Probably because the fantasy miniatures games, such as the original Chainmail, we were playing (alongside other standard wargames) has them. The reason fantasy miniatures games had them was because they are standard races in fantasy literature and mythology, though they have been presented in countless different manners (from Tolkein to Dunsany to Anderson to many, many more).