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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Guest&nbsp; 85555" data-source="post: 8496515">I don't know that that question can be fully answered without people violating the forum guidelines. But there are a lot of differences I think one thing it shows though is that a writer is more than just their nationality. JRR Tolkien was definitely very Catholic. And that shaped his writing (so did him being English, but the point is there are more things shaping what a writer does). And if you say down a random English Catholic, you wouldn't get Lord of the Rings, it took JRR Tolkien specifically to write that. These things that shape who we are, are important, but they aren't the only thing. JRR Tolkien came out of Catholicism, but then, so did Luther. And as any Catholic will tell you: we do have free will. I think this is one reason why a number of people bristle a little at the whole: D&D is American so it must be shaped by this essentialist understanding of what it is to be an American (the frontier! individuality!, etc). Those things are bound to be present, but there are plenty of Americans who are more interested in European history than American history. And most Americans at this point are descended from various waves of immigration (which has fading significance with each generation but it means you have other values present besides some sort of pure American protestant work ethic and a notion of individuality bound up in western expansion and the free market). And if we are indeed a nation that value individuality, well it makes sense that people are free to shape their own identity however they want: i.e. you don't have to watch westerns or care about them (and at this point, few people do really). Also for the purposes of this discussion, it is worth pointing out that many Americans are Catholic. Granted, I am pretty sure Gygax wasn't, and Howard wasn't. But a lot of gamers and designers are. Catholics are something like 22% of the population, and in some place we are a majority. So it would make sense to me you will have many Americans who see the world more the way Tolkien did than the way Howard did. And all that said, you are still dealing with individuals, so I don't think you can reduce people or the things they create to them being Catholic, or them being American.</blockquote>

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