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<blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 8813215" data-attributes="member: 6801228">It is only as derivative of Tolkien and Howard as Tolkien and Howard were derivative of their predecessors. You might as well go read Gilgamesh, Beowulf, and the Nordic Sagas if you want to make a claim to reading the &quot;originals&quot; Tolkien and Howard weren't super special insightful writers who wrote something completely original.Why is that odd? WoW took aspects of DnD and made them popular, so why would it not make sense for DnD to look at the popular things in&nbsp; WoW and see if they work for DnD? It is certainly no stranger than saying DnD should be more like Tolkien.Except it is actually entirely a slight against latter-day fantasy authors. You are trying to state that nothing written since 1974 is anything more than a derivation of later works, while at the same time ignoring that everything ever written builds and expands on earlier work. Meaning that all those &quot;original&quot; works were just derivative of their predecessors. And, shockingly, many people writing today aren't pulling from&nbsp; Tolkien or Howard, but pulling from the same sources as Tolkien and Howard. Or, different sources. I certainly haven't seen a lot of egyptian mythology referenced in Tolkien or Howard, or much Journey to the West, or the Vedic texts. Yet I've read a lot of fantasy influenced by those things. It is just pure elitism to claim that Tolkien and Howard were the high-water mark and no one has written any fantasy worth talking about since them.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Chaosmancer, post: 8813215, member: 6801228"] It is only as derivative of Tolkien and Howard as Tolkien and Howard were derivative of their predecessors. You might as well go read Gilgamesh, Beowulf, and the Nordic Sagas if you want to make a claim to reading the "originals" Tolkien and Howard weren't super special insightful writers who wrote something completely original. Why is that odd? WoW took aspects of DnD and made them popular, so why would it not make sense for DnD to look at the popular things in WoW and see if they work for DnD? It is certainly no stranger than saying DnD should be more like Tolkien. Except it is actually entirely a slight against latter-day fantasy authors. You are trying to state that nothing written since 1974 is anything more than a derivation of later works, while at the same time ignoring that everything ever written builds and expands on earlier work. Meaning that all those "original" works were just derivative of their predecessors. And, shockingly, many people writing today aren't pulling from Tolkien or Howard, but pulling from the same sources as Tolkien and Howard. Or, different sources. I certainly haven't seen a lot of egyptian mythology referenced in Tolkien or Howard, or much Journey to the West, or the Vedic texts. Yet I've read a lot of fantasy influenced by those things. It is just pure elitism to claim that Tolkien and Howard were the high-water mark and no one has written any fantasy worth talking about since them. [/QUOTE]

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