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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sacrosanct" data-source="post: 7489393" data-attributes="member: 15700">This is a strawman, and not what he/she is arguing.  I don't know how many times we need to have this discussion, and every time, people like to resort to strawmen to try to make their point.  Squibbles said that Gary consistently argued that D&D's foundational inspiration came from other sources.  That is true.  Gary has said that.  Gary never said that Tolkien wasn't an inspiration, like what you're arguing. In fact, he said he was, primarily because that's what people were most familiar with and thus he wanted to give something to those gamers.  It's entirely possible for something to have an influence, even a big one, without being the fundamental influence.  Especially since we also know much of what Tolkien is credited with creating, he didn't.  We had a thread about this less than a year ago.  Tolkien pulled heavily from existing myth and folklore.  In fact, that was his entire point, to create a unified anglo saxon set of mythology by pulling all these bits and pieces from various sources together into one.  And since we know that Gary was well versed in mythology and folklore and fantasy literature that predated Tolkien, it's assured that he knew this as well.  Many things they pulled from the original source, but many people who only know Tolkien assume that Gary lifted it from Tolkien instead of the original source.</blockquote>