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Survivor Appendix N Authors- LEIBER WINS!
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<blockquote data-quote="Gradine" data-source="post: 7489998" data-attributes="member: 57112"><p>Here's the thing about influences; the things (and particularly cultural artifacts) that influence us often do so in ways that are as much unconscious and conscious. We're not always the best in naming our influences at the best of times, and in a time when Gygax really wanted people to get into Sword & Sorcery but knew Tolkien was what everyone was reading, he (and others, let's not forget) built a game that would be familiar to Tolkien fans while still carrying the tone and feel of S&S. Thus, he had every reason to (both consciously and unconsciously) downplay the influence of Tolkien on the work. But to try to argue that Tolkien isn't <em>foundational</em> to D&D is just silly. Of course it's foundational; as foundational as the works of Vance, Howard, Lieber, or Moorcock, at the very least. Not just the borrowed creature here or there, but the playable races as well. D&D's Elves and Dwarves are Tolkien's Elves and Dwarves. Full stop. And Gygax's Halflings were still so close to Hobbits that Wizards has been doing everything in their power to make Halflings as "not-Hobbit" as possible while still being recognizable as D&D Halflings.</p><p></p><p>I'm not so sure I would call Tolkien foundational to Gygax's home game, given what we know of it, but of the game he (and others, let's not forget) wrote down and put in a box and sold to a bunch of people? The argument that he's not foundational just doesn't hold water.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Gradine, post: 7489998, member: 57112"] Here's the thing about influences; the things (and particularly cultural artifacts) that influence us often do so in ways that are as much unconscious and conscious. We're not always the best in naming our influences at the best of times, and in a time when Gygax really wanted people to get into Sword & Sorcery but knew Tolkien was what everyone was reading, he (and others, let's not forget) built a game that would be familiar to Tolkien fans while still carrying the tone and feel of S&S. Thus, he had every reason to (both consciously and unconsciously) downplay the influence of Tolkien on the work. But to try to argue that Tolkien isn't [I]foundational[/I] to D&D is just silly. Of course it's foundational; as foundational as the works of Vance, Howard, Lieber, or Moorcock, at the very least. Not just the borrowed creature here or there, but the playable races as well. D&D's Elves and Dwarves are Tolkien's Elves and Dwarves. Full stop. And Gygax's Halflings were still so close to Hobbits that Wizards has been doing everything in their power to make Halflings as "not-Hobbit" as possible while still being recognizable as D&D Halflings. I'm not so sure I would call Tolkien foundational to Gygax's home game, given what we know of it, but of the game he (and others, let's not forget) wrote down and put in a box and sold to a bunch of people? The argument that he's not foundational just doesn't hold water. [/QUOTE]
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