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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mannahnin" data-source="post: 9035839" data-attributes="member: 7026594">Some of the first magic pools ever seen in adventures randomly increased or decreased ability scores.  The famous room of pools in B1, In Search of the Unknown, for example.  Which wasn't 50 years ago, it was 45, but I suspect they're rounding.  I think the intended "joke" is "Hey, all these magic pools which have been in old school adventures and dungeons going back to the beginning of the game?  Yeah, Goblins made them.  Like this."No half-orc in OD&D (they first get mentioned in the Monster Manual in 1977); they showed up as a PC option in the AD&D PH in '78. But yes.  While I'm sure Gary found Leiber, Howard, Burroughs, and so forth more influential and to his taste than Tolkien, all the original PC races come from Tolkien, and the biggest chunks of the bestiary are from Tolkien or from Greek mythology.Chainmail didn't get the Fantasy Supplement added to it until 1971, after Gygax had been working on those rules for a couple of years. The FS obviously includes virtually every creature from LotR and The Hobbit specifically so you can wargame the battles from the books, or inspired thereby.OD&D takes a huge chunk of its monsters, and all the PC races (though Elves are certainly altered a bit, I'm guessing at least partly influenced by Poul Anderson), from Tolkien, Gary's later protestations notwithstanding.  Half elves showed up in the first supplement, Greyhawk, for the record. Half Orcs don't get mentioned until the '77 Monster Manual, but 1E is even more blatant in how the half orcs, dwarves and especially halflings are DEFINITELY based directly on Tolkien's work.  Elves are a little more of a mixed bag; you can see concepts which are directly from Tolkien but there's other stuff seeping in there.</blockquote>

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