tolkien as an intro...

[Ranger REG]

several folks in my game group seemed shocked when i revealed that i had never read any tolkien.

they wanted to know how i had gotten into d+d without it..... i found my way to loving it thru conan.

what literary inspiration helped to draw you into the game? which books? were they all tolkien? anything else?

My first introduction to fantasy literature is Greek mythology and legendary stories, followed by other mythology from around the world, including Hawaii's.

My first introduction to modern fantasy literature is the Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks.

I read LOTR and The Hobbit by Tolkien later.

 

[DDK]

I've never been able to finish LotR. What can I say? It bores me senseless. The movie was pretty good though.

A friend is who got me into roleplaying. I started with the Mechwarrior game and we both read the DL novels and had wanted to get AD&D books but we lived in a small tourist town where the nearest gaming store was 200km away. When I bought them and wanted to be DM I told him he couldn't look at the DM's guide and it pissed him off so much that we never ended up playing. Sigh.

 

[mseds99]

D&D brought me introduced fantasty literature to me, not the other way around. Hanging with my cousin and the older kids was reason enough to join the game.

BTW, I would definately agree with the people who recommend against Lord of the Rings series as 'introduction' to the game. It can be fairly slow moving and bored the hell out of my girlfriend who I have unsuccessfully recruited to gaming. The movie helped though, so i still have a fighting chance with her...

 

[mmadsen]

several folks in my game group seemed shocked when i revealed that i had never read any tolkien.

I'm always shocked when a gamer hasn't read Tolkien. In fact, I generally expect them to have read and enjoyed Tolkien, even if they don't consider it the Fantasy Bible.

they wanted to know how i had gotten into d+d without it..... i found my way to loving it thru conan.

Conan has just as much "cred". Still, I'm surprised you never sought out The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings. Why not?

what literary inspiration helped to draw you into the game? which books? were they all tolkien? anything else?

I'd read quite a bit of mythology, King Arthur, and Robin Hood, as I recall, before my older brother introduced me to D&D. Then I made the effort to read The Hobbit and eventually The Lord of the Rings. I'd seen the animated versions -- of The Hobbit and The Return of the King primarily -- numerous times though before I ever got through the entire trilogy.

In my first-edition heyday, I picked up Moorcock's Elric books -- after seeing the Melnibonean Mythos in Deity's and Demigods naturally. (I didn't want anything to do with the Cthulhu Mythos!)

Evidently looking in the appendix in the back of the DMG was too complicated for me at that young age. I didn't know to seek out any of Gygax's suggestions. Sigh.

It was years later, and I'd already left D&D when gaming fiction hit the scene. A friend convinced me to get the original Dragonlance trilogy. Frankly, I really enjoyed it. (I can't say the same for The Crystal Shard, which I picked up a few years later. Bleh.)

Around the same time I finally picked up some Conan stories, and I couldn't figure out why I really, really liked some of them, and really, really hated others. Looking back, it's obvious: the excellent stories are by Robert E. Howard; the awful stories aren't. I've since made the effort to hunt down the original REH works (and his non-Conan stories as well). Good stuff.

 

[Balrog]

I was introduced to D&D initially through the library in about 4th or 5th grade. I would go to read books on King Arthur and other mythology. Once, while sitting at a table minding my own business with my nose in a book, i heard a group of kids laughing and carrying on at a table nearby. Turns out they were gaming.

Well, it piqued my curiousity, but i didnt actually start playing until 6th grade, after my family had moved to Corpus Christi, Texas. In the meantime, I had read CS Lewis' Narnia books, and had started the Hobbit on a roadtrip with my parents. While in the car during the trek from Des Moines to Corpus Christi, I unimaginatively declared, "I am bored." Well, as luck would have it, my dad had a copy of the Hobbit in the car! He handed it to me, and the rest is history. I finished it on the trip, and not too long after that read the Lord of the Rings. It was also in the first few months after moving to CC in 1981 that I met my first friends that gamed, and I have gamed ever since.

I too loved those Choose Your Own Adventure Books; i still have them i think, as well as that original copy of the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings(for sentimental value). In the early days, i read some Elric, Earthsea, Dune, Piers Anthony, basically anything I could get my hands on. The titles of Dungeon of Dread, Pillars of Pentagarn, Return to Brookmere, and the Mountain of Mirrors still bring back memories of hours of reading fun. It was hours and hours of reading fantasy that made me the hopeless dreamer i still am....

The Flame of Udun

 

[alsih2o]

Re: Re: tolkien as an intro...

Conan has just as much "cred". Still, I'm surprised you never sought out The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings. Why not?

not enuf action, sgt rock (the comic) abd conan (the "novels" and the comic) had slaughter and intrigue left and right from very early in the works. the pace was what keptme in them, and the fantastic variety, haven't even taken a stab at jrrt since i was about 15, being as it has been 18 yrs now, i might wanna give it another go tho.

 

[Frosty]

Certainly Tolkien, but like Frosty I also was heavily influenced by Ivanhoe. I read Lieber and Moorcock because EGG had listed them in the back of the DMG under recommended reading...

The great thing about Ivanhoe is that the hero is so useless. He lives this fascinating life and all he can do is lie about and complain. (Spoiler: He is wounded in the first scene and stays in sickbed for the entire movie and in the end he wins the showdown only because the villain sacrifices himself.)

Now, if I was Ivanhoe I would...

 

[Wicht]

For those of you who have complained about LotR and its slowness, try reading it aloud to someone... The man's words work very well in a spoken form. In fact, his dialogue, which at times looks clunky on the page, IMO is some of the best dialogue I have ever read aloud. If you can't do that, do yourself the favor of getting the books on tape and listening to it.

I hooked my wife on fantasy literature (and reading in general) through reading to her Tolkien. Now on her own she just finished the first Dragonlance series. She would read more but the kids occupy a lot of attention at the moment.

 

[kengar]

I've never been able to finish LotR. What can I say? It bores me senseless. The movie was pretty good though.

Not trying to be offensive and -obviously- you don't have to answer this, but how old are you?

Like I said in my first post on this thread, I couldn't get through LOTR when I was in Jr High or High School. I just wasn't into them and they seemed to drag. It wasn't until I was out of college that I picked the books up and got all the way through them. I'm not saying younger folks can't read Tolkien or appreciate it. Heck, most of my friends had read it several times before I got around to it. I'm just saying different folks may come to it at different times in their lives. Some of them never, I guess. No fault in that.

And the movie rocked even if you've never read it. This according to several non Tolkien/Fantasy reading, non gaming friends I dragged to the theatre last winter (including my in-laws!). I was just great moviemaking regardless.

 

[cybernetic]

I was introduced directly...I had a cousin who played 1e and when I was old enough to read I ganked some of his books and tried to read them...weeks later he started teaching me to play and I joined him and his friends...

and as a side note...I'm 21 and still haven't read any of tolkien's books....but i know everything that happened in them (even the unfinished tales and other books outside the hobbit and trilogy)......