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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kinak" data-source="post: 6198179" data-attributes="member: 6694112">Thanks for quoting this. I'd sort of glazed over it in context, but it's an interesting assertion.He's arguing, in the rest of the paragraph, that Tokein's worldbuilding basically turns the races he uses into mythical archetypes. I'm not sure how good a job D&D has ever done of capturing those, but let's set that aside.Tolkein, for all that he's given to the genre, isn't really special in that his creatures represent ideas. And that approach isn't limited to fantasy in the slightest.Using fictional creatures as stand-ins for ideas, or symbols of those ideas, isn't something that started with Tolkien. It's a tool as old as oral tradition and continues strong to this day, in urban legends as well as the more traditional kind. Fantasy authors' worldbuilding is an undetectably tiny blip in the pool of symbolic creatures.But, high-minded bickering aside, all you have to do to prove that "races as symbols" isn't restricted to fantasy is watch some Star Trek.The difference between Middle Earth's racial symbolism and Star Trek's racial symbolism is just that one's racers were built on prior works and can't be copyrighted. The fact that you can call something an elf and every geek knows what you're talking about isn't primarily a testament to Tolkien's storytelling, it's a testament to the fact that you can call something an elf.Cheers!Kinak</blockquote>