What if... D&D had been designed BEFORE The Lord of the Rings!

[Klaus]

Color coded dragons, rangers (Heck the title Strider was right in the class - am I the only one who thought ranger=Aragorn?), orcs and goblins as humanoids not fae, intelligent giant eagles, wraiths (sure, in legend, but, in THAT form? Pure Tolkein), were-bears, and a host of other elements are ripped either in part or in whole from Tolkein.

No offense to the Col, but, I'm calling shenanigans on the idea that DnD wasn't heavily influenced from the outset by Tolkein.

I don't deny the influence of LotR on parts of D&D, but where are the color-coded dragons in LotR?

 

[Hussar]

Isn't Smaug red? Hardly a coincidence that red dragons are the biggest and baddest and all dragons in DnD are basically winged dinosaurs rather than winged serpents. IIRC there is mention of a black dragon as well. But, I could be misremembering.

Keep in mind, the thread doesn't postulate "D&D in an alternate history without Tolkien's Lord of the Rings," it postulates "D&D releasing before Tolkien's Lord of the Rings" - meaning the fantasy boom LotR eventually caused might well feed back into fantasy roleplaying, which had taken a back seat to SF and supers for a time.

Fantasy boom LOTR caused? I missed this. Pre-1980, fantasy was still a tiny sub-genre of SF. Bigger than previously perhaps, but, it wasn't until the 80's that you see fantasy as a separate genre from SF. I've mentioned this before, but the only reason we know LOTR is because it got put on academic reading lists in many English speaking countries. If the Professor had been some guy on the street rather than an Oxford don, we wouldn't even have heard of LOTR.

However, the rest I agree with. DnD wouldn't be the number one game. It would likely still be an SF game - with people arguing about whether hard SF or slipstream made for better games.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

A thought just occured to me as people have suggested that sf might have been the most popular genre of choice for a mid-30s RPG. The 'biggest thing' in sci-fi, Doc Smith's Lensmen series, hadn't come out yet! (The first installment of Galactic Patrol was in the September 1937 issue of Astounding.) So there might well be (have been) quite a bit of 'discussion' between the Plantary Romance crowd (burrough's fans, et al) and the Galactic Roamers (Smith's fans, et al).

 

[Thunderfoot]

So the real question is, what would have happened if Dr Who had been released on radio before TV?.... Hmmmmmm Or if Battlestar Gelactica had been a book before a show...need I even bring up Star Trek or Star Wars?

 

[carolina]

I think D&D would look a lot more like the core of what is now the Wilderlands/Judges Guild product. They clearly have a pulp-fiction feel, and they tried to take D&D down that road. In the absence of Tolkien, that seems likely.

 

[Drowbane]

Color coded dragons....

but, I'm calling shenanigans on the idea that DnD wasn't heavily influenced from the outset by Tolkein.

Tolkien's Dragons came in different colors, yes. But they all breathed fire. (could be wrong, haven't read the Sil-whater)

 

[WayneLigon]

Fantasy boom LOTR caused? I missed this. Pre-1980, fantasy was still a tiny sub-genre of SF. Bigger than previously perhaps, but, it wasn't until the 80's that you see fantasy as a separate genre from SF.

Lord of the Rings became a tremendous hit on college campuses in the mid- to late-Sixties. It was a true boom fad; one day it seemed like everyone was reading it. LotR proved that fantasy could become a viable genre in and of itself; that's why so many things that followed were exactly like it. The early 80's saw the beginning of marketing fantasy seperately from SF but it was already filling up bookshelves in the 70's.

 

[Agback]

You know, even though there was a plethora of pulp out there, LOTR is by far the best selling fantasy niovels of all time (though in recent time, they are being challenged).

No, nowhere close. LOTR has sold more copies (combining all languages) than any other book except the Bible. I'm not sure of exact sales figures, but they are over 100 million, in forty languages. And it still sells, steadily, enough copies to keep it on the bestseller list every year. A few books might outsell it for a year, even two. But LOTR has been a bestseller for nearly forty years (it was a sleeper for its first decade). Any rival would have a lot of catching up to do.

You are perhaps thinking of the Harry Potter books. 300 million sales total among six separate books (in 63 languages). If the series keeps up its popularity it may overtake LOTR eventually. But for the moment no particular Harry Potter book has even half the sales of LOTR. And children's fads don't last forever.

 

[Agback]

Fantasy boom LOTR caused? I missed this.

Very likely you did. It was about 1966-1975.

 

[WayneLigon]

No, nowhere close. LOTR has sold more copies (combining all languages) than any other book except the Bible.

Er, no. Sorry, not even in the running.

The top three fiction bestsellers of all time are:

1. The Valley of the Dolls
2. Gone With the Wind
3. To Kill a Mockingbird

For the best selling of all books put together, Valley of the Dolls is #10. The rest are

1 The Holy Bible
2 Mao Tse-Tung Quotations from Chairman Mao
3 Noah Webster The American Spelling Book
4 Mark C. Young Guiness Book of World Records
5 World Almanac Editors World Almanac
6 William Holmes McGuffey The McGuffey Readers
7 Benjamin Spock The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care
8 Elbert Hubbard A Message to Garcia
9 Charles Monroe Sheldon In His Steps, What Would Jesus Do?
10 Jacqueline Susann Valley of the Dolls