The_Gneech
Explorer
Actually, red and white dragons feature prominently in the pre-Arthurian adventures of Merlin in the service of King Vortigern -- considerably before the publication of Lord of the Rings. 
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What if... D&D had been designed BEFORE The Lord of the Rings!
- Thread starter w_earle_wheeler
- Start date
I think this question can be read two different ways that produce two different answers:
(a) What if Tolkien had either never written or written in the 80s?
(b) What if D&D had been created in the 1930s?
I think only (a) is worth answering because I don't believe that D&D would have been socially acceptable in a large enough portion of the population to carve out even the ghetto market that it did before the 60s. The way generations since the 60s have come to view imagination, creativity, collective action, etc. is actually pretty different from life before the 60s. I think RPGs owe a debt to the counter-culture of the 60s that can't be fully measured.
Just look at how the Christian Right reacts to D&D to this day to get a sense of what D&D might have looked like to people in the 30s or the 50s.
What would D&D look like without Tolkien? Well, I think the expected party size and racial anc occupational diversity would have been a whole lot smaller. The idea of the 6-member party with sharp divisions of labour is, in my view, Tolkien's biggest impact on the game. Both the Hobbit and LOTR featured large multi-racial parties with niche rolls for wizards, rogues, etc.
I'm no expert on the pulp fantasy genre that preceded Tolkien but it seems to me that the closest thing you've got to the large, highly specialized party is Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. So I'd expect parties of 1-3 rather than 3-7. Of course, we wouldn't have gone on the AD&D PC race bonanza; I'm guessing elves and dwarves would be NPCs only, halflings wouldn't exist and we'd end up with race either being dropped out of the system or being the un-PC kind of race that the Conan game comes up with -- a whole lot closer to the meaning of "race" in popular culture in the pulp fantasy era.
Anyway, those are just a few thoughts... Of course I don't believe fantasy would have become respectably intellectual enough to have attracted authors like Ursula Leguin without Tolkien. It might be that the whole genre would have gone a different way without him.
(a) What if Tolkien had either never written or written in the 80s?
(b) What if D&D had been created in the 1930s?
I think only (a) is worth answering because I don't believe that D&D would have been socially acceptable in a large enough portion of the population to carve out even the ghetto market that it did before the 60s. The way generations since the 60s have come to view imagination, creativity, collective action, etc. is actually pretty different from life before the 60s. I think RPGs owe a debt to the counter-culture of the 60s that can't be fully measured.
Just look at how the Christian Right reacts to D&D to this day to get a sense of what D&D might have looked like to people in the 30s or the 50s.
What would D&D look like without Tolkien? Well, I think the expected party size and racial anc occupational diversity would have been a whole lot smaller. The idea of the 6-member party with sharp divisions of labour is, in my view, Tolkien's biggest impact on the game. Both the Hobbit and LOTR featured large multi-racial parties with niche rolls for wizards, rogues, etc.
I'm no expert on the pulp fantasy genre that preceded Tolkien but it seems to me that the closest thing you've got to the large, highly specialized party is Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. So I'd expect parties of 1-3 rather than 3-7. Of course, we wouldn't have gone on the AD&D PC race bonanza; I'm guessing elves and dwarves would be NPCs only, halflings wouldn't exist and we'd end up with race either being dropped out of the system or being the un-PC kind of race that the Conan game comes up with -- a whole lot closer to the meaning of "race" in popular culture in the pulp fantasy era.
Anyway, those are just a few thoughts... Of course I don't believe fantasy would have become respectably intellectual enough to have attracted authors like Ursula Leguin without Tolkien. It might be that the whole genre would have gone a different way without him.
WayneLigon
Adventurer
fusangite said:
Probably not; until Tolkien's resurgence in the 60's, fantasy authors who were not Ray Bradbury or.. well, I can't think of another one at the moment... had to couch their stories in SF terms to even get published. Darkover, Witch World, Pern, and others had to go that route. The Deryni series can be viewed as magic or psionics very easily. I'm sure other examples exist.
MoogleEmpMog
First Post
Completely contrary to fusangite, I'd say D&D would have had a better chance of becoming, if not officially "socially acceptable," at least a better-selling product in the 1930s.
The lurid pulp magazines were not "socially acceptable" - but they were extremely popular. The potential playing population was better educated and much more oriented toward reading, speculative fiction had not been condemned to the ghetto of "genre" as it would be by profit-minded publishers of later eras, over the top action/adventure fantasy and science fiction were popular subgenres, and parlor games (the most complicated of which were essentially proto-LARPs) were a major pastime.
What's more, most of the elements that raised religious concerns in the '80s (spellcasting by PCs, polytheistic religions, demons and devils) would have been either nonexistent or greatly reduced because of the very differences between pre- and post-Tolkien fantasy.
The lurid pulp magazines were not "socially acceptable" - but they were extremely popular. The potential playing population was better educated and much more oriented toward reading, speculative fiction had not been condemned to the ghetto of "genre" as it would be by profit-minded publishers of later eras, over the top action/adventure fantasy and science fiction were popular subgenres, and parlor games (the most complicated of which were essentially proto-LARPs) were a major pastime.
What's more, most of the elements that raised religious concerns in the '80s (spellcasting by PCs, polytheistic religions, demons and devils) would have been either nonexistent or greatly reduced because of the very differences between pre- and post-Tolkien fantasy.
Tonguez
A suffusion of yellow
MoogleEmpMog said:
I agree.
In addition it should be remembered that in the 1930's the storytelling tradition was still in place (although this was being appropriated by the pulps) and there were the 'parlour games' of the upper classes still being followed as they had been in the 1800's (a mere 40 years before).
I think 'the Fantasy Game' may have become somewhat exclusive, comprise of sharestory-telling, and played mainly by the idle rich and University educated intelligensia (much as it is now
)
Griffith Dragonlake
First Post
Jason and the Argonauts were perhaps the first dream team. Hercules, Orpheus, Theseus, and Atalanta were among them.
Hussar
Legend
Bitter much?
Even the most insanely popular pulp of the time, which most certainly wasn't fantasy or SF, doesn't even register as a blip when it comes to readership of books like Potter.
If "The Fantasy Game" was limited to the idle rich and university eductated, you'd see a player base of about 12 people. Let's not forget that it wasn't until after WWII and the huge number of retraining plans offered to vets that universities saw their huge growth. Prior to WWII, university trained individuals were a pretty rare breed compared to now.
Nyaricus
First Post
just a few comments...
There were Ice Drakes, Fire Drakes and a variety of other dragons in LOTR. arda.com hs alot of info.
Rangers: yep, this one is ripped right out of Aragorns left arse cheek, but the new bow-style is Robin-Hood inspired.
orcs wouldn't be around, but goblins, I do agree, would be fey
Intelligent, oversized, talking birds are common in many mythos. Did not Odin have a couple?
wraiths I have no idea about
were-bears are from russian and north american native mythology.
Color-coded dragons: Ever hear that one about the red and the white dragon in england, one for the english, the other for the welsh, representing one side or another. he English one won. foreshaodwing a military campaign defeat for the Welsh. I cannot remeber what this is from ATM though :\ St. George and Merlin are coming u, for some reason. Mainly though, color-coded dragons in D&D are from the Dragonlance CS.Hussar said:
There were Ice Drakes, Fire Drakes and a variety of other dragons in LOTR. arda.com hs alot of info.
Rangers: yep, this one is ripped right out of Aragorns left arse cheek, but the new bow-style is Robin-Hood inspired.
orcs wouldn't be around, but goblins, I do agree, would be fey
Intelligent, oversized, talking birds are common in many mythos. Did not Odin have a couple?
wraiths I have no idea about
were-bears are from russian and north american native mythology.
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