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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Blustar" data-source="post: 2838240" data-attributes="member: 34486">I think you guys misunderstand Tolkien's influence on the Fantasy genre and by association the D&D game. ( not that he set out to do any of this) ( he was just writing to entertain his kids!!!) Tolkien was the gateway drug to all other fantasy, Why? WTF knows!!You can read in many prefaces to fantasy volumes, author's mentioning Tolkien or praising his work or even thanking him. Why? Because they know that without Tolkien they would still be working 2-3 extra menial jobs to support their writing obsessions. They were great authors too but Tolkien struck a nerve with popular culture and became a rediculously popular author during the 60's and early 70's and it's still going strong today.     We're talking they were writing Frodo Lives on subway trains. You can tell, even reading in a cursory manner, that Tolkien loved the land, the earth, and all its undulations and misty hillsides.  In the hyper counter-culture mood of the day it struck a chord with the youngins in college. I know many hippies from the day who are convinced that the Professor smoked pot and "dropped out" and do not believe that he didn't experiment with any drugs. Thats how much the text moved them! Obviously Tolkien was probably embarassed that these wierdos were his "champions" and was probably confused at what they had in common. ( As an aside Tolkien in a sense did "drop out" with his rejection of modern society and his disgust with technology and it's corruption of man. So they really did have something in common)      Somehow Tolkien is one of those authors with universal appeal and he blew the doors off of the conceited critics who always passed off Fantasy as juvenile. Hence Lieber, Howard, Lovecraft had been around for years but were regulated to the "pulps" and only had cult followings. The lowest of the low in publishing. Why? The atmosphere of rebellion and the young intellectuals throwing caution to the wind and trying the "new" thing started something that remains vibrant to this day. A new era was born, the genie was out of the bottle by a fortuitous set of circumstances and Tolkien (like most great people) was in the right place at the right time with an exceptional product. (totally by accident!)       You can tell that GAry pasted the LOTR stuff to capitalize on the boom and you better thank Gary ( who doesn't even particularly like Tolkien, I think) for doing this wise marketing decision because it hauled in all those Tolkien lovers who were starved for more "adventure".No Tolkien and D&D probably remains a niche product and maybe never truly reaches the market penetration it did.         I know D&D was a great game without the Tolkien influence but the Tolkien bait nuggets powered the game into financial success. Exactly how many inferior fantasy authors rode Tolkiens coattails to have successful writing careers. It was a smart move because I know if it wasn't for that I never ever would have played an RPG game. I was enticed and tricked by the hobbits, elves, Balrog, Strider (ranger), etc. So what if later I found out it was influenced more by other authors, on the surface it appears to be something analogous with Tolkien. ( and as a bonus I finally got to read all those other great authors)        Anyways, without the Tolkien influence, I think the biggest difference would be D&D's popularity. But the game would remain generally the same without the pasted on Tolkien bits thrown in.Blueps. I didn't see that Gary is acutally on this thread... <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/nervous.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":heh:" title="Nervous Laugh    :heh:" data-shortname=":heh:" />  I didn't mean to put words in your mouth but this is just my opinion on how it went down.pps. And I agree that The Broken Sword is an awesome and gritty novel. I always pick it up when I find it at the used book stores and give it to one of my friends who hasn't read it yet. ( I've given away 5 so far!)</blockquote>

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