D&D General What is the appeal of Tolkien fantasy races?

[Voadam]

and out of all the characters in LotR the only memorable human was Aragorn (remember Gandalf and Saruman were Maiar who were only posing as human),

Sean Bean not only dies in the movie, but also apparently in memory. Poor Boromir.

 

[Bohandas]

To be fair I've only watched the movies and read Of The Rings of Power and The Third Age, but from those I didn't get a clear idea of what the hell Boromir's deal was. He seems to mainly exist to demonstrate the ring's influence over people's minds, and he dies pretty early on. He's like the person who gets killed by the villain at the beginning of a horror movie.

 

[Don Durito]

How is Eowyn not memorable? She killed the Witched King. I'd also say the Faramir is memorable too - but definitely Eowyn should count!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

everyone has different tastes. Elves and dwarves can seem like humans with Tolkien magic element, and can be played as such. But tget are, in fact different cultures and can(and should in my opinion) be played as such.

In fact, they don't exist. They have whatever cultures the writer chooses to give them, just like a writer who chooses to write about cat people.

Someone that lives 1000 years has a very different perspective then someone that lives 60 or 80 years.

When you are creating a fictional race, you can work through the consequences of biological differences, such as a longer or shorter lifespan, but there is no partcular reason turtle people can't be the ones that live for thousands of years, and elves live for only a few months.

Conversely, playing something like turtle person, car peopke, dragon people or demon people, in my opinion, seems bizarre and screams lack of creativity, to me( just as playing elves or dwarves screams just humans with token magic to you)

Creativity, or lack of it, has no connection to what race a character is.

Everyone's perception a and experiences differ

True. I grew up with Doctor Who and Star Trek before I encountered Tolkien.

 

[Oofta]

In the majority of serious fiction and video games (not cartoons) there are simply more elves, dwarves and other humanoids described than anthropomorphic characters. Beyond that, they tend to have specific tropes and paradigms.

Which is not to say there is none, there is simply more with the "traditional" races and it tends to be a bit more consistent. So people want to play what they're familiar with. It appeals to them because there's some basis identifying with that race, and it supports a fantasy world view that they know.

As an example wen it comes to tortles they are either teenage mutant ninjas or a person that talks ... really ... slow ... ly. Doesn't really tell you much about what they are. So as a player you have to fill in most of the blanks, something not everyone wants to do. Even if you grew up with Star Wars, Star Trek, Dr Who there weren't a lot of cat people running around.

 

[TheSword]

Setting aside dragon-people, who go back much further, the earliest appearance of "lizard-folk" seems to be in the writings of Helena Blavatsky towards the end of the 19th century.

Of course, come the 1960s-70s they had become a common pulp SF trope.
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I’m not saying they don’t exist as tropes. They just don’t exist as tropes for protagonists. There are oodles of enemy dragons, dragonkin, lizards and lizardkin, snakes and snake kin. Theyre just usually framed as evil/mandating/demonworshipping etc.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Even if you grew up with Star Wars, Star Trek, Dr Who there weren't a lot of cat people running around.

M'Ress, caitian Enterprise crewmember, Star Trek the animated series, which C1974, was just the right time for my formative years. Star Wars was a little late to be formative for me, and Cat People didn't appear in Doctor Who until 1989. It had plenty of lizard folk going right back to the 1960s though.

I’m not saying they don’t exist as tropes. They just don’t exist as tropes for protagonists. There are oodles of enemy dragons, dragonkin, lizards and lizardkin, snakes and snake kin. Theyre just usually framed as evil/mandating/demonworshipping etc.

Usually true, although Doctor Who subverted that trope as early as 1972, when the usually antagonistic reptilian Ice Warriors turned out to be honourable allies in The Curse of Peladon.

 

[Oofta]

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M'Ress, caitian Enterprise crewmember, Star Trek the animated series, which C1974, was just the right time for my formative years. Star Wars was a little late to be formative for me, and Cat People didn't appear in Doctor Who until 1989. It had plenty of lizard folk going right back to the 1960s though.

Usually true, although Doctor Who subverted that trope as early as 1972, when the usually antagonistic reptilian Ice Warriors turned out to be honourable allies in The Curse of Peladon.

Cat people are probably the most common, I grew up reading Larry Niven and his stories of Kzin for example. I didn't say they never appear, but if you have to go back to the early 70s to find an example from a cartoon, I stand by my words. Anthropomorphic people are less common.

 

[Voadam]

Cat people are probably the most common, I grew up reading Larry Niven and his stories of Kzin for example. I didn't say they never appear, but if you have to go back to the early 70s to find an example from a cartoon, I stand by my words. Anthropomorphic people are less common.

I am not sure if you are saying you have to go back 50 years to find them or you can only find them going back 50 years?

Anthropomorphs have lots of cartoons of actual cats who walk and talk and are sentient. Felix the cat was animated in 1919 before there was even sound movies.

Flash Gordon had lion men starting in 1936, though that is print cartoon and not animation.

For more modern things you have Thundercats Roar from 2020 (also Thundercats from 2011 and the 1985 original series).

In general I think I think it is arguable there are more anthropomorphs than elves and dwarves in cartoons. I would think there are more instances of ninja turtles than dwarves for instance.

 

[Oofta]

I am not sure if you are saying you have to go back 50 years to find them or you can only find them going back 50 years?

Anthropomorphs have lots of cartoons of actual cats who walk and talk and are sentient. Felix the cat was animated in 1919 before there was even sound movies.

Flash Gordon had lion men starting in 1936, though that is print cartoon and not animation.
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For more modern things you have Thundercats Roar from 2020 (also Thundercats from 2011 and the 1985 original series).

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In general I think I think it is arguable there are more anthropomorphs than elves and dwarves in cartoons. I would think there are more instances of ninja turtles than dwarves for instance.

Which is why I specifically stated "outside of cartoons". In addition, the anthropomorphic characters are just people drawn as animals, there's little or no commonality other than what they look like.

This is not to say that playing a cat person is "bad", it's why the "traditional" fantasy races appeal to a lot of people.