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

[Guest 85555]

I will now provide a short ranking of rock bands that are better than Led Zeppelin:

Pink Floyd, Beatles, AC/DC, Queen, Sabbath, Stones, Metallica, Velvet Underground, Who, Cream, Kinks, Hendrix, Clash, Police ....

You know what? The Monkees rocked harder than they did. Yeah, that's right.

and that's before getting into modern bands!

Led Zeppelin were great, they just got overplayed and it has become fashionable to knock them (there was a time, even decades after they came out, you couldn't escape hearing them on the radio). I also feel like Cracked did a lot to shade some of the current criticism of Zeppelin (particularly around Plant's lyrics). Did Led Zeppelin have flaws? Sure, every great band has flaws (especially in genres like rock and heavy metal). Page was a notoriously dirty, some might even say sloppy guitar player. But as a guitarist myself, I actually kind of like that about him (both in how it sounds, and in terms of it feeling like an honest performance in the recording booth). If you listen to a lot of those older guitar players, you tend to get more honest performances like that (I was listening to Johnny Cash's debut album last night and some of the guitar playing on that album is rough in places, but that adds to the feel of a real performance). Even Hendrix was a bit of a dirty player too, and he is one of the greatest guitarists of all time.

That said, I like Queen and Sabbath more, but that is just personal taste. But Led Zeppelin were an important dividing line for heavy music. Like Hendrix is a dividing line for guitar.

But the Monkeys? Come on man.....

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

It's okay. My daughter will undoubtedly start punishing me with it when she turns 10. Just because it gives me flashbacks doesn't mean that I expurgated Dark Side from my record collection.

Maybe start up with the really early stuff, even go for the Syd Barrett?

....hmm ... not sure that will help with the flashbacks, though!

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

But the Monkeys? Come on man.....

 

[billd91]

Sorry to hear about Pink Floyd. I caught them in concert (post Waters, not quite that old) and they were still amazing. Or .. um ... I was in the mood for them to be amazing. Six of one, etc.

Saw them twice in 1987 - once up close at the, now gone, Milwaukee County Stadium. They were definitely amazing. My one disappointment was that they added Echoes to their set list later in the tour and not for the concerts I went to.

 

[Oofta]

...

But the Monkeys? Come on man.....

Hey hey, they're the monkees. Maybe I'm just a daydream believer about to board the the last train to Clarkston but they may just be the one because I'm a believer.

 

[embee]

Hey hey, they're the monkees. Maybe I'm just a daydream believer about to board the the last train to Clarkston but they may just be the one because I'm a believer.

The Monkees hold a place for me because of the 2006 World Cup.

There are few things more incredible than being drunk on draught Boddington's in an English expat bar at 8:00 in the morning (instead of being in the office) while a bar full of equally drunk football hooligans sings "Daydream Believer" at the top of their lungs.

It really was the best version of the song.

 

[jayoungr]

The appeal

• The fan likes LOTR
• The fan doesn't want to roleplay that hard

The implication that roleplaying a human, dwarf, or elf is somehow "easymode" compared to, say, a lizardfolk is flat-out wrong. It's just a different focus. Good, detailed roleplay takes just as much work no matter what species your character is--and the flip side is that you can slide through on half a character concept no matter what species your character is too. (I have seen a lot of characters of far-out-of-the-mainstream species with basically no personality, where the species choice is as far as the roleplay goes.)

 

[Jack Daniel]

What is the appeal of Tolkien fantasy races?

I dunno. What's the appeal of androids and grayliens in sci-fi?

 

[TheSword]

I think that the core races of d&d with perhaps the exception of Dragonborn, tieflings and half Orcs are well established cultures in fiction, film and legend. They are familiar in such a way as you instantly conjure an idea of what they are like and probably an idea of a few traits they may have. This basic cultural awareness shouldn’t be underestimated.

Maybe they’re boring, maybe they are sterotyped. But it someone asks what there dwarf is like then there are some basic ideas that they can draw on for inspiration that can carry them through.

I’ll be honest, without those cultural signifiers a cat person or humanoid turtle is far more likely to be a human in a catsuit because they don’t come with the cultural, mythological, established, ubiquitousness that the dwarves, elves, gnomes etc do. The player is on their own from an ideas perspective. Many players in that situation will revert to type.

One of the reasons Dark Sun elves and dwarves were so interesting was because the tropes could be turned on their head and twisted. Without the tropes you’re twisting thin air.

 

[Wicht]

I dunno. What's the appeal of androids and grayliens in sci-fi?

For Androids, I can raise you a Roy Batty...

For the gray aliens, I got nothing... never did understand their appeal to others.