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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5802045" data-attributes="member: 4937">I don't at all disagree that Tolkien's concept of the Ranger, both Aragorn and the descriptions of the Rangers of the North and Ithilien, is the inspiration of the Ranger class.  I think that that is a matter of historical record, albiet one that TSR tried to bury in order to avoid getting sued.But, for instance, the 1e class had restrictions on the weapon proficiencies that the Ranger could begin with and the order in which they could be taken that is clearly based on passages in the text describing how the Rangers are equipped.  But there is a lot about the implementation where the decisions made by the person who wrote up the class are mysterious to me, and which, to me reflect the typically poor understanding of the text at the time.  The 1e Ranger is based on the text of LotR in the same way that the text of LotR is an allegory for WWII.   It's clear that someone saw it that way at one time, but not at all clear to me from this priviledged vantage why they thought that.   To what extent the problem is explained by the crude understanding of the text, and to what extent it is explained by the biases built into the average rules smith at the time due to the relative primitive state of RPG technology at the time the class was wrote up, is something I can't answer.</blockquote>