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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 8075948" data-attributes="member: 58197">Very true. However, TSR eagerly capitalized on the Tolkien craze by adding Middle-Earth elements (dwarves, elves, orcs, etc.), and that opened the door for Tolkien themes to enter D&D and quickly gain tremendous influence.You can see it in the alignment system. The original alignments were simply Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic; very much in keeping with the swords-and-sorcery tradition, especially Michael Moorcock. While Chaos was more likely to be associated with "bad stuff," it wasn't a hard and fast rule. But when Tolkienesque high fantasy came in, that demanded a clash of clearly defined Good and Evil, and so we got the nine-point system we have now.Of the three "big settings" for AD&D, Dragonlance was firmly in the Tolkien camp and defined by Good versus Evil, while Greyhawk was just as firmly in the Howard/Leiber camp and defined by Law versus Chaos. (Forgotten Realms, of course, crammed everything in and to hell with consistency or theme. The fact that FR came out on top in the end is a cautionary tale for purists.)As for L. Frank Baum, there's no reason why he should ever have had any great influence on D&D, and he didn't. He's one writer in one strand of the rich and broad tradition of American fantasy; D&D belongs to a different strand and draws on different writers.</blockquote>