D&D 5E Why D&D is not (just) Tolkien

[pemerton]

to argue that a passing reference to something having no influence is prima facie proof that something was influential

I didn't use the phrase "prima facie" proof.
[MENTION=6802178]Caliburn101[/MENTION] reports Gygax having said something. I've got not reason to think Caliburn101 is lying. I think there's any number of ways of making sense of what Gygax is said to have said which are consistent with the origins of the cleric in Arneson's game.

I am done with the "reported" occurence which, as far as I know, only exists in a single undocumented occurence with this internet commenter. That said, as I have already stated, I love to learn new things, and the reason I went to research this was to see if maybe there had been additional findings or research.

Caliburn101 could have attributed any number of things to Gygax, but mentioned this one thing. I have no reason to think it is a lie.

You seem to be misunderstanding my post. I don't dispute the evidence that clerics came out of Arneson's game. Your additional remarks on the Men & Magic table is interesting.

But what was Gygax's conception of clerical turning? Regardless of the fact that he personally disliked it, he was committed to advocating a game that included it. I've got no reason to doubt that, on at least that one occasion, he likened it to Bombadil's activities in LotR. (Whether or his own initiative, or perhaps in response to an inquiry along those lines from Caliburn101, or perhaps in some other context that Caliburn101 has not explained to us.)

TLDR: You are arguing about the origins of the cleric. I am arguing that the known origins of the cleric give no very strong reason to think Caliburn101 is lying. Because what Caliburn101 reports Gygax as having said is quite consistent with the fact that Arneson's game was the origin of clerical turning.

 

[lowkey13]

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[Shasarak]

Because otherwise, the standard here is, "If an anonymous person makes an incredible claim (and I mean that in the old-fashioned sense of the word) that cannot be verified and is contrary to everything we know, we have to accept it, because reasons." And that's not how I roll. Sorry.

It sounds pretty normal to not believe something that was contrary to everything you know.

 

[Hussar]

Not sure if this has been brought up, but one other major influence of Tolkien is the idea of the zero to hero arc that D&D embraces. Pulp heroes like Conan or The Grey Mouser were never zeroes. They were always superheroes. They most certainly weren't some guy's gardener.

Yet, by the end of LotR, the hobbits are all much more than what they started as. They are very different from what they started as. And that's something that D&D has always based itself on.

A pulp based game would start with accomplished characters who are pretty much super human. Or at least on the bleeding edge of the best of the best. They're larger than life. But, D&D never started that way. You're first level PC was a peon and it wasn't until you were well into the campaign that you started to look like those pulp heroes.

Now, I'm not saying Tolkien originated the idea. Of course not. But, that sort of Campbellian heroes journey is crystalized in fantasy by Tolkien. People have mentioned Jason and the Argonauts. Trick is, that's the equivalent of the Justice League. These weren't nobodies that got together in the Color Animal Inn. They were all established heroes with stories in their own right. It's largely Tolkien that gives us the idea of the "zero to hero" fantasy story with a group and not just a single protagonist.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=6799753]lowkey13[/MENTION] - I don't understand why you keep attributing a view to me that I've expressly said I don't hold.

 

[Eric V]

[MENTION=6799753]lowkey13[/MENTION] - I don't understand why you keep attributing a view to me that I've expressly said I don't hold.

So he can be right?

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[flametitan]

Not sure if this has been brought up, but one other major influence of Tolkien is the idea of the zero to hero arc that D&D embraces. Pulp heroes like Conan or The Grey Mouser were never zeroes. They were always superheroes. They most certainly weren't some guy's gardener.

Yet, by the end of LotR, the hobbits are all much more than what they started as. They are very different from what they started as. And that's something that D&D has always based itself on.

A pulp based game would start with accomplished characters who are pretty much super human. Or at least on the bleeding edge of the best of the best. They're larger than life. But, D&D never started that way. You're first level PC was a peon and it wasn't until you were well into the campaign that you started to look like those pulp heroes.

Now, I'm not saying Tolkien originated the idea. Of course not. But, that sort of Campbellian heroes journey is crystalized in fantasy by Tolkien. People have mentioned Jason and the Argonauts. Trick is, that's the equivalent of the Justice League. These weren't nobodies that got together in the Color Animal Inn. They were all established heroes with stories in their own right. It's largely Tolkien that gives us the idea of the "zero to hero" fantasy story with a group and not just a single protagonist.

Even in Gygax's games, the players started off with some notoriety. Level 1 for a fighter was veteran, after all. Gygax borrowed the high lethality as inspiration from another short story, The Seven Geases, not from the Lord of The Rings starting with average joes.

 

[lowkey13]

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[flametitan]

While I liked the theory advanced by @Hussar ... sometimes it's just a product of circumstances.

IIRC, Arneson's campaign was a bunch of his friends getting together. The whole idea of leveling (which started with 3, maybe, something like noob, hero, superhero?) was just so that the campaign would keep on going.

This was introduced to Gygax (again, IIRC, and I'm not looking this up) when Arneson ran a game for him.

So it's entirely possible that the idea of a bunch of people who got together and "leveled up" wasn't inspired by any particular source, but was just a product of place and circumstances.

Definitely, and I'd argue that's why the adventuring party exists as well. It's hard to play this with friends if it emulated fiction that focused on one person, rather than a group of people. As for your theory behind levelling, I'd say it's also an extension of the reason why hit points exist. Chainmail's combat was based upon one hit kills, as it was about mass armies. Arneson didn't like that, and if I recall made a system about hit dice rolls, though I don't know the details. I know that later on either Arneson or Gygax simplified it to the hitpoint system we have now. Possibly, levelling up was added to that to help further reduce the odds that someone who has put time and devotion into a given character doesn't lose them to a stray hit.