Parmandur
Book-Friend
Lord of the Rings has sold way, way better than Diablo: Diablo is more mainstream than D&D, but less mainstream than Tolkien by a large amount.Maybe then. Now?
"It's like Diablo, but without a computer."
Lord of the Rings has sold way, way better than Diablo: Diablo is more mainstream than D&D, but less mainstream than Tolkien by a large amount.Maybe then. Now?
"It's like Diablo, but without a computer."
What's Diablo?Maybe then. Now?
"It's like Diablo, but without a computer."
There was a lot of crossover between playing D&D and reading comics, too. Early on, D&D was disproportionately played by teenage boys and young men, there are going to be a /lot/ of correlations that have everything to do with the demographics, and not so much to do with the influences on the game or the reason for it being in the first place.Heh, well, precisely. D&D is very fringe next to Tolkien, and I think it is fair to speculate that the Venn diagram overlap for D&D players and Tolkien readers (at least attempted) is very, very high: if D&D players are not a perfect subset of Tolkien readers, it's probably damn close.
Well, sure, it goes both ways: everyone I know who has ever played D&D falls in the former camp (Tolkien to D&D), though. Literally everyone. I don't know many people who both read books and didn't read the Hobbit as a child, for that matter.What's Diablo?
"It's like WoW, but you play by yourself..."
There was a lot of crossover between playing D&D and reading comics, too. Early on, D&D was disproportionately played by teenage boys and young men, there are going to be a /lot/ of correlations that have everything to do with the demographics, and not so much to do with the influences on the game or the reason for it being in the first place.
And, that correlation could be going both directions. You can read Tolkien (or REH or Vance), hear D&D is derivative of it, and check it out, or you can play D&D, and check out Tolkien (and Lieber, and Moorcock, &c) because you hear D&D is derivative of it.
I think a large proportion of D&Ders checking at Tolkien, vs a minuscule proportion of Tolkien fans checking out D&D argues against the former and for the latter, but I'm confirmation-biased, because the latter was my personal experience.
OK, so we have opposed confirmation biases.Well, sure, it goes both ways: everyone I know who has ever played D&D falls in the former camp (Tolkien to D&D), though.
The hobby has always skewed heavily male, and started out skewing heavily towards young males (now more towards males who were young then, and got old!). That Tolkien had broader appeal doesn't exactly support the idea that the flow was mostly from Tolkien to D&D... though it's hardly contradicted, either, maybe D&D filtered for that demographic somehow? Because wargaming was male-dominated, for instance.Indeed, the Tolkien influence can only work to minimize the teenage boy dominance of the hobby, given the popularity of Tolkien with the full set of demographic "quadrants."
I read a lot as a kid, but more sci-fi than fantasy, starting with ERB, though which is darn close to fantasy, and used to be a very common point of entry for young readers...I don't know many people who both read books and didn't read the Hobbit as a child, for that matter.
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But then, how many players came into D&D from Tolkien?
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Dwarves and elves have a very strong lineage in fantasy that predates Tolkien. They feature strongly in Norse and Anglo-Saxon mythology. Which, as Tolkien's day job was a Professor of Anglo-Saxon literature, he would obviously know very well.
The conflation of elves and fae dates from Elizabethan fantasy literature. For example, Shakespeare, but he's not the only one.
Yup, fair enough. And if Dwarves were fairies living in forests, you might have a point. The problem is though, the D&D versions of elves and dwarves are directly tied to Tolkien, right down to the racial antipathies. Sure, there are fairy stories as old as time. But, how many fairy stories have elves and dwarves that don't like each other?
How many have elven kingdoms living side by side with human ones, where you have trade between them?
I went to the wrong public schools in the 70s. We got Where the Red Fern Grows, Charlotte's Web, and Wind in the Willows.... ;(I'm going to take a wild stab here and say, lots. Considering Tolkien was required reading at many, many public schools in North America at the time,
Then there was Bakshi doing Hobbit & LotR in the late 70s, too.odds are, a fair chunk of the D&D playing public had read at least the Hobbit by the time they saw D&D.
It's not like any of the stuff in D&D is that un-recognizable. You've got knights in armor, wizards, the spells & magic items drew from all the heck over mythology, fantasy literature, movies &c - and the monsters, too. The skeletons & black pudding, of all things, made D&D immediately recognizable to me as a fan of Harryhausen and b-horror movies, who'd never heard of Tolkien at the time.And if you've read the Hobbit, D&D is immediately recognizable.
I know! They were practically a household name after they did the Star Wars poster!It's not really a coincedence that you have Hildebrant Bros doing art for D&D.
Yeah, the svartalfar made it into D&D as Dwarves, as Drow, and as xvarts. Amusing, that.Well, in Norse / Germanic myth (which Tolkien was an expert in) Dwarves are usually portrayed as skilled craftsmen who live underground. Whereas as elves are more portrayed as enchanters. Although admittedly Norse myth is ambiguous as to whether dwarves are a type of elf or something different. They are antagonistic to normal elves though, dwarves being a sort of anti/dark-elf.
Nah, just not all from Tolkien, him, the myths, and whatever else.But, does anyone seriously think that the chain of ideas for dwarves and elves skips Tolkien and draws from those same Norse sources? Really?