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<blockquote data-quote="Arilyn" data-source="post: 7264967" data-attributes="member: 6816042">If time travel books and shows have taught me anything, it's that small changes cause massive ripples!I think Tolkien was a key ingredient. It's hard to imagine a fantasy war game based off Leiber or Moorcock. We have to remember the original DnD wasn't even a role playing game. Originally, Gygax was very opposed to role playing in his game. Yes, role playing was popping up in other games, but nobody was pushing it. Eventually, we would have probably gotten rpgs, but not from Gygax. Tolkien was not just another author in the fantasy resurgence. His works paved the way. The fantasy Chainmail supplement was pretty much a Tolkien supplement. This, in turn, led to DnD. Remove Tolkien, and I'm just not seeing DnD being created. And even if it was, as you said, the environment would not have been ready for it. If I'm remembering the history correctly, that little supplement in Chainmail was panned by a lot of wargame hobbyists. Tolkien was sufficiently popular, however, that it managed to gain enough adherents that Gygax and Arneson felt it was worthwhile to create DnD. So yeah, no Tolkien, no DnD. But we can never know for sure.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Arilyn, post: 7264967, member: 6816042"] If time travel books and shows have taught me anything, it's that small changes cause massive ripples! I think Tolkien was a key ingredient. It's hard to imagine a fantasy war game based off Leiber or Moorcock. We have to remember the original DnD wasn't even a role playing game. Originally, Gygax was very opposed to role playing in his game. Yes, role playing was popping up in other games, but nobody was pushing it. Eventually, we would have probably gotten rpgs, but not from Gygax. Tolkien was not just another author in the fantasy resurgence. His works paved the way. The fantasy Chainmail supplement was pretty much a Tolkien supplement. This, in turn, led to DnD. Remove Tolkien, and I'm just not seeing DnD being created. And even if it was, as you said, the environment would not have been ready for it. If I'm remembering the history correctly, that little supplement in Chainmail was panned by a lot of wargame hobbyists. Tolkien was sufficiently popular, however, that it managed to gain enough adherents that Gygax and Arneson felt it was worthwhile to create DnD. So yeah, no Tolkien, no DnD. But we can never know for sure. [/QUOTE]

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