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Why D&D is not (just) Tolkien
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7265113" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>None of that addresses my objection. As Arilyn pointed out earlier, just because 'Frozen' is vastly different than the source material, doesn't mean 'Frozen' isn't derived from 'The Snow Queen'. </p><p></p><p>As a self-described Tolkien loremaster, I can state with great conviction that D&D elves are nothing like Tolkien elves and I can give all sorts of textual evidence that that is true, but that doesn't mean that the D&D elves aren't directly lifted from Tolkien. Yes, adaptation - intentional and unintentional - occurred within this lifting, but lifted they were indeed because there are elements of the D&D elves that are found no where else but in Tolkien.</p><p></p><p>That's the standard. So in the case of something like a 'magic ring', we could only strongly assert D&D magic rings came from Tolkien if we found some traits in the text that were unique to Tolkien - such as for example, if rings of invisibility had drawbacks, but halflings were specifically immune to them, then this would be evidence of a direct lift. I can't think of any such examples right at the moment though, and lacking such an example there are just too many possible sources of the idea of a magic ring to latch on to any one. On the other hand, I've always had a suspicion that the source of the 'rings of elemental' command was ultimately the Elvish rings of power. Lacking textual evidence though, that's just a suspicion - the limited relationship could be a coincidence.</p><p></p><p>By the same standard, I'd love to have your textual evidence that Zelazny is "for the most part" the source of the thief class given the prevalence of sneaky characters in literature - Cugel the Clever, for just one example. Definitive, or nearly definitive, textual evidence would be an example of a thief using a magic wand by way of trickery, speaking a secret thieves cant, and other oddities of the class that aren't common to the idea of thief being found in a single source.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7265113, member: 4937"] None of that addresses my objection. As Arilyn pointed out earlier, just because 'Frozen' is vastly different than the source material, doesn't mean 'Frozen' isn't derived from 'The Snow Queen'. As a self-described Tolkien loremaster, I can state with great conviction that D&D elves are nothing like Tolkien elves and I can give all sorts of textual evidence that that is true, but that doesn't mean that the D&D elves aren't directly lifted from Tolkien. Yes, adaptation - intentional and unintentional - occurred within this lifting, but lifted they were indeed because there are elements of the D&D elves that are found no where else but in Tolkien. That's the standard. So in the case of something like a 'magic ring', we could only strongly assert D&D magic rings came from Tolkien if we found some traits in the text that were unique to Tolkien - such as for example, if rings of invisibility had drawbacks, but halflings were specifically immune to them, then this would be evidence of a direct lift. I can't think of any such examples right at the moment though, and lacking such an example there are just too many possible sources of the idea of a magic ring to latch on to any one. On the other hand, I've always had a suspicion that the source of the 'rings of elemental' command was ultimately the Elvish rings of power. Lacking textual evidence though, that's just a suspicion - the limited relationship could be a coincidence. By the same standard, I'd love to have your textual evidence that Zelazny is "for the most part" the source of the thief class given the prevalence of sneaky characters in literature - Cugel the Clever, for just one example. Definitive, or nearly definitive, textual evidence would be an example of a thief using a magic wand by way of trickery, speaking a secret thieves cant, and other oddities of the class that aren't common to the idea of thief being found in a single source. [/QUOTE]
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