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Why D&D is not (just) Tolkien
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<blockquote data-quote="prosfilaes" data-source="post: 7274890" data-attributes="member: 40166"><p>Yes, Tolkien wrote novels, and short stories exist. Yet I'm sure MERP and other Tolkien RPGs have had short adventure modules, because that's inevitable. Dragonlance, the Pathfinder APs, and huge heavy works like the Zeitgeist AP appear later because they're more intimidating and more expensive, both to make and in shelf price. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Changes that naturally happen as part of adaptation aren't great evidence of outside influence. Of course D&D was going to make the PCs front and center and give them the abilities the players saw in their mind's eye when reading LotR.</p><p></p><p>To quote from the third OD&D booklet, "Underworld and Wilderness Adventures":</p><p></p><p></p><p>One can get a hint of Moria in that, but not much Tolkien. I'm sure if I had read better in early 20th century fantasy, I might peg "an underground lake, a series of caverns filled with giant fungi" to something, but ultimately that does not read of literary fantasy at all. It's gamey (game-like, I guess?), and it doesn't feel coherent in any literary way. Instead of calling on Howard and Leiber, it feels a much stronger claim that Gygax was creating something very different from literary fantasy, without a necessity of being nice, neat and coherent. It doesn't seem to have many echos in the future D&D, though.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="prosfilaes, post: 7274890, member: 40166"] Yes, Tolkien wrote novels, and short stories exist. Yet I'm sure MERP and other Tolkien RPGs have had short adventure modules, because that's inevitable. Dragonlance, the Pathfinder APs, and huge heavy works like the Zeitgeist AP appear later because they're more intimidating and more expensive, both to make and in shelf price. Changes that naturally happen as part of adaptation aren't great evidence of outside influence. Of course D&D was going to make the PCs front and center and give them the abilities the players saw in their mind's eye when reading LotR. To quote from the third OD&D booklet, "Underworld and Wilderness Adventures": One can get a hint of Moria in that, but not much Tolkien. I'm sure if I had read better in early 20th century fantasy, I might peg "an underground lake, a series of caverns filled with giant fungi" to something, but ultimately that does not read of literary fantasy at all. It's gamey (game-like, I guess?), and it doesn't feel coherent in any literary way. Instead of calling on Howard and Leiber, it feels a much stronger claim that Gygax was creating something very different from literary fantasy, without a necessity of being nice, neat and coherent. It doesn't seem to have many echos in the future D&D, though. [/QUOTE]
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