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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Flying Toaster" data-source="post: 9738725" data-attributes="member: 7052563">The 1E race/class restrictions seem completely arbitrary to me.  Elves and half-elves could be mages but not illusionists, while for gnomes it was the reverse, and dwarves, halflings, and half-orcs could not be any kind of spellcasters until UA IIRC.  Those rules seem to be based not on any kind of real  world folklore, but more on what characters could or could not do in Appendix N pulp fiction or even in Tolkien (perish the thought!).Reading up on medieval European history, languages, and literature really gave me an appreciation for the original sources of Western fantasy tropes, as opposed to later pastiches.  There is all kinds of weird, wild stuff in original texts written in Old Irish, Old Welsh, Old English, and Old Norse, and even Arthurian tales from the age of chivalry often have an eerie, otherworldly quality that never seems to appear in much RPG material.  One thing I learned is that the dwarves of Norse/Teutonic legends and lore were often spellcasters and shape-shifters as well as miners, smiths, and jewelers, so it is not at all clear why Gygax thought dwarves should never be magic-users.  Curiously most of the lore does not actually specify that dwarves were short in stature, or even that they were in fact distinct from “light” or “dark” elves!Slightly off-topic, but some of the really hard core OSR people like James Maliszewski seem to think that D&D has become “decadent” because it is too self-referential* and because not enough people read Appendix N literature anymore.  I do not think that mid-20th century pulp is the only legitimate source of inspiration for RPGs.  There is so much other material to draw on - ancient mythology, medieval epics, non-Western lore, and of course modern fantasy written after 1979.*Show me a successful form of art or entertainment that isn’t self-referential: think of all the novels about living with writer’s block, movies about Hollywood, workplace sitcoms about working at a TV network, etc.</blockquote>

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