Worlds of Design: In the Shadow of Tolkien

The answer is likely predicated on if you came to Tolkien before you came to FRPGs.

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

"Nobody believes me when I say that my long book is an attempt to create a world in which a form of language agreeable to my personal aesthetic might seem real. But it is true." - J. R. R. Tolkien

I read the Lord of the Rings (LOTR) when I was in my late teens, about seven years before original Dungeons & Dragons was released. (The Hobbit came later for me.) This is long before any LOTR movies, of course. Most of you have read LOTR (or watched the Peter Jackson movies) long after the release of D&D, I suspect, but still we can ask which came first for you, LOTR or D&D?

Which Came First (for You)?​

I’d suppose that Tolkien is likely to have a greater influence on your gaming if you came to Tolkien before you came to fantasy role-playing games (FRPGs).

This also might depend on when you started playing FRPGs. When I first played D&D (1975) the assumption was that the GM would mine fantasy novels and stories, and myths and legends, for ideas for his/her campaign. I remember hunting down Stith-Thompson’s Motif Index of Folklore Literature (in Duke Library), surely not something many GMs do today (even though today it’s a free PDF rather than huge paper volumes). There were few adventure modules and even fewer ready-made settings to buy. With this approach, Tolkien would be one author amongst many, maybe foremost but still just one.

Gary Gygax listed in Appendix N of AD&D the novels/novelists that had influenced him, including many long preceding LOTR. I’ve read most of the books listed in the Appendix, but I suspect many younger people have read few of them. Working from the list, Jeffro Johnson in his book Appendix N: the Literary History of Dungeons & Dragons, by reviewing these books, has ably demonstrated that there were a lot stronger influences on D&D than Tolkien.

Tolkien’s Expanding Influence​

Even before the Ralph Bakshi LOTR movie (1978) I gauged the likelihood that someone would like D&D according to whether or not they’d read The Lord of the Rings. (Many give up because the book starts slowly.) If they had not read it, prospects were much less rosy. Now, with many movies (Peter Jackson’s, Bakshi’s, and the Rankin Bass follow-up to Bakshi, and others more obscure), and even a LOTR TV series (Rings of Power), I don’t rely on my old view. On the other hand, so many more people are aware of LOTR (and of RPGs) than in the pre-movie past.

More recently, adventure modules and even settings of all kinds can be found online, including many that are free. GMs don’t have to make up adventures or settings, they can use someone else’s creations. Further, many of the old fantasy authors are virtually unknown to recent generations. But with the movies, Tolkien is even more well-known than when there were only books. Do the movies make Tolkien a stronger influence? Or do GMs today just accept whatever adventures/settings they acquire and not change much? For most these days, likely the latter.

Beyond Tolkien​

If you want more discussion of Tolkien’s influence, see my previous articles (Escaping Tolkien and Reassessing Tolkien’s Influence). As I wrote this, I asked myself, what’s the biggest influence likely to be, after Tolkien?

Conan the Barbarian (whether the savage Robert E. Howard version, or the more tempered ones by other authors that followed)? Wheel of Time? Game of Thrones? Dresden Files? David Eddings’ Mallorean and Belgariad? Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn? Harry Potter? Superhero movies? Something from Appendix N days such as Poul Anderson’s Three Hearts and Three Lions?

Your Turn: Do you think the timing on your exposure to Tolkien’s works influenced your FRPG play?

 

[aco175]

I started playing D&D when I was 8 or so. I did not try to read the LotR books until I was in high school and then only got through the Hobbit. I recall the cartoon movie at some point but likely about the same time I started playing. Not sure on how much influence it had. The movies I did like, but I was 30 by then.

 

[TwoSix]

I would assume the amount of people who have LotR as a formative influence on their fantasy roleplay decreases with each generation; I would also assume there's probably a bump for mid-Millennials who saw the Peter Jackson trilogy in their teen or tween years.

As a late Gen Xer (born in '78), my first exposure was to D&D via video games around the age of 11; I didn't read LotR until I was 13 or so, and by that point had read quite a bit of other fantasy, with a large portion being D&D (Dragonlance) fantasy. LotR is a pretty weak influence on my fantasy roleplay as a result, and most of the "Tolkienisms" I've absorbed have been through D&D.

I would imagine my own influences are not atypical for someone in my age bracket.

 

[Emerikol]

I think Tolkien was a massive influence but not the only one. Wargaming was a major influence too. The Dying Earth. Lots. I'm sure Appendix N covers many and they likely contributed to different degrees. Still the traditional races seem to come right out of Tolkien.

 

[Clint_L]

I knew and loved Tolkien first; I was a pretty precocious reader (tracks; I now teach literature). And there was a marked impact on my initial approach to D&D. I also bought Middle Earth Roleplay as soon as I found it, which led me to Rolemaster.

However, I now find the influence of Tolkien to (sometimes) be an annoyance in D&D, as it often leads to hackneyed stories and game assumptions. Tolkien is not really a very good fit with D&D mechanics, and never was. Also, the privileged status of Tolkien-derived concepts (rangers, half-elves, half-orcs, halflings, orcs, Dark Lords, etc) is irritating to me.

And I particularly dislike the cliched plot of an existential battle between good and evil. Hate it.

 

[Piperken]

As I wrote this, I asked myself, what’s the biggest influence likely to be, after Tolkien?

Through the past few decades, I've come across more quotes from Sir Terry Prachett's body of work, particularly the Discworld series, than the others.

 

[Arilyn]

I read Tolkien well before I started rpgs but I also read a ton of other fantasy. My games were more influenced by other authors, even though I love LotR.

 

[pablomaz]

I started playing RPGs when I was 13, back in ’94. I had never even heard of Tolkien — which wasn’t that unusual in Brazil in the 90s, before the movies came out. I think after I read the books, around ’96 or ’97, I started craving something more heroic than before. And that’s when rangers became my favorite class...

 

[Arnie_Wan_Kenobi]

It's funny to me, because I came to D&D largely through Dragonlance originally, and I have realized that I tend to view other settings and storylines through that lens, even Lord of the Rings (which I read later, reread and enjoyed more, and certainly put more academic analysis into). It's the baseline through which I frame fantasy/Sword and Sorcery. The Orders of High Sorcery are my basal magic order; Soth pops to mind before the Witchking; Silvanesti/Qualenesti/Kagonesti are how I group my elves; the dwarves...ok, the dwarves are interchangeable. [That's a joke, folks.]

The real validity of a fantasy setting comes by how right or dirty they do by their minotaurs.

On the other hand, it's also pretty easy to read Dragonlance as Mormon LotR and LotR as English Catholic Dragonlance.

 

[Koloth]

Was playing RPGs before reading Tolkien but not by much. Was introduced to both in college. I knew of the Hobbit in high school as some class I didn't take required reading it. For a couple of weeks each semester, you would see several students carrying around paperback versions. Other then playing a Hobbit or two in D&D games, don't remember Tolkien having a huge influence. Several players were also big readers of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover books and more then one game featured some variation of high power psionics and Darkover lore. At least one Traveller game involved visiting Darkover. Fair to say that Bradley had a greater influence then Tolkien on our RPG play. A couple of wishes resulted in characters having aspects of Bionics as the Six Million Dollar Man show was still a thing. Anne McCaffrey's Pern books resulted in more then one dragonriding experiement in game. She had a better developed Bard(called Harper in her world) then D&D did for a couple of versions.