Worlds of Design: In the Shadow of Tolkien

How much does Tolkien’s body of work influence you fantasy role-playing games?

When were you first interested in Tolkien's works compared to when you played FRPGs

  • I was interested in Tolkien's works well before I got into FRPGs

    Votes: 85 46.7%
  • My interest in Tolkien's works and FRPGs happened about the same time

    Votes: 64 35.2%
  • I became interested Tolkien's works well after I got into FRPGs

    Votes: 28 15.4%
  • I've never been a fan or influenced by Tolkien's works

    Votes: 5 2.7%

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

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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?
 

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Lewis Pulsipher

Lewis Pulsipher

Dragon, White Dwarf, Fiend Folio
I'm currently running a Moria campaign using The One Ring system. I think I can safely say Tolkien has had quite an influence on that :) .

But outside that, Tolkien has created tropes that are hard to escape. His elves are radically different from the way elves were generally depicted prior to that -- and mostly the FRP community runs with it -- For example, if you have elves in your game, are they closer to Tolkien elves or Santa's elves? The latter are much more traditional, so unless you are playing them, you're under Tolkien's influence. Dwarves have also been hijacked by him.

Indeed, even the concept of non-human races as protagonists might be considered part of Tolkien's influence. Pre-Tolkien works feature men and women with other races taking the roles of extras. Some exceptions, of course, but most major fantasy works were featured human protagonists. Even CS Lewis' works are call about humans in the lead roles. Even when he doesn't isekai them in, the leads are still taken from the human population of Narnia.

I agree with other posters who say that alignment is not really a Tolkien thing, but caring about good vs. evil in a fantasy setting really is. Swords & Sorcery fantasy doesn't really care about morality -- Conan is not morally ambiguous; rather he lives in a world where protagonists do not talk about morality. No one Conan out for being morally right or wrong.

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Overall, I think it's easy to overlook his influence on our hobby. It's hard to realize that the core fundamentals of how you play -- whether you're a catfolk vampire in space, or a sentient medieval dog, or a basic human fighter -- are at least partially the way they are because of Tolkien's influence. If it's fantasy, it's very likely influenced by him. And if not, it's probably influenced by anime, which is the other big influencing force in FRP in my experience.
 

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I don't think that book has enough influence, TBH. Also not major characters. I think it's much simpler: If I want a race that looks like a viking, then a race that is large, hairy, uses axes and has horns coming out of its head, minotaurs fit the bill nicely.

Lol! I never thought of that--that Dragonlance lems is enough that minotaurs are almost always Roman-Legion-coded initially for me. Viming minotaurs sound awesome.
 

I think the other 'Big Influence' in FRP or fantasy in general has to be Warcraft. You can blame that game for giving us recurrent playable Orc discourse.
 

My came around the same time. I read The Hobbit in eighth grade, and read my first blue box edition in fifth grade. I "played" D&D in 8th grade. I think The Hobbit, Elfquest, Conan, comics, Ultima, and classic literature like Robinson Crusoe, The Three Musketeers, The Jungle Book, and heck, even Charlotte's Web had more of a rounding effect on influencing my view on D&D. Tolkien helped lead me to MERP, but D&D was always a place where Tarzan could exist with Merlin.
 

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