Tonguez
A suffusion of yellow
So while many people see the influence of Tolkien on DnD, Gary Gygax himself said that while the success of Tolkien did encourage him to develop the game, the overall influence was minimal. Instead he sites Conan the Conqueror as seminal influence on his “concepts of adventure”.
Conan was first recreated for Greyhawk (D&D Supplement IV) as a Fighter Level 15/ Thief Level 9 and this concept added to things like magic resistance, animal instincts and rage eventually developed into the Barbarian class. He even went on to inspire a couple of early modules and his own TSR RPG
But it was Sword and Scorcery inspired concepts of adventure that really carried DnD to what it is - over-the-top characters engaging in hard combat in a world of flashy magic. REH also had Conan come across various guarded wizard towers, lost cities with monster haunted dungeons, warring factions, which became the site based dungeons of DnD.
Its certain that Hobbits and Ents and similar were lifted from Tolkien, but Gygax calls these influences superficial as being based on the same mythologies rather than being wholesale adaptions. Gygax further claims that the seeming parallels and inspirations of Tolkien in DnD was contrived as an attempt to attract Tolkiens readers to the game even though Gygax opined that it was well nigh impossible to recreate any Tolkien-based fantasy within the boundaries of the game system.
The original forward to the game states “These rules are strictly fantasy. Those wargamers who lack imagination, those who don’t care for Burroughs’ Martian adventures where John Carter is groping through black pits, who feel no thrill upon reading Howard’s Conan saga, who do not enjoy the de Camp & Pratt fantasies or Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser pitting their swords against evil sorceries will not be likely to find DUNGEONS and DRAGONS to their taste.”
No mention of Tolkien there, as Gygax considered the Rings trilogy tedious and “considered in the light of fantasy action adventure, Tolkien is not dynamic.” and as such REH was a much better foundation to an interactive ‘fantasy action adventure Game’, than Tolkiens LotR.
Anyway what do you think, just how important is Howards Conan and other such pulp writers to DnD
(PS while Tolkien may be cited in discussion, lets not make this a debate about the merits of Tolkien v REH)
Conan was first recreated for Greyhawk (D&D Supplement IV) as a Fighter Level 15/ Thief Level 9 and this concept added to things like magic resistance, animal instincts and rage eventually developed into the Barbarian class. He even went on to inspire a couple of early modules and his own TSR RPG
But it was Sword and Scorcery inspired concepts of adventure that really carried DnD to what it is - over-the-top characters engaging in hard combat in a world of flashy magic. REH also had Conan come across various guarded wizard towers, lost cities with monster haunted dungeons, warring factions, which became the site based dungeons of DnD.
Its certain that Hobbits and Ents and similar were lifted from Tolkien, but Gygax calls these influences superficial as being based on the same mythologies rather than being wholesale adaptions. Gygax further claims that the seeming parallels and inspirations of Tolkien in DnD was contrived as an attempt to attract Tolkiens readers to the game even though Gygax opined that it was well nigh impossible to recreate any Tolkien-based fantasy within the boundaries of the game system.
The original forward to the game states “These rules are strictly fantasy. Those wargamers who lack imagination, those who don’t care for Burroughs’ Martian adventures where John Carter is groping through black pits, who feel no thrill upon reading Howard’s Conan saga, who do not enjoy the de Camp & Pratt fantasies or Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser pitting their swords against evil sorceries will not be likely to find DUNGEONS and DRAGONS to their taste.”
No mention of Tolkien there, as Gygax considered the Rings trilogy tedious and “considered in the light of fantasy action adventure, Tolkien is not dynamic.” and as such REH was a much better foundation to an interactive ‘fantasy action adventure Game’, than Tolkiens LotR.
Anyway what do you think, just how important is Howards Conan and other such pulp writers to DnD
(PS while Tolkien may be cited in discussion, lets not make this a debate about the merits of Tolkien v REH)
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