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LibraryOgre
2015-05-30, 10:59 PM
So, let's assume for a moment that you want to remove most of the Tolkien influences from D&D, but have it remain recognizably D&D.

What goes? What stays? What gets reemphasized?

Karl Aegis
2015-05-30, 11:30 PM
Elves, orcs, and halflings go.

Gnomes, Humans, Gnolls, Kobold and Goblinoids stay.

Dwarves are kind of iffy.

Reemphasize the importance of goblinoids. In the absence of elves, goblinoids take the role of primary enemy race.

Anxe
2015-05-30, 11:36 PM
In a lot of the fantasy I've read that is more traditional than Tolkein, Ogres and Trolls are the most prominent "evil" races. Goblins show up as well, but not nearly as much in the stuff I read which is totally a representative sample. :smallwink:

YossarianLives
2015-05-31, 12:10 AM
I would go further than just removing Tolkien-Esque races. Why not change the flavour of the game all together, make it less about a replica of medieval Europe but a new, interesting, exciting, culture. One without deep roots in Europe.

NecroRebel
2015-05-31, 12:18 AM
What might be a good idea is to make sure absolutely everyone is a Vancian caster, even the warriors. Magic is mostly the domain of the Elves and enemy in Tolkien, so having it be truly ubiquitous amongst all races would serve well. Furthermore, Vancian casting is a fairly uniquely D&D thing, so emphasizing it would help keep the feel of it.

Zaydos
2015-05-31, 12:24 AM
Get rid of the adventuring party :smalltongue:

In all seriousness Elves, Halflings, Orcs, Goblins, and probably Dwarves all go. Other than that the only thing that really came from Tolkien as opposed to 30s to 50s fantasy literature in general (and largely Jack Vance, Conan, and Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser with Michael Moorcock standing out as the biggest post-Tolkien influence on D&D) is the concept of an adventuring party.

Now, D&D was heavily influenced by Norse myth and English folk lore, drawing heavily from Poul Anderson (translated sagas), and a genre which ultimately built upon the adventure novel started with King Solomon's Mines written by H. Rider Haggard (translated sagas), as well as William Morris's works which are sometimes said to be the origin of High Fantasy (translated sagas) and such esteemed but mostly forgotten writers as Fletcher Pratt and le Sprague deCamp (whose first book together took place in the middle of Ragnarok), and these are the same things that influenced Tolkien (Smaug is Fafnir mixed with the Fire Drake of Beowulf, Beorn is Bodvar Bjarki son of Beorn who was also incidentally Beowulf, the One Ring is very much the cursed ring of the Volsunga saga from which we get Fafnir, which also had the sword of the king which when reforged is granted a new name) so much that he quoted William Morris (whose most major fantasy novel has a white witch with a sled which has a dwarven rider and whose intro scene is very closely mimicked by Tolkien's good friend C. S. Lewis) on comments about how the Volsunga saga was the Iliad (or was it Odyssey) of Northern Europe.

So if you mean make it feel totally different than Tolkien. Look first to the older editions. The Tolkien influence has grown with each edition up till 3.X which isn't surprising as the 80s were the time of Tolkien clones and even in the 90s-00s we had such things as Wheel of Time (oh how I love-hate it, such was the power of its dirty juvenile pleasure), Eragon, and Sword of Truth all very much coming out of the Tolkien mold. Look also to the various settings. Eberron, Dark Sun, and Planescape are all very much D&D but all are very, very unlike Tolkien.

Ultimately, though, it comes down to what do you mean by Tolkien-influence. Influence actually from Tolkien is easy; Sword and Sorcery (as opposed to Epic Fantasy) has always been the main contributor and ultimately did not take much from Tolkien till recently. If you instead mean anything vaguely resembling Tolkien it becomes harder and means emphasizing the elements not drawn from European folklore and legend. Planescape is good for this, resembling more Michael Moorcock's fantastical worlds and sudden introversion towards naval gazing. Dark Sun high lights another set of early influences of D&D, notably Sword and Planet adventure stories the uncle of Howard's Sword and Sorcery, but avoids feeling Tolkien-esque by using pretty much nothing Tolkien did. Looking beyond, Exalted is actually a good example. Not the mechanics, but the world design. It is very much let's take everything from fantasy except stuff that feels "Tolkien"-like.

Werephilosopher
2015-05-31, 12:34 AM
Dwarves and goblins don't have to go. Just change them back to what they were before Tolkien, god-hating magical recluses and silly yet intelligent little tricksters, respectively.

JCAll
2015-05-31, 01:05 AM
De-Tolkenizing modern fantasy is roughly equivalent to un-burning ashes.

Tvtyrant
2015-05-31, 01:08 AM
Give everyone psionic casting and or incarnate abilities. Make these part of the world culture, remove the concept of mundanes and vancian magic, change every races name.

Seto
2015-05-31, 01:22 AM
Give everyone psionic casting and or incarnate abilities. Make these part of the world culture, remove the concept of mundanes and vancian magic, change every races name.

Yeah... Pretty much every one of the alternate "magic" systems (ToM, ToB, Psionics, Incarnum) gives a non-Tolkieny vibe.

Takewo
2015-05-31, 01:27 AM
Ironically, I've always thought that D&D was pretty far away from Tolkien's fantasy. Well, except for the elves, maybe.

goto124
2015-05-31, 02:09 AM
Why are we removing the 'Tolkien' influences anyway?

Marlowe
2015-05-31, 02:21 AM
Elves can certainly stay.

As an alien civilization living alongside normal society that messes with everyone else in a fashion ranging from callous mischief-making to predatory malignance. Do not forget Poul Andersen.

Mastikator
2015-05-31, 02:27 AM
Just go to the underdark and you're golden.

Honest Tiefling
2015-05-31, 03:24 AM
Crib from 4th edition. I am not a LoTR fan, but I don't remember a whole lot of devilspawn, dragonpeople or intelligent crystals wandering around in the books. Maybe in the Simarillion?

Yora
2015-05-31, 03:52 AM
Dwarves and goblins don't have to go. Just change them back to what they were before Tolkien, god-hating magical recluses and silly yet intelligent little tricksters, respectively.

The elves too.


De-Tolkenizing modern fantasy is roughly equivalent to un-burning ashes.

Or go back to the wood. There was plenty of fantasy before The Hobbit.

Shadowsend
2015-05-31, 05:24 AM
Re-fluff the elves to be far more in tune with the fae, especially Summer fae. (The way the gnomes are in certain editions.) Re-fluff the halflings to be shamanistic/druidic. Re-fluff the dwarves to be in tune with the Winter fae. The orcs take more from pre-Roman expansionist Celts than Tolkien. Though I'm not exactly sure the Celts were "evil". Remember Tolkien orcs (at least the movie variety) are far more lawful-evil than the orcs presented in D&D. Hobgoblins are more like Tolkien orcs, IMO, so they would need to be changed more than orcs. Pathfinder already re-fluffed goblins in a decent manner, so you could use that, or come up with another variation. Remove the hoarding instinct from dragons (that is VERY Tolkien), and maybe change them into noble/joyful/vengeful/vicious hunters. The undead are mostly borrowed from other sources, as are the aberrations and many of the monstrous creatures. The trolls should be Winter fae instead of giants, and perhaps ogres get re-fluffed as Summer fae.

some guy
2015-05-31, 06:45 AM
I would go further than just removing Tolkien-Esque races. Why not change the flavour of the game all together, make it less about a replica of medieval Europe but a new, interesting, exciting, culture. One without deep roots in Europe.

Yeah, this helps a lot. The settings of Qelong and Yoon-Suin are both very much d&d and both very much not Tolkien.

Talyn
2015-05-31, 07:21 AM
Remove the hoarding instinct from dragons (that is VERY Tolkien), and maybe change them into noble/joyful/vengeful/vicious hunters.

Dragons hoarding/guarding gold and being vast, fiery creatures consumed by greed are WAY older than Tolkien. Almost all European legends and folklore describe dragons this way. The only thing Tolkien did when he took them was to make them (or, at least, Smaug, who is the only dragon anyone ever talks to) incredibly charismatic.

You could do Middle Eastern dragons instead (where they are basically giant, water-dwelling devils) or Far Eastern dragons (where they are more like gods), but hoarding dragons is far older than Tolkien.

Maglubiyet
2015-05-31, 07:34 AM
No railroading, DM-mouthpiece wizards.

If you wanted to RE-Tolkienize D&D you'd have to add long digressions into racial and linguistic histories and make everyone sing rhymes and poems about them.

BWR
2015-05-31, 07:48 AM
(or, at least, Smaug, who is the only dragon anyone ever talks to)


Glaurung begs to differ.

Necroticplague
2015-05-31, 08:12 AM
Actually integrate the magic more deeply into the setting. I've found that Tolkein was always very hands off with the magic, keeping it mostly keeping it in 'plot device' territory, with the majority of the world being oddly mundane. So actually making magic incredibbly common, and have the setting be effected by it, goes a good way.

Marlowe
2015-05-31, 08:23 AM
I'm a little confused as to why we should have to "de-Tolkienise" D&D when D&D is not that "Tolkienised" in the first place. Tolkien's world was a fairly wild, empty place with a roughly early-medieval technology level and quite limited commerce between different races and areas of civilisation, whereas most D&D settings seem to have a higher standard of technology and are a lot more densely settled with much more mixing of populations.

Also; how does removing Vancian casting, derived from the Dying Earth stories of Jack Vance and originally used for D&D precisely because it didn't match any existing folklore of which the writers were aware, make this less like Tolkien?

Mando Knight
2015-05-31, 08:56 AM
Yeah... Pretty much every one of the alternate "magic" systems (ToM, ToB, Psionics, Incarnum) gives a non-Tolkieny vibe.


Also; how does removing Vancian casting, derived from the Dying Earth stories of Jack Vance and originally used for D&D precisely because it didn't match any existing folklore of which the writers were aware, make this less like Tolkien?

Exactly. The most common complaint with trying to make Gandalf a D&D Wizard (or Favored Soul, or however the person chooses to interpret him) is that his magic doesn't fit D&D's Vancian-style casting basically at all. No pre-Vance magic really does.

Yora
2015-05-31, 10:31 AM
I think the main Tolkienisms in D&D are halflings, orcs, and always-good rangers (which was loosened in 3rd edition), as well as the portrayal of elves (high elves, gray elves, wood elves) and dwarves (every dwarf is Gimli). Balors are obviously Balrogs, but they have almost nothing in common other than their looks. Oh, and Treants are Ents, but those have a very marginal role in D&D. Waiths and Wights are almost certainly inspired, but have been detolkienized and made fully generic very early on. [And giant eagles!]

Less obviously, but perhaps more important, is the idea of elves going to the West and dwarven kingdoms declining. Though it's really obvious only in Forgotten Realms, not sure how it is with Greyhawk and Dragonlance. In Mystara they are merely marginal, but I don't think they were ever dominant.
Weapons that specifically target certain creatures are something I've also only seen in Tolkien and D&D. Moria might be the original megadungeon, but the concept doesn't really carry any Tolkienian conotations.

LibraryOgre
2015-05-31, 10:34 AM
I'm a little confused as to why we should have to "de-Tolkienise" D&D when D&D is not that "Tolkienised" in the first place.


Why are we removing the 'Tolkien' influences anyway?

I think it's more Tolkienized in the earlier editions, especially where halflings are very much hobbits as opposed to the kenderken then become in 3.x. As for why? Because it's an interesting question to play around with, precisely because Tolkien has so much influence on the modern fantasy genre, that teasing out those influences and seeing what we come up with as a result is kinda cool.

Xerlith
2015-05-31, 11:19 AM
I think Eberron does quite a good job on this, actually. It still remains distinctly D&D while dong a face-heel turn on most "classical" fantasy premises.

I'm a fanboy, I know.

Yora
2015-05-31, 11:23 AM
We could start with Conan. All Conan stories had been written before The Hobbit was released, so that's one strand of well known fantasy that is fully Tolkien-free. Can't say I've seen any Tolkien influences in Leiber or Moorcock either. Jirel of Joiry by C.L. Moore was about the same time as The Hobbit (mostly earlier) and feels very D&D at times.

Keltest
2015-05-31, 12:00 PM
Change the plural of Dwarf to Dwarfs instead of Dwarves.

More seriously, my understanding is that a lot of what Tolkien did was more uniting various legends into a particular format. Elves were not always a better version of humanity, but they were almost always fairly alien and unknowable for humans, deeply connected with magic.

It would take a lot of work to separate out what he actually made up compared to what he gave a new coat of paint, I think. Tolkien's goblins for example were fairly clever in their own right, when they set their minds to it. The movies didn't really explore that too much.

Eisenheim
2015-05-31, 12:05 PM
One of the things about elves in both Tolkien and D&D is that they seem to take inspiration from 2 quite disparate sources. One being the fairies of celtic myth and another being the alfar of scandinavian myth, who also are partly the inspiration for the dwarves.

Jay R
2015-05-31, 12:46 PM
So if you mean make it feel totally different than Tolkien. Look first to the older editions. The Tolkien influence has grown with each edition up till 3.X...

Starting in 1979 or so. The Tokien influence was taken out or reduced for legal reasons in the seventies. In original D&D, the only races mentioned as potential player-characters were Fighting Men, Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits, and Balrogs. [No, I'm not making this up.]

Obviously, the Tolkien influence was reduced soon after.

But you are correct that the Tolkien influence started growing again after it was reduced, because that's what most of us wanted the game to be.

Yora
2015-05-31, 02:11 PM
Anyone mentioned half-elves yet? Those are also a Tolkien invention (though his work rather differently than those in D&D).

Zaydos
2015-05-31, 02:14 PM
Anyone mentioned half-elves yet? Those are also a Tolkien invention (though his work rather differently than those in D&D).

Norse sagas beg to differ, specifically Skulda (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skuld_%28princess%29). It's the same legend which gave us Werebears and why they're always Lawful Good.

Of course Norse half-elves worked... actually more like D&D than Tolkien's being human with elf-y traits. Still would lump 'em in with Elves as something derived from Tolkien primarily.

Ninjadeadbeard
2015-05-31, 02:24 PM
I'm a little confused as to why we should have to "de-Tolkienise" D&D when D&D is not that "Tolkienised" in the first place. Tolkien's world was a fairly wild, empty place with a roughly early-medieval technology level and quite limited commerce between different races and areas of civilisation, whereas most D&D settings seem to have a higher standard of technology and are a lot more densely settled with much more mixing of populations.

You are correct in every way. Every conceivable way, my friend.

Reboot
2015-05-31, 09:39 PM
What might be a good idea is to make sure absolutely everyone is a Vancian caster, even the warriors. Magic is mostly the domain of the Elves and enemy in Tolkien, so having it be truly ubiquitous amongst all races would serve well. Furthermore, Vancian casting is a fairly uniquely D&D thing, so emphasizing it would help keep the feel of it.

Wouldn't that semi-require removing generalist wizards (etc) entirely, so that everyone can do a bit of anything, but only wizards (etc) who specialise in a field can get to the higher level stuff [more like the way stuff works in real life, really - only a few get really far into multiple fields of science and so forth, since making a career out of it tends to require specialisation.]

Kitten Champion
2015-05-31, 11:02 PM
It's harder to compare D&D's oeuvre with Tolkien's than contrast.

Halflings as a general concept, sure. Though D&D Halflings are characterized more as roguish scoundrels than Hobbits are typified as, I suppose that's mostly taken from Tolkien's protagonists and accentuated as the quick-talking and tricky burglar role became their shtick. Dwarves as ave-wielding warriors with beards and a stubborn and greedy streak? Yeah. The archetype overshadows that race considerably. Elves? There are a ridiculous number of varieties of Elves even within some individual settings that it's far less of an issue to have one that's rather not-Tolkien. Though the archetypal long-lived wood-dwelling pointy-eared archer/mage still has supremacy. Half-Elves? Tanis Half-Elven seems to be the bog standard approach to characterization now, far more roleplaying options lead in that direction.

I would say the most comparable setting is Dragonlance. Sure, there are a myriad of differences between Krynn and Middle Earth but the intention of the setting's inception was to have the characters be the central figures in an epic quest of apocalyptic significance like the novels rather than just being one adventurer among many in a world of countless individual stories.

Jay R
2015-06-01, 09:54 AM
Halflings as a general concept, sure. Though D&D Halflings are characterized more as roguish scoundrels than Hobbits are typified as, I suppose that's mostly taken from Tolkien's protagonists and accentuated as the quick-talking and tricky burglar role became their shtick.

That might be convincing to anybody who hasn't been playing the game since the seventies.

D&D started with hobbits, balrogs, and ents. When the legal situation became difficult, they changed them to halflings, balors, and treants.

D&D halflings may have changed over time, but they were explicitly established as hobbits with the serial numbers filed off.

Yora
2015-06-01, 11:36 AM
No. They were introduced as hobbits with the serial numbers still on.

Zaydos
2015-06-01, 11:58 AM
And in 2e still lived in shires according to The Complete Book of Gnomes and Halflings.

It does seem like cutting out chapter 2 of the Player's Handbook would do much to cut out Tolkien's influence from D&D.

Kitten Champion
2015-06-01, 01:06 PM
That might be convincing to anybody who hasn't been playing the game since the seventies.

D&D started with hobbits, balrogs, and ents. When the legal situation became difficult, they changed them to halflings, balors, and treants.

D&D halflings may have changed over time, but they were explicitly established as hobbits with the serial numbers filed off.

What these "seventies" you speak of?

Anyways, yeah, ditto with Aragorn and the Ranger class, which is pretty much inexorably linked to its inspiration. Though, you can just scrub that one out and put in Archer or something.


And in 2e still lived in shires according to The Complete Book of Gnomes and Halflings.

It does seem like cutting out chapter 2 of the Player's Handbook would do much to cut out Tolkien's influence from D&D.

Wait, isn't the Shire just a name for a region? I mean, it's not like a synonym for a village or settlement as far as I can recall. Wouldn't that be like saying Vampires lived in Transylvanias?

...and yeah, I agree, short of Humans, Tieflings, Gnomes, and Dragonborn the descriptions from the 5e Handbook I have on my screen reads like it's taken straight from Tolkien. Though the Half-Elves are still pretty much Tanis in concept.

BWR
2015-06-01, 01:21 PM
Wait, isn't the Shire just a name for a region? I mean, it's not like a synonym for a village or settlement as far as I can recall. Wouldn't that be like saying Vampires lived in Transylvanias?


'shire' is basically another word for 'county' (ok, so not really, but close enough). It's not a proper name. Nottinghamshire, Buckinghamshire, Worcestershire, etc. So 'shires' is plenty fine, just unusual these days.

DavidSh
2015-06-01, 01:43 PM
Starting in 1979 or so. The Tokien influence was taken out or reduced for legal reasons in the seventies. In original D&D, the only races mentioned as potential player-characters were Fighting Men, Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits, and Balrogs. [No, I'm not making this up.]


Balrogs? The original Men & Magic pamphlet is up on the web. It lists men, elves, dwarves, and hobbits. I see no mention of Balrogs, but I see the following

There is no reason that players cannot be allowed to play as
virtually anything, provided they begin relatively weak and work up to the top, i.e., a
player wishing to be a Dragon would have to begin as let us say, a "young" one and
progress upwards in the usual manner, steps being predetermined by the campaign
referee.

Zaydos
2015-06-01, 02:06 PM
Wait, isn't the Shire just a name for a region? I mean, it's not like a synonym for a village or settlement as far as I can recall. Wouldn't that be like saying Vampires lived in Transylvanias?

...and yeah, I agree, short of Humans, TIeflings, Gnomes, and Dragonborn the descriptions from the 5e Handbook I have on my screen reads like it's taken straight from Tolkien. Though the Half-Elves are still pretty much Tanis in concept.

Yes. But halflings live in sheltered shires. That's what the book chose to call them and my thought was "but the Shire was a proper name... ooh they have rules for halfling cheeses". I was a young child, I liked the nice touch of cheese and thought The Hobbit was one of the best books ever written (forget if this was before or after I thought that Lord of the Rings was the best of literature :smallsigh: I was a 13 my taste was undeveloped).

And yeah 4e and 5e have gotten a bit better about non-Tolkien influences in the races. Wait... aren't all the 5e races which aren't Tolkien based listed as optional/rare? :smallfrown: Gnomes are from 1e! I vastly prefer including gnomes in worlds to halflings.

mAc Chaos
2015-06-01, 05:21 PM
I feel like if you took out the Tolkien there would be nothing left.

LibraryOgre
2015-06-01, 07:15 PM
I feel like if you took out the Tolkien there would be nothing left.

I think that's selling D&D short. If nothing else, you've still got humans, dragonborn, tieflings, and warforged.

Keltest
2015-06-01, 08:51 PM
I think that's selling D&D short. If nothing else, you've still got humans, dragonborn, tieflings, and warforged.

I don't consider warforged to be especially integral or iconic for D&D. Eberron, maybe, but not D&D in general.

Talyn
2015-06-01, 09:14 PM
No railroading, DM-mouthpiece wizards.

If you wanted to RE-Tolkienize D&D you'd have to add long digressions into racial and linguistic histories and make everyone sing rhymes and poems about them.

Around my table, we actually do this, and it's awesome. We have three separate players (and the DM) who make up legends, old songs, and ancient place names as we go, cribbing from a design document that actually takes into account linguistic drift over time. Sure, we do it as amateurs and not experts like the late great Professor, but we do it!


Glaurung begs to differ.

My Silmarillion lore is pretty rough, so I could be wrong, but I have no recollection of Glaurung ever talking to anyone other than taking orders from Morgoth.

mAc Chaos
2015-06-01, 09:16 PM
I think that's selling D&D short. If nothing else, you've still got humans, dragonborn, tieflings, and warforged.

Those aren't really races you see often though. Orcs, Elves, goblins, all of those are part of the daily D&D experience.

Jay R
2015-06-01, 09:23 PM
Balrogs? The original Men & Magic pamphlet is up on the web. It lists men, elves, dwarves, and hobbits. I see no mention of Balrogs, but I see the following

There is no reason that players cannot be allowed to play as
virtually anything, provided they begin relatively weak and work up to the top, i.e., a
player wishing to be a Dragon would have to begin as let us say, a "young" one and
progress upwards in the usual manner, steps being predetermined by the campaign
referee.

That's not the original. That paragraph was originally about balrogs, until they had to change it. My 1975 book says, "balrogs".

LibraryOgre
2015-06-01, 09:24 PM
Those aren't really races you see often though. Orcs, Elves, goblins, all of those are part of the daily D&D experience.

Yes, but you can play D&D without them. In a way, that's some of what Dark Sun did... while it had races called "elves", "dwarves", and "halflings", they were so different from what those races usually represented that the game had to define them entirely. Elves grew two feet and became wandering tribes of thieves. Dwarves lost all their hair and became obsessive-compulsive. Halflings stopped being retiring, pastoral, shirefolk and became xenophobic primitive cannibals.

Honest Tiefling
2015-06-01, 09:36 PM
Those aren't really races you see often though. Orcs, Elves, goblins, all of those are part of the daily D&D experience.

...Uh. What? I mean, obviously I annoy my DM with my constant tieflings, but elves and dwarves tend to be a bit rare around these parts. Dragonborn (or other dragon-like races) are probably one of the most popular races in games I've seen. I'd also be willing to bet that if Elves lost their mechanical advantage, they'd be even LESS popular then the Grippli because they don't have the adorable frog art, and they look really wrong in a lot of their 3rd edition art. Depends a lot on your groups of course, but not every group is your typical elf-dwarf-human-something short line up.

Marlowe
2015-06-01, 10:07 PM
I've wanted to make a campaign setting using nothing but lesser Planetouched as races. Between Tiefling, Aasimar, 4 kinds of Genasi, Chaond, Zenythri, Wispling, Maeluth, and Mechanatrix there's a lot of variety there. Might take away the Genasi CHR penalty since they're a little weak compared to the others.

Instead of the usual "savage" races we'd have variously hostile varieties of Fey. Killoren, Uldra, marauding bands of homicidal Petals. All attempting with various degrees of determination and viciousness to defend "their" world against these Planetouched settlers that turned up a a few generations ago for...some reason?

The backstory for such a world, and having it make any sense in terms of the usually D&D fluff, is something I'm having trouble coming up with though.

Zaydos
2015-06-01, 10:11 PM
I've wanted to make a campaign setting using nothing but lesser Planetouched as races. Between Tiefling, Aasimar, 4 kinds of Genasi, Chaond, Zenythri, Wispling, Maeluth, and Mechanatrix there's a lot of variety there. Might take away the Genasi CHR penalty since they're a little weak compared to the others.

Instead of the usual "savage" races we'd have variously hostile varieties of Fey. Killoren, Uldra, marauding bands of homicidal Petals. All attempting with various degrees of determination and viciousness to defend "their" world against these Planetouched settlers that turned up a a few generations ago for...some reason?

The backstory for such a world, and having it make any sense in terms of the usually D&D fluff, is something I'm having trouble coming up with though.

Humanity is a race of adaptation, a race which mutates when exposed to various energies. There was a great shift in the placement of the planes, bringing them closer to the prime, allowing their influence to change and mutate the humans of the world.

Though that doesn't work for "settlers"... Maybe the planes continued moving closer and closer to the Prime and the planetouched fled it through the plane of Shadow to reach an alternate Prime which had never before been touched by humanity?

Milo v3
2015-06-01, 10:18 PM
I've wanted to make a campaign setting using nothing but lesser Planetouched as races. Between Tiefling, Aasimar, 4 kinds of Genasi, Chaond, Zenythri, Wispling, Maeluth, and Mechanatrix there's a lot of variety there. Might take away the Genasi CHR penalty since they're a little weak compared to the others.

I don't know why I am surprised you of all people did that.

Marlowe
2015-06-01, 10:26 PM
Sounds a bit like Rifts. "Something inexplicable happened and turned everyone into a different race, leading to dogs and cats living together and mass hysteria."

Be especially funny if the alignment of the person mattered not a damn to which variety of Planetouched they turned into, so the most Lawful Paladin or Jesadian Cleric wakes up with demon's horns and a tail and the tricksy sneak-thief is somewhat embarrassed to discover he now has a metallic cast to his skin and a sudden desire to make sure he's paid his taxes.

The idea I had, which I don't think was terribly original, was "several generations ago, the Fiendish, Celestial, Axiomatic and other assorted Transplanar powers used this world as the setting for some great battle, kidnapping and mutating thousands of mortals into their current forms to serve as their foot-soldiers and pawns."

"After a few years of pointless violence and meaningless destruction, the Outsiders all decided to leave, either because whatever point was being proved had been proved or they'd just got bored is uncertain. Leaving their former puppets alone to try and build their own civilisation on the wild and war-damaged world that remains, dealing with their own mutual distrust and the enmity of the Fey "natives" as best they can."

I'm not too happy with this.

Honest Tiefling
2015-06-01, 10:31 PM
I don't know why I am surprised you of all people did that.

I'm not terribly surprised plenty of people did that. It's been done in a few groups I've seen, and even their Pathfinder equivalents are...Well, a bit 3.5 Half-Elven.

And personally, Marlowe, I think it's a fine idea for a setting, through ah, personal bias here. I think it'd be hilarious to be a thief who has an urge to donate money to the orphange and keeps sneaking into the orphange to put the money into the coffers because wires got a bit mixed in the whole process. And then gets caught by an adorable little tyke and he has to swear he was stealing it so shut up. No wait, I didn't mean that, please stop crying...

Zaydos
2015-06-01, 10:31 PM
Sounds a bit like Rifts. "Something inexplicable happened and turned everyone into a different race, leading to dogs and cats living together and mass hysteria."

I am aware that Rifts exists and... you might be able to rob your future self? Aren't there mecha? Ok my Rifts knowledge comes from it had books in the FLGS next to the Warzone and Warhammer ones when I was little (the 40K books were on another wall), and 8 Bit Theater.

Really it was just the first thing that came to mind and ripped a bit from Marvel comics and its Inhumans, X-gene, Eternals, Deviants, and the like.

Marlowe
2015-06-01, 11:13 PM
Just thinking about this a wee bit more (and assuming no CHR penalty for genasi). Table of those races.



Race
Str
Dex
Con
Int
Wis
Chr


Tiefling
0
+2
0
+2
0
-2


Aasimar
0
0
0
0
+2
+2


Zenthyri
+2
+2
0
0
+2
-2


Chaond
0
+4
+2
0
0
-2


Fire Genasi
0
0
0
+2
0
0


Air Genasi
0
+2
0
+2
-2
0


Water Genasi
0
0
+2
0
0
0


Earth Genasi
+2
0
+2
0
-2
0


Wispling
-2
+4
0
+2
0
0


Maeluth
0
-2
+4
0
0
0


Mechanatrix
0
-2
+2
+2
0
-2



And I've forgotten about Shadowswyfts. But anyway, looks like a fairly dextrous, tough and smart population, but a little collectively lacking in Charisma.

Zaydos
2015-06-01, 11:19 PM
Should we perhaps start a thread just for this instead of... well it isn't a very Tolkien setting idea at least.

Also that table makes me sad :smallfrown: In my heart Tieflings will always gain Int and Cha bonuses.

Marlowe
2015-06-01, 11:31 PM
http://i368.photobucket.com/albums/oo121/Joncharlesspencer/Plnet_1.jpg

Honest Tiefling
2015-06-01, 11:44 PM
Just thinking about this a wee bit more (and assuming no CHR penalty for genasi).

And I've forgotten about Shadowswyfts. But anyway, looks like a fairly dextrous, tough and smart population, but a little collectively lacking in Charisma.

Sounds like a typical group of adventurers to me...

And considering that the Fellowship of the Rings were comprised of fairly likable races and potential leaders able to negotiate, isn't that also a step away from Tolkien? It's a group of misfits that barely function in society trying to fix things.

Marlowe
2015-06-01, 11:48 PM
Thing is, in this world they would BE the society. The ubiquitous Planetouched CHR minuses are meant to show that they don't really fit in with the majority. If they are the majority it looks a little unnecessary.

Trouble is, if I pulled it from everyone it makes the Genasi the last turkey in the shop. Again.:smallmad:

Honest Tiefling
2015-06-01, 11:51 PM
I'd just do it and scale their abilities. Make them be able to swim in lava and rub it in the tiefling's face. Well, not literally, unless they're somewhat evil...

Through the idea of a society of people trying to make a human like society but failing because their populace is being pulled in all sorts of directions is interesting. They mimic the humans, as they once were human and want to rebuild, want to forget the changes. Sometimes they don't even understand the changes. But their fundamental nature doesn't work with it, and so many people that were once unified are now so different as being unable to work together, with former alliances being torn apart and people who never knew or liked each other feeling drawn to one another and agreeing with them, it just feels so natural to work with them...

Zaydos
2015-06-01, 11:53 PM
Thing is, in this world they would BE the society. The ubiquitous Planetouched CHR minuses are meant to show that they don't really fit in with the majority. If they are the majority it looks a little unnecessary.

Trouble is, if I pulled it from everyone it makes the Genasi the last turkey in the shop. Again.:smallmad:

Set Tiefling to +2 Int and +2 Cha like they were in 2e (ok that was -1 Str, -1 Con, +1 Int, +1 Cha), without the Dex bonus they're mechanically not better and it gives 2 +2, 3 -2, and 6 +0. Chaonds are freaks by these standards, and the Lawful ones just don't really empathize well because they're too deep into cosmic law. Meanwhile Good and Evil are all about inspiring and tempting respectively.

It still bothers me that Tieflings went from +Cha to -Cha.

Marlowe
2015-06-02, 12:20 AM
http://i368.photobucket.com/albums/oo121/Joncharlesspencer/c1.jpg
http://i368.photobucket.com/albums/oo121/Joncharlesspencer/c2.jpg
http://i368.photobucket.com/albums/oo121/Joncharlesspencer/c3.jpg

Zaydos
2015-06-02, 12:27 AM
I blame Monte Cook.


http://940ee6dce6677fa01d25-0f55c9129972ac85d6b1f4e703468e6b.r99.cf2.rackcdn.c om/products/pictures/112751.jpg

Probably the single best source book I ever bought.

That and most tieflings are descended from succubi... why don't they have Charisma? Doesn't stop them from being my favorite non-dwarf race in the game. For which I can apparently blame Jim Bambra.

Marlowe
2015-06-02, 12:39 AM
http://i368.photobucket.com/albums/oo121/Joncharlesspencer/c4.jpg

Yora
2015-06-02, 01:38 AM
It still bothers me that Tieflings went from +Cha to -Cha.
If follows the assumption that Charisma is beauty.

Zaydos
2015-06-02, 01:43 AM
Let's get this thread back on track.

The thing about D&D isn't actually that it has a lot of Tolkien influence. It's that like most things that have Tolkien influence it's rather generic middle of the road fantasy; most Tolkien-esque things are closer to D&D than Tolkien probably because you had a lot of authors that got into the Tolkien craze who had obviously been influenced by a fair bit of other fantasy, like Glen Cook's Black Company which has !Nazgul and !Sauron but at points reads more like Conan with a focus shifted to those mercenary bands he's always joining instead.

So you shift it away from the generic. Choose something and focus on it.

Planescape - the Outer Planes.
Spelljammer - Silly Space.
Dark Sun - Barsoom... I mean post apocalyptic desert wasteland of Mars... I mean post apocalyptic desert wasteland with green martians. I mean... aw flub it.
Eberron - Post WWI Europe pulps + Dungeon Punk to give the requisite tech.

Greyhawk while closer to Fafhrd and Conan is practically the definition of Tolkien-esque despite that (see Tolkien = generic fantasy). Forgotten Realms is super high magic but still very much Epic fantasy. So we'll not be looking at those.

The four we have each drew on something other than straight fantasy to differentiate themselves from generic fantasy.

Planescape introduced the factions drawing heavily on philosophy, used Sigil to give a cosmopolitian starting place and what it reminds me most of came after Planescape not before it. I actually have some problem figuring out what it drew from other than possibly Corum (Michael Moorcock's Swords series), and some of the odd worlds seen there and in Elric, which might even be visible in its emphasis on Law vs Chaos (Corum being the Moorcock series that iirc actually demonstrated Law != Good Chaos != Evil best). Still got that trilogy out to re-read, but I find myself unable to stand Corum's whining and angst. Back on track, it put an emphasis on exploring new worlds at best twisted reflections of our own. The Lower Planes weren't trying to reach out with a dark army to overwhelm everyone, and while there were fiendish plots to oppose the emphasis wasn't on going there and beating its dark lord. In fact due to the de-emphasis of demon lords (I mean Blood Bound barely mentions the Lords of the Nine saying no one is sure they exist) incited by the outcry against D&D as devil worship you really don't have a dark lord so much. Instead they emphasized the clash of philosophies, not good versus evil, but what is good?

Spelljammer just went silly, drawing bits from Star Trek and well anything they could (I mean they drew stuff from Bio-Booster Armor Guyver for goodness sake). I love it, but it's not everyone's cup of tea. Again drew from Sci-Fi primarily, such as Star Trek (the Dolphin Ship being based off of TNG's Enterprise), Fred Saberhagen's Berserker series (Witchlight Marauders), and overall giving a feel very similar to E. C. Tubb's Dumarest of Terra series.

Dark Sun well I covered the main inspiration (Thri-Kreen = Green Martians), though they replaced the honorable Jeds with evil Sorcerer-Kings... then again only Helium's was honorable and for the most part it was a series about running into less than honorable Jeds. Also possibly some stuff drawn from Gor... but I only read the first three books before things got to me about those books and they drew as heavily from Barsoom as any book I can think of drew from... anything. I could probably talk about more elements drawn from other things (wild talents, 100% psychic population) but I kind of ignore most of the later stuff (Prisoner inspired lizardfolk and their last sea, metaplot which unceremoniously killed off half the plot hooks sorcerer-kings, bah).

Eberron... It has some definite stuff drawn from 1920s era, but besides now wanting to play Lord Wimsy in it I've never been a big fan and my knowledge is minimal.

So what do we do? Draw from something other than Fantasy Authors. Go back to Arthurian roots perhaps. Go back to Norse roots and see if by going to the source Tolkien drew from and staying truer to it we can get further from him. Choose something and focus on it. Incarnum would do it. Planetouched would do it. There are options. Someone pick one, make a setting.

Personally I like mine heavy fantasy. How much is Tolkien varies. Interra is largely Tolkien since it was made originally when I was 14. 3 Worlds has more just generic D&D influences (dwarves aren't dying, elves are still better, there's a country ruled by a dragon where people use triceratops as beasts of burden, and illithids are constantly trying to invade reality from their barren wasted plane, Mirkwood is a thing though). Planescape is my go to published setting and isn't very Tolkien at all.

If you want my help don't let me touch forests. They always come out Mirkwood.


If follows the assumption that Charisma is beauty.

That's the thing, though, 3.x Tieflings are still very much conventionally beautiful. It's more social stigma = charisma penalty, as Marlowe pointed out already (though I will note that Air Genasi originally had a Charisma penalty because they are a race of arrogant jerks who have a racial superiority complex) which doesn't work with 3.5's use of Charisma of many other things. Also an attempt to balance against Aasimar since early in 3.x +2 Dex = -2 to 2 mental ability scores or Str or Con, so by that design philosophy +2 Dex, +2 Int, -2 Cha = +2 Wis, +2 Cha for net modifiers.

SinsI
2015-06-02, 01:46 AM
Remove the Ranger class (which was inspired by Aragorn).

Marlowe
2015-06-02, 01:53 AM
http://i368.photobucket.com/albums/oo121/Joncharlesspencer/c5.jpg
http://i368.photobucket.com/albums/oo121/Joncharlesspencer/c6.jpg

Eldan
2015-06-02, 04:04 AM
Of course, Barsoom also has psionics, more or less, so you don't even need new sources for that part.

Lorsa
2015-06-02, 02:33 PM
Funny that someone mentioned that dwarves should stay. I always though dwarves were the D&D race most alike its Tolkien counterpart.

Talakeal
2015-06-02, 02:36 PM
Funny that someone mentioned that dwarves should stay. I always though dwarves were the D&D race most alike its Tolkien counterpart.

Of course Tolkien dwarves are also not very far removed from their mythological origins. Heck, watching Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (which came out the same year as the Hobbit) one could easily believe that they are describing the same creature.

Honest Tiefling
2015-06-02, 02:39 PM
I don't recall the norse ones being great warriors, I thought they were all cowards? Heck, I don't remember Grumpy busting out the battleaxe, either. I must have missed something here.

Talakeal
2015-06-02, 02:43 PM
I don't recall the norse ones being great warriors, I thought they were all cowards? Heck, I don't remember Grumpy busting out the battleaxe, either. I must have missed something here.

Its been a while since I saw it, but they do take up their pickaxes and attack the evil queen at the climax, cornering her on a cliff where iirc she falls to her death.

Also, dwarves in the Hobbit are not particularly brave warriors either, they are pretty cowardly and incompetent throughout the story and in their dialogue with Gandalf at the beginning stress how there are no great warriors amongst them who would even attempt to slay a dragon.

Keltest
2015-06-02, 02:53 PM
Its been a while since I saw it, but they do take up their pickaxes and attack the evil queen at the climax, cornering her on a cliff where iirc she falls to her death.

Also, dwarves in the Hobbit are not particularly brave warriors either, they are pretty cowardly and incompetent throughout the story and in their dialogue with Gandalf at the beginning stress how there are no great warriors amongst them who would even attempt to slay a dragon.

Indeed. Dwarves aren't especially exceptional warriors, per se, theyre just incredibly dedicated workers and loyal to a fault. When applied to battle, those qualities are quite beneficial, even if the dwarves are disinclined to get into the fights to begin with. They don't make up for skill, but they compliment it nicely.

TheCountAlucard
2015-06-02, 05:04 PM
Also, dwarves in the Hobbit are not particularly brave warriors either, they are pretty cowardly and incompetent throughout the story and in their dialogue with Gandalf at the beginning stress how there are no great warriors amongst them who would even attempt to slay a dragon.As opposed to in the movies. :smallmad:

I mean, they say they're not warriors in the movie, too, but then every time a slightly dangerous scene starts, they turn into invulnerable badasses, and render the whole thing a cartoony farce.

Honest Tiefling
2015-06-02, 05:25 PM
So basically, if we keep dwarves we need uber-warrior dwarves who charge into battle and lay waste to it. Probably ones that enslave other races or elementals to do their mining for them because they are too busy being warriors, training and oiling their muscles.

VoxRationis
2015-06-02, 05:51 PM
Give everyone psionic casting and or incarnate abilities. Make these part of the world culture, remove the concept of mundanes and vancian magic, change every races name.

Boy is that excessive.

Truth be told, keeping to the Tolkienesque in D&D is far harder than stripping the Tolkienesque out, especially in 3rd edition (in 2nd there were more than a few spells which worked in a way as to refer to LotR—hold portal springs to mind). The Vancian magic system is called Vancian for a reason and makes for wizards very different from those of most original fantasy, truth be told. Most of the wondrous items (really most things that don't have "of elvenkind" or "of dwarvenkind" in the name) have this eclectic and arcane character that fit more with the wizards from Lieber or Vance than anything Tolkienesque—they have highly specific, flashy abilities, whereas magic tended to be more vague and subtler in Lord of the Rings.

The concept of a "mundane" is hardly unique to Tolkien; I'd argue that most fantasy worlds include at least one mundane main character (often the main character). The Fafhrd and Grey Mouser books were one of the other huge influences on D&D (particularly in terms of PC behavior), and those two are pretty mundane (the Mouser dabbled in magic, but never used it very much or very effectively). Giving everyone magical abilities would definitely stray from the Tolkienesque, but so would stripping magic from the setting entirely. Both would take a lot of effort, for little gain; as I mentioned before, most of the magic already in it doesn't feel like Lord of the Rings, so there's little reason to change it.

Most of the Tolkienesque still found in D&D is in the race loadout—I'd argue that races need to be changed more than anything else. I'd strip out all races but humans as playable characters and add things like merfolk as NPCs ad libitum when developing the setting—that'd be the quickest route, and the most in keeping with how I like to play. However, you could create a new suite of playable races, or import some from the MM as new main PC races.

Keltest
2015-06-02, 05:52 PM
As opposed to in the movies. :smallmad:

I mean, they say they're not warriors in the movie, too, but then every time a slightly dangerous scene starts, they turn into invulnerable badasses, and render the whole thing a cartoony farce.

Really? I seem to recall that every time the dwarves get into a fight, they mostly end up getting beaten or having to run away.

That said, I vastly prefer them fighting compared to doing stupid things like individually letting themselves get captured no less than 13 different times in ONE encounter before figuring out that going in alone is a bad idea.

Darkweave31
2015-06-02, 06:03 PM
I hear Eberron is fun...

Tvtyrant
2015-06-02, 06:06 PM
My Silmarillion lore is pretty rough, so I could be wrong, but I have no recollection of Glaurung ever talking to anyone other than taking orders from Morgoth.

Well he curses people (in the witch sense). He makes Turin and Turin's sister fall in love and have babies, and then strikes down Turin with his mind bullets. Also only Smaug gathers treasure of the dragons mentioned by name in Tolkien, so we have an almost literal Smaug clone syndrome.

Zaydos
2015-06-02, 06:24 PM
Well he curses people (in the witch sense). He makes Turin and Turin's sister fall in love and have babies, and then strikes down Turin with his mind bullets. Also only Smaug gathers treasure of the dragons mentioned by name in Tolkien, so we have an almost literal Smaug clone syndrome.

No, we don't.

The three most famous western dragons are probably Fafnir (Volsunga Saga), the Firedrake (Beowulf), and the dragon from Saint George. Of these:

Fafnir was a human whose greed was such that after killing his father to steal the weregild paid for his brother's death and skinning (his brother was an otter at the time) turned into a dragon because of it, and who embedded gold into his chest as armor and missed but a single spot over his heart (you may recognize this as where Smaug comes from). Oh yes, there's a ring which causes all who see it to covet it and great woe to befall its owner.

The Firedrake lived in a great burial mound where it slept till a thief stole a single gold goblet (you may recognize this as how Bilbo angers Smaug) from a horde of millions and then set forth burning and destroying the countryside until a great hero could slay it.

The dragon from Saint George... is closer to Glaurung iirc my Silmarilion properly, what with his mind-control eyes.

As a rule, though, Western dragons were used as an embodiment of greed. So it's not Smaug it's... western dragons in general. Smaug just is the most stereotypical of Tolkien's dragons.

YossarianLives
2015-06-02, 06:26 PM
Marlowe, how long do you spend on your comics?

Keltest
2015-06-02, 06:33 PM
Well he curses people (in the witch sense). He makes Turin and Turin's sister fall in love and have babies, and then strikes down Turin with his mind bullets. Also only Smaug gathers treasure of the dragons mentioned by name in Tolkien, so we have an almost literal Smaug clone syndrome.

For that matter, it was noted in the Hobbit that dragons had a tendency to desire treasure, even if they don't actually do anything with it. Smaug was more than likely one of the only ones left capable of acting on that to any degree.

Chromascope3D
2015-06-02, 11:26 PM
Eberron... It has some definite stuff drawn from 1920s era, but besides now wanting to play Lord Wimsy in it I've never been a big fan and my knowledge is minimal.

Tolkien-esque fantasy is typically black-and-white. You have the evil dark lord and his evil army of orcs on one side, and on the other side, you have the forces of good and light. In Eberron, everything is varying shades of grey. Literally anyone or anything can be good or evil. Orcs can be good, in fact, the oldest druidic sect in Khorvaire, the Gatekeepers, who are tasked with protecting nature from aberrations and planar incursions, is composed primarily of orcs. Meanwhile, a high inquisitor of the Silver Flame, a church that is arguably the greatest cause for good in the world, could be using his position to subvert various manners of politics and fulfilling some dark agenda. On that basis alone, Eberron is very far removed from Middle Earth, putting more focus on the conflict between the many, many varying factions and the individuals that make up them than on the conflict between any broadly-stroked, diametrically opposed ideals.

The magic trains and the warforged are just icing on the cake; they're not truly the main focus of the setting like so many have been led to believe. :smallbiggrin:

Marlowe
2015-06-03, 07:13 AM
Marlowe, how long do you spend on your comics?
http://i368.photobucket.com/albums/oo121/Joncharlesspencer/r1_1.jpg
http://i368.photobucket.com/albums/oo121/Joncharlesspencer/r2_1.jpg
http://i368.photobucket.com/albums/oo121/Joncharlesspencer/r3_1.jpg
http://i368.photobucket.com/albums/oo121/Joncharlesspencer/r4_1.jpg
http://i368.photobucket.com/albums/oo121/Joncharlesspencer/r5.jpg
http://i368.photobucket.com/albums/oo121/Joncharlesspencer/r6.jpg
http://i368.photobucket.com/albums/oo121/Joncharlesspencer/r7.jpg

LibraryOgre
2015-06-03, 03:07 PM
Remove the Ranger class (which was inspired by Aragorn).

The AD&D ranger, yeah. By 2e, that influence is slight, and by 3.x, it's not any bigger.

Person_Man
2015-06-03, 03:45 PM
Use Spelljammer or some similar non-Tolkien-ish setting.

The awesome thing about Spelljammer in particular is that every game players can basically visit literally any setting you want, and you have a plausible in-game explanation for how they get there that doesn't require a special MacGuffin or protals or whatever.

Mr. Mask
2015-06-03, 04:44 PM
To be honest, DnD is only Tolkien like if you squint and only look at a small corner of the picture. Many of the Tolkien-esque elements it has are also prominent in a lot of non-Tolkien works.

Adventuring parties and heroes? Legends and tales the whole world over.

Magical items? Same, though you could refluff them as being made by ogres and fairies more often rather than being form past civs.

Lots of monsters? Common, and some would argue not Tolkien-esque (I feel it is, but I won't argue about it).

Lot of deities and magic users? Not Tolkien-esque at all, actually.

Elves, orcs and halflings, Balors, and possibly dwarves? These are the closest, but even these seem a far cry from Tolkien and closer to Warhammer.

The orcs are big and strong and dumb, rather than small, swarthy, and cunning, and they aren't (meant to be) all evil.

Balors mythology is entirely different, and the same goes for the elves, who whose elfishness varies widely depending on the GM.

Halflings are probably the most Tolkien-like, with blackjack and hookers (actually, forget the Tolkien-like...).

Dwarves are pretty close to Tolkien's interpretation, save steampunk additions. You could fluff the dwarves to be more like the dark elves the dwarves were based off of.

Shamash
2015-06-03, 08:32 PM
Make the adventure less about fighting evil and saving the world and more about getting money to survive and eat the other day.

Atarax
2015-06-03, 08:46 PM
Make it anime.

Marlowe
2015-06-04, 01:06 AM
Make it anime.

http://i.imgur.com/DqbSYRM.jpg

Zaydos
2015-06-04, 01:11 AM
Make it anime.

Eh? They did that. Record of Lodoss War was more Tolkien than most D&D settings, except maybe Dragonlance.

Record of Lodoss War was a novelization of a Japanese D&D campaign made into an anime. It is quite literally someone's D&D as anime.

Karl Aegis
2015-06-04, 04:09 AM
Make it anime.

Yes, half the world will be high fantasy Sengoku Era Japan with giant robots, amnesiac killing machines powered by the most evil of souls, magicians whose only spell turns them into the manliest man ever, Buddhist Monks that can shoot their souls at their opponents and punch apart mountains and dragons that are technically fey. The other half of the world will be steampunk catholic nuns riding motorcycles playing card games in the wild west. There will be many guns.

We shall call this setting 10th Terra. Sometime in 2007 there will be a supplement where aliens invade. We will wonder how large their mecha are and they will be sizable.

Marlowe
2015-06-04, 04:25 AM
Yes, half the world will be high fantasy Sengoku Era Japan with giant robots, amnesiac killing machines powered by the most evil of souls, magicians whose only spell turns them into the manliest man ever, Buddhist Monks that can shoot their souls at their opponents and punch apart mountains and dragons that are technically fey. The other half of the world will be steampunk catholic nuns riding motorcycles playing card games in the wild west. There will be many guns.

We shall call this setting 10th Terra. Sometime in 2007 there will be a supplement where aliens invade. We will wonder how large their mecha are and they will be sizable.

http://i368.photobucket.com/albums/oo121/Joncharlesspencer/q1.jpg

Milo v3
2015-06-04, 04:52 AM
http://i368.photobucket.com/albums/oo121/Joncharlesspencer/q1.jpg

Umm... what? When was psionics mentioned....

Marlowe
2015-06-04, 05:11 AM
Umm... what? When was psionics mentioned....

It's an off-hand reference to the Psionics system in D&D being distinctly "animesque".

Well, certainly more "animesque" than steampunk nuns in the wild west at any rate.:smallconfused:

SimonMoon6
2015-06-04, 11:33 AM
Can't say I've seen any Tolkien influences in Leiber or Moorcock either.

The closest I can come in drawing Tolkien parallels in Moorcock's works is the idea that older races are going away or dying off, to be replaced by the more mundane races (like Man). Sometimes, it's just the Melniboneans being a culture in decline, or it might be Corum's race being outright attacked by the Mabden (humans).

However, I do find it weird that several posters are saying that the Tolkien influences in D&D aren't purely from Tolkien but from other sources like Warhammer... things that were *also* based on either Tolkien or D&D.

However, I do see D&D as a melting pot of every fantasy idea. We have Tolkien. We have knights of the round table. We have Greek mythology. We have Egyptian mythology. We have everything. So, it creates a weird patchwork of everything that... well... I guess many people like it. It just seems weird to me that Judeo-Christian based paladins and priests might worship Egyptian gods alongside Tolkien's hobbits who might be casting Vancian spells while fighting Medusa (or "a" medusa) and a rakshasa.

But I also think there are a lot of people for whom Tolkien's works (and other works based on Tolkien, like the Shanarra series) are*the* fantasy setting. So, they don't see anything strange about halflings being a standard race, with dwarves and elves being pretty much the only other likely standard nonhuman races, apart from variants on them or other Tolkien races (half-orcs, half-elves), with the weird addition of gnomes.

Zaydos
2015-06-04, 11:40 AM
However, I do find it weird that several posters are saying that the Tolkien influences in D&D aren't purely from Tolkien but from other sources like Warhammer... things that were *also* based on either Tokien or D&D.

Hey I made sure only to list influences that were pre-1e PHB, until talking about specific settings... actually mostly mentioned things pre-LotRs or at least pre-60s when LotRs became popular and influential. i.e. Yeah, Warhammer came out of left field to me too, since it was based on D&D so heavily.

And Warhammer is heavily influenced by Moorcock too (the whole of Chaos/the Chaos Gods/the Symbol for Chaos are pretty much taken straight from Moorcock). Actually Moorcock's influence on Exalted can be seen (the way Creation is made from the Wyld is drawn straight from an Elric story, sorcery works pretty much the exact same way, and the 3e developers kept talking about Elric-style sorcery as if it was different... which still concerns me).

Come to think of it, Moorcock might be the single most influential fantasy writer to RPGs, which is odd.

Kiero
2015-06-04, 12:16 PM
I've wanted to make a campaign setting using nothing but lesser Planetouched as races. Between Tiefling, Aasimar, 4 kinds of Genasi, Chaond, Zenythri, Wispling, Maeluth, and Mechanatrix there's a lot of variety there. Might take away the Genasi CHR penalty since they're a little weak compared to the others.

Instead of the usual "savage" races we'd have variously hostile varieties of Fey. Killoren, Uldra, marauding bands of homicidal Petals. All attempting with various degrees of determination and viciousness to defend "their" world against these Planetouched settlers that turned up a a few generations ago for...some reason?

The backstory for such a world, and having it make any sense in terms of the usually D&D fluff, is something I'm having trouble coming up with though.

The setting for our 13th Age game, Acrozatarim (http://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/Acrozatarim), is much like that. It's an elemental world with humans and Planetouched as the majority of the sentient species.

MrStabby
2015-06-04, 01:27 PM
Races in D&D are standard European mythological races - nothing specifically Tolkienesque about them. Possibly that Orcs are more prominent in both settings than mythology is a point - but not a great one. Add to that all the non Tolkien stuff in D&D and the connection is weaker. Once it was Tolkien, now it isn't. Now it simply European Folk Tale Adventures. This is why there are also Titans, Giants, Ogres, Werewolves, Fey and Golems in D&D but not in Tolkien

The classes are also somewhat different. Fighter/Rogue/Wizard/Sorcerer/Ranger I see, and to a lesser extent Druid. I don't see Cleric, Bard, Barbarian or Paladin as classes from Tolkien.

SimonMoon6
2015-06-04, 02:28 PM
I don't see Cleric, Bard, Barbarian or Paladin as classes from Tolkien.

Well, Barbarian wasn't originally part of D&D. It didn't get added until 1e's Unearthed Arcana.

And Bard wasn't *really* part of 1e D&D. I mean, sure, there were rules for it, but they were so convoluted and crazy (having to use 1e's human-only dual-classing (*not* multi-classing) rules to switch classes three times), that I doubt anybody ever played a bard in 1e.

Keltest
2015-06-04, 02:52 PM
Well, Barbarian wasn't originally part of D&D. It didn't get added until 1e's Unearthed Arcana.

And Bard wasn't *really* part of 1e D&D. I mean, sure, there were rules for it, but they were so convoluted and crazy (having to use 1e's human-only dual-classing (*not* multi-classing) rules to switch classes three times), that I doubt anybody ever played a bard in 1e.

Im sure a lot of people played bards in 1e, they just did what my group did and houseruled them into a class that didn't need a ton of multiclassing just to be able to pick.

Zaydos
2015-06-04, 03:32 PM
Also D&D wizard is nothing like Tolkien (Vancian magic), D&D thief (wasn't in the very original) is also much more like Conan than any character in Tolkien (they can actually pick locks and find traps) and is specifically the Gray Mouser (Read Scrolls with a chance of mishap/UMD comes from him). That leaves... Fighter which is totally generic fantasy and can't be traced to Tolkien, Sorcerer which is 3.x and closer to Tolkien than Wizard (magic in Tolkien comes from the bloodline/nature not studying grimoires), and Ranger which 1e Ranger was Aragorn plain and simple... except the random high level Magic User spells, 2e Ranger is that drow dude with the scimitars, 3e ranger is a hunter thing, 3.5 tried to allow you to play Legolas because of the popularity of the movies.

Kitten Champion
2015-06-04, 03:54 PM
While the Ranger class concept is mostly coloured by Lord of the Ring, none of the class archetypes are anything unique to Tolkien -- or fantasy literature for that matter.

I think Tolkien's influence can mostly be found in the basic concept of different fantastic races contributing to an adventuring party in their own specific fashion. Though perhaps I'm wrong.

Chromascope3D
2015-06-04, 11:08 PM
Also, somehow I only just now remembered that "Orc" was essentially coined by Tolkien. Of course, in LotR, Orcs and Goblins were simply two different words to describe the exact same thing, it was only in later fiction that they were diverged into two different races, with goblins being closer to the small, greedy cave folk we see in the Hobbit and orcs more militaristic, like the Uruk-Hai specifically, who were only a subtype of orc "bred" into existence by Saruman.

So, I'd say to remove orcs entirely, or simply call them goblins. Or kobolds, or trolls, or whatever. Before D&D and Tolkien they were all essentially the same to the unlearned masses anyway. :P

Marlowe
2015-06-04, 11:14 PM
I remember an early (pre-LoTR) Poul Andersen where "Goblins" were a fairly civilized and not-that-evil race, regrettably under the political dominance of the much more warlike and much more evil Trolls. Who were significantly more intelligent and cultured themselves than their D&D version.

Still, it's interesting that Goblins always seem to be under somebody's thumb.

Zaydos
2015-06-04, 11:38 PM
I remember an early (pre-LoTR) Poul Andersen where "Goblins" were a fairly civilized and not-that-evil race, regrettably under the political dominance of the much more warlike and much more evil Trolls. Who were significantly more intelligent and cultured themselves than their D&D version.

Still, it's interesting that Goblins always seem to be under somebody's thumb.

D&D trolls are also from a Poul Anderson novella. Three Hearts and Three Lions (which used Law v Chaos morality) had the hero have to fight these lanky, long limbed, green skinned trolls with long noses who were only vulnerable to fire and the light of the rising sun (the latter being a legendary weakness of trolls that they turned to stone in sunlight). Not quite Pre-Tolkien (early 50s) but before Tolkien became widely popular in the 60s, and from someone who translated sagas so his use of trolls probably came from myth.

Remind you of anything

http://dedpihto.narod.ru/games/Monsters1/troll.gif

Marlowe
2015-06-05, 12:15 AM
Three Hearts and Three Lions is only a novella these days? I've got two copies up on the shelf.

But yes. That book gives us the D&D Troll, the D&D concept of the Paladin, a Law vs Chaos axis that seems much closer to what's in the game than anything in Moorcock, and probably a lot of other things I can't remember right now. Which makes me wonder how little it gets mentioned.

Fearan
2015-06-05, 06:49 AM
Yes, half the world will be high fantasy Sengoku Era Japan with giant robots, amnesiac killing machines powered by the most evil of souls, magicians whose only spell turns them into the manliest man ever, Buddhist Monks that can shoot their souls at their opponents and punch apart mountains and dragons that are technically fey. The other half of the world will be steampunk catholic nuns riding motorcycles playing card games in the wild west. There will be many guns.

We shall call this setting 10th Terra. Sometime in 2007 there will be a supplement where aliens invade. We will wonder how large their mecha are and they will be sizable.
It's about time, someone mentioned Exalted in this thread

TheCountAlucard
2015-06-05, 07:16 AM
I would've mentioned it on the first page, except they specified that they still wanted it to be recognizably D&D. :smallsigh:

Closet_Skeleton
2015-06-05, 07:29 AM
Remove the Ranger class (which was inspired by Aragorn).

...because Aragon uses two swords.

Just like Conan has berserker rages.


The closest I can come in drawing Tolkien parallels in Moorcock's works is the idea that older races are going away or dying off, to be replaced by the more mundane races (like Man). Sometimes, it's just the Melniboneans being a culture in decline, or it might be Corum's race being outright attacked by the Mabden (humans).

Everyone is dying off in the Melnibonean's world. Its the end of time and all that. The Melniboneans are more decadent and over confident than slowly fading away.

He also had a world where the Elf equivalents successfully genocide the human equivalents which is basically anti-Tolkien.


And Warhammer is heavily influenced by Moorcock too (the whole of Chaos/the Chaos Gods/the Symbol for Chaos are pretty much taken straight from Moorcock).

The original Warhammer High Elves figures were Melnebonean figures that got re-used. Hence the High Elves living in on an island in the centre of the world and having dragon cavalry that they used to have more of but are now unable to properly wake up.

Speaking of which, Valyria in ASoIaF is pretty obviously a Melnebonae rip off as well, just with the Atlantis elements dialled up.


Also, somehow I only just now remembered that "Orc" was essentially coined by Tolkien.

Its a obscure form of the word 'Ogre'. Hence why Tolkien Orcs are evil flesh eaters of low intelligence (or at least wisdom).

Fearan
2015-06-05, 07:44 AM
I would've mentioned it on the first page, except they specified that they still wanted it to be recognizably D&D. :smallsigh:
Well, with Planescape, Spelljammer and Dark Sun on the run, the "recognizably D&D" part really needs definition

Yora
2015-06-05, 07:55 AM
I think Dark Sun doesn't really feel like D&D at all. And the greatness of Planescape is really that if flips all the conventions and archetypes of D&D fantasy on their head.

I think the Melniboneans don't stand for magic disappearing from the world like in Middle-Earth, but for the end of the British Empire. Moorcock was born in England in 1939 and an anarchist activist. His opinion is probably more "good riddance".

Fearan
2015-06-05, 07:56 AM
I think Dark Sun doesn't really feel like D&D at all. And the greatness of Planescape is really that if flips all the conventions and archetypes of D&D fantasy on their head.
Still, those are D&D. That's precisely why I've asked to define "recognizably D&D"

Admiral Squish
2015-06-05, 08:25 AM
De-tolkienizing D&D seems like it would basically require scrapping everything but the d20 base. You might be able to keep some of the more unusual aspects of it, but the whole thing is tied up, intentionally or otherwise, with the whole pan-european mythic blend that can be traced back to the Ring of Nibelung. Even if you try to step away from the basic setting of medieval Europe, the whole fantasy genre is pretty laser-focused on that kind of world. If I say 'wizard', that calls to mind a very specific merlin/gandalf/alchemist kinda image. If I say 'orc', chances are that what comes to mind is tolkeinesque. Even if, in the setting, wizards are more like witch doctors, and orcs are a proud, noble race, you still have to fight back that basic set of assumptions to get to where you're going.

VoxRationis
2015-06-05, 11:35 AM
Speaking of which, Valyria in ASoIaF is pretty obviously a Melnebonae rip off as well, just with the Atlantis elements dialled up.


I'd argue that having dragonriders does not make for a Melnibonean ripoff. Remember that the story of Melnibone, as we are introduced to it, is of a corrupt civilization in decadence and decline. Valyria was at its peak when the Doom happened; although they were cruel and decadent, those things had no negative effect on their power and efficacy. And the Valyrian dragons remained strong and active well into the age of the Targaryen rulers. In Game of Thrones (I think; it might be Clash of Kings), people reminisce that the last dragons were oddly deformed and sickly, but that's a) long after Valyria fell; b) quite possibly due to the Westerosi influence on Targaryen habits and customs, which probably interfered with how dragons are supposed to be raised; and c) forgetting that that's after most of the remaining Targaryen dragons were killed in a long dynastic dispute.

Not that Valyria is particularly original. It's a blatant ripoff of both Rome and incorporates Atlantis stuff as well.

Keltest
2015-06-05, 12:10 PM
...because Aragon uses two swords.

Just like Conan has berserker rages.

the original AD&D ranger had no particular affinity with either dual wielding or using bows. I suspect a certain Scimitar Dual-Wielding Drow had something to do with that, but I cant prove it.

ProphetSword
2015-06-05, 02:46 PM
According to Gary Gygax, D&D had very little to do with Tolkien. In an article he wrote in 1985 for Dragon Magazine #95, called "Why Middle Earth Is Not Part of the Game World," he had this to say:

A careful examination of the games will quickly reveal that the major influences are Robert E. Howard, L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt, Fritz Leiber, Poul Anderson, A. Merritt, and H. P. Lovecraft. Only slightly lesser influence came from Roger Zelazny, E. R. Burroughs, Michael Moorcock, Philip Jose Farmer, and many others.

Though I thoroughly enjoyed The Hobbit, I found the "Ring Trilogy"...well, tedious. The action dragged, and it smacked of an allegory of the struggle of the little common working folk of England against the threat of Hitler's Nazi evil. At the risk of incurring the wrath of the Professor's dedicated readers, I must say that I was so bored with his tomes that I took nearly three weeks to finish them.

He said this about Gandalf:
Considered in the light of fantasy action adventure, Tolkien is not dynamic. Gandalf is quite ineffectual, plying a sword at times and casting spells which are quite low-powered (in terms of the D&D game).

And made these points about the races in D&D:
Orc (from Orcus) is another term for an ogre or ogre-like creature. Being useful fodder for the ranks of bad guys, monsters similar to Tolkien's orcs are also in both games.

Trolls,however, are not identified well by the Professor; these game monsters are taken from myth, influenced somewhat by Poul Anderson.

"Hobbit" is another folkword borrowed from legends, but Tolkien personified and
developed these diminutive stalwarts extensively. They, and the name, are virtually unique to his works, and the halflings of both game systems draw substantial inspiration from them.

Dwarves, on the other hand, are well known in Teutonic and Scandinavian myths; here, the Professor and I build upon the same foundation.

Elves are likewise creatures of lore, and perhaps the most extensively treated of them all. In legend they are small or tall, good, evil, uncaring, silly, bright, and so on. Tolkien had them taller, more intelligent, more beautiful, and older than humans; in fact, he made them quite similar to the fair-folk, the fairies. The elves of the AD&D game system borrow two names (gray and wood) from the Professor's writings, and that is nearly all. They are shorter than humans, and not generally as powerful. There are various ethical alignments amongst them, though most are neutral-good in outlook with strong tendencies of individuality (chaos, in game terms).



Take these comments as you will.

Also, this text was reprinted from Dragon Magazine #95, and I'm sure someone owns that copyright (likely Wizards of the Coast), so hopefully I'm not stepping on any toes quoting sections of it here. Obviously, the original article is much longer and much more detailed, and I encourage you to read it if you want more information.

Mr. Mask
2015-06-05, 06:08 PM
That's probably more to do with arrogance than honesty. There was a lawsuit issued against DnD in relation to it using copyrighted material like hobbits, balrogs, etc., because they had the gall to sue someone for imitating these or other properties in their setting.

Kitten Champion
2015-06-05, 08:00 PM
That's probably more to do with arrogance than honesty. There was a lawsuit issued against DnD in relation to it using copyrighted material like hobbits, balrogs, etc., because they had the gal to sue someone for imitating these or other properties in their setting.

You can question his motives, but he did freely claim in the same article that he used related names and some surface details as a way of marketing D&D to Tolkien readers. Which, given a lot of what's been expressed in this thread, would explain the dissonance between the Tolkien-related elements and the rest of the game's mechanics and campaign settings.

Mr. Mask
2015-06-05, 08:26 PM
True. I've never seen that much similar to Tolkien's work and DnD to begin with, despite the borrowed elements.

Zaydos
2015-06-05, 08:41 PM
I am inclined to believe Gygax based on having read all the authors save A. Meritt and having found more of their stuff in AD&D, 2e, and B/C/E/M/I than I have found of Tolkien.

Though orcs are straight ripped from Tolkien, Gygax, orcs are straight ripped from Tolkien.

Karl Aegis
2015-06-05, 09:39 PM
I am inclined to believe Gygax based on having read all the authors save A. Meritt and having found more of their stuff in AD&D, 2e, and B/C/E/M/I than I have found of Tolkien.

Though orcs are straight ripped from Tolkien, Gygax, orcs are straight ripped from Tolkien.

Are you trying to tell me Gruumsh was an elf this entire time?

Steampunkette
2015-06-05, 09:46 PM
Easy Answer

Reflavor everything out of Europe, make the races barely recognizable and swap their rolls around heavily. Dwarves become forest dwelling hairless marauders. Elves become twisted mirrors of humanity, capricious and cruel. Halflings become sewr dwelling subhuman cannibals. Goblins replace halflings and trolls replace dwarves in human society. Orcs become druids who are deeply tied to nature.

Or you could just play Dark Sun, Eberron, or some Ravenloft.

Zaydos
2015-06-05, 10:01 PM
Are you trying to tell me Gruumsh was an elf this entire time?

No, but orc as a human sized evil army is Tolkien plain and simple. They're one of the few things I will concede was full on ripped from Tolkien.


Easy Answer

Reflavor everything out of Europe, make the races barely recognizable and swap their rolls around heavily. Dwarves become forest dwelling hairless marauders. Elves become twisted mirrors of humanity, capricious and cruel. Halflings become sewr dwelling subhuman cannibals. Goblins replace halflings and trolls replace dwarves in human society. Orcs become druids who are deeply tied to nature.

Or you could just play Dark Sun, Eberron, or some Ravenloft.

I had a setting where dwarves were dwarves were forest dwelling psychic not quite marauders (I was young so they ended up noble savages who were mistaken as marauders because they thought civilized humans were evil) they also had human length legs and were narrower than normal (they were 6" taller than mountain dwarves). Is that close enough?

VoxRationis
2015-06-06, 01:22 AM
Are you trying to tell me Gruumsh was an elf this entire time?

No, but Gruumsh clearly has his roots in Sauron. His symbol is a single, baleful eye, ever-staring, a motif commonly found as the symbol of the followers of Sauron. In 3rd edition, he's mentioned as being one-eyed due to having had the other eye put out in a fight, but in the 2nd edition Deities and Demigods, he's depicted as a cyclops, thereby emphasizing the single staring eye, and in the 3rd edition PHB, an alternate name for him is "He-Who-Never-Sleeps", mirroring the theme of constant vigilance embodied in the description of the Eye of Sauron as "lidless." I'm guessing some of the first orc encounters in D&D probably had them refer to things like "He-Who-Never-Sleeps" and using the eye as a symbol, but then they had to quickly think up a less-Tolkienesque deity to avoid lawsuits.

Kitten Champion
2015-06-06, 04:03 AM
Though orcs are straight ripped from Tolkien, Gygax, orcs are straight ripped from Tolkien.

Sure, but in the end, they're just faceless mobs for you to slaughter without a twinge of guilt.

He also brought Half-Orcs in as a PC race, which is interesting given the above statement.

Marlowe
2015-06-06, 04:42 AM
There's (a) Half-Orcs in LoTR, although they're like BARELY there. They're more sneaky and skulky than "dumb bruiser", but that's because Tolkien Orcs are more sneaky than strong.

erikun
2015-06-06, 08:19 PM
I haven't read through the entire thread, but a good question to ask yourself is: Why?

Why is there a desire to de-Tolkienize the D&D system? I can perfectly understand if you are going for a certain vision or intent with the ruleset, and that vision isn't compatable with Tolkien. If you have a setting with no elves, or where elves are a class of fae and not humanoid, then removing the Tolkienish elves would be a good thing.

However, outside that I don't see much point in the activity. D&D is sort of a mismash of different settings anyways, and there is no reason to de-Tolkienize D&D to prevent Tolkienish characters than there is a need to de-Xanthize D&D or de-LeGuinize D&D or de-Vanceize D&D. If people want to play those character concepts in a D&D game, then I don't see much reason to deny it.

Karl Aegis
2015-06-06, 08:33 PM
So you found out about Le Guin.:smallannoyed:

Kitten Champion
2015-06-06, 08:50 PM
I haven't read through the entire thread, but a good question to ask yourself is: Why?

Why is there a desire to de-Tolkienize the D&D system? I can perfectly understand if you are going for a certain vision or intent with the ruleset, and that vision isn't compatable with Tolkien. If you have a setting with no elves, or where elves are a class of fae and not humanoid, then removing the Tolkienish elves would be a good thing.

However, outside that I don't see much point in the activity. D&D is sort of a mismash of different settings anyways, and there is no reason to de-Tolkienize D&D to prevent Tolkienish characters than there is a need to de-Xanthize D&D or de-LeGuinize D&D or de-Vanceize D&D. If people want to play those character concepts in a D&D game, then I don't see much reason to deny it.

Denying people anything is not really the point of the thread. It's more to fulfill a sense of curiosity as to how Tolkien affected D&D and what would left if one were to pull that string until it unravelled. Since Tolkien is such an enormous presence in the modern genera fiction it's more of a complex and potentially interesting exercise than addressing Piers Anthony's or Ursula Le Guin's impact.

Investigating Jack Vance's influence and finding alternatives to them might be interesting however, Robert Howard's as well.

Marlowe
2015-06-07, 04:07 AM
So you found out about Le Guin.:smallannoyed:

Burn the Witch!

erikun
2015-06-07, 10:31 AM
So you found out about Le Guin.:smallannoyed:
Earthsea was one of the more interesting books I read when I was a child. I was familiar with Le Guin for long before I became familiar with D&D.

Wardog
2015-06-07, 05:42 PM
No, but orc as a human sized evil army is Tolkien plain and simple. They're one of the few things I will concede was full on ripped from Tolkien.


Tolkien orcs aren't human sized, though. From memory, the "great orc cheiftain" that skewered Frodo in Moria was "almost Man-high". Most orcs were smaller (probably dwarf-sized, I expect).

Also, doesn't D&D typically treat orcs as "barbarians" or "savages" rather than soldiers? Living in small tribal villages, with primative technology, sending out small raiding parties, but only uniting into large "hordes" occasionally under a powerful and charismatic leader. Whereas Tolkien orcs live in cities of sorts (captured human or dwarf fortresses, or underground warrens of their own construction), and though somewhat ill-disciplined generally operate as actual soldiers, and are capable of using (and inventing) technology.

The very basic concept of "orc = hostile mook race" comes from Tolkien, but the actual characterisation is wildly different from D&D.

VoxRationis
2015-06-08, 01:30 AM
Tolkien orcs aren't human sized, though. From memory, the "great orc cheiftain" that skewered Frodo in Moria was "almost Man-high". Most orcs were smaller (probably dwarf-sized, I expect).

Also, doesn't D&D typically treat orcs as "barbarians" or "savages" rather than soldiers? Living in small tribal villages, with primative technology, sending out small raiding parties, but only uniting into large "hordes" occasionally under a powerful and charismatic leader. Whereas Tolkien orcs live in cities of sorts (captured human or dwarf fortresses, or underground warrens of their own construction), and though somewhat ill-disciplined generally operate as actual soldiers, and are capable of using (and inventing) technology.

The very basic concept of "orc = hostile mook race" comes from Tolkien, but the actual characterisation is wildly different from D&D.

Eh, to some degree. Remember that the "soldier" orcs we see in Lord of the Rings are press-ganged or purpose-bred by powerful individuals with substantial magical abilities. When left to their own devices, they tend to hole up and act in much pettier ways.

Daedroth
2015-06-08, 11:39 AM
Tolkien orcs aren't human sized, though. From memory, the "great orc cheiftain" that skewered Frodo in Moria was "almost Man-high". Most orcs were smaller (probably dwarf-sized, I expect).

Also, doesn't D&D typically treat orcs as "barbarians" or "savages" rather than soldiers? Living in small tribal villages, with primative technology, sending out small raiding parties, but only uniting into large "hordes" occasionally under a powerful and charismatic leader. Whereas Tolkien orcs live in cities of sorts (captured human or dwarf fortresses, or underground warrens of their own construction), and though somewhat ill-disciplined generally operate as actual soldiers, and are capable of using (and inventing) technology.

The very basic concept of "orc = hostile mook race" comes from Tolkien, but the actual characterisation is wildly different from D&D.

Because "Tolkien orcs" are not "D&D orcs", they are "D&D Hobgoblins"

Zaydos
2015-06-08, 12:21 PM
Because "Tolkien orcs" are not "D&D orcs", they are "D&D Hobgoblins"

Nah, Tolkien's orcs and D&D orcs both live in small villages, usually taking over underground settlements of other races, and occasionally coming together into hordes under a charismatic leader (it's in Thorin's backstory). Neither are soldiers, at best being press ganged into it, and both act primarily as raiders and bandits.

Tolkien's Uruk-hai (implied to possibly be what were called hobgoblins in the Hobbit) are D&D Hobgoblins.

And the whole orcs using tech was from the movies, so that's not Tolkien's orcs that's Jackson's orcs (trying to emphasize the Isengard = Industry idea).

Talakeal
2015-06-08, 01:03 PM
And the whole orcs using tech was from the movies, so that's not Tolkien's orcs that's Jackson's orcs (trying to emphasize the Isengard = Industry idea).

The goblins in the Hobbit were depicted as being very interested in technology, particularly stuff that explodes.

Marlowe
2015-06-09, 12:15 AM
Nah, Tolkien's orcs and D&D orcs both live in small villages, usually taking over underground settlements of other races, and occasionally coming together into hordes under a charismatic leader (it's in Thorin's backstory). Neither are soldiers, at best being press ganged into it, and both act primarily as raiders and bandits.

Tolkien's Uruk-hai (implied to possibly be what were called hobgoblins in the Hobbit) are D&D Hobgoblins.

And the whole orcs using tech was from the movies, so that's not Tolkien's orcs that's Jackson's orcs (trying to emphasize the Isengard = Industry idea).

Mordor Orcs (not Uruk-hai) live in barracks. They have ID numbers (The Witch King of Angmar is "Number One"). It's implied they're kept in line with a secret police/informer system. They moan a bit about what they would do if there weren't any "bosses" around, but they're definitely more the product of a modernist totalitarian system than they are tribal barbarians.

VoxRationis
2015-06-09, 01:16 AM
Right, but all that is imposed on them by a supernatural god (I know, not technically a god) of evil and his bevy of supernatural minions. Those guys could mandate the wearing of clown noses and the recitation of Emily Dickenson and the orcs would still have no choice but to go along with it.

Marlowe
2015-06-09, 01:23 AM
"...because I would not stop for death he asked for my ID...":smallyuk:

Forrestfire
2015-06-09, 01:39 AM
I haven't had the chance to read the whole thread, so someone tell me if this has been mentioned already, but what's there to remove? No wait, hear me out! :smalltongue:

I'm not trying to deny that there are things that definitely feel like Tolkien's stuff (orcs and elves, dwarves, hobbits...), but if you look into the settings, you don't really get anything resembling Lord of the Rings at all:


Greyhawk: One of the most kitchen sinkiest of settings, it has everything from superficially Tolkien-like stuff, towns ranging from dirt farmer villages to high magic cities, time travel, divine politics, rayguns, space aliens and other inhabited planets (iirc there's even a spaceport run by beholders)... Oerth is weird. Really, really weird. Even without tying it into Planescape through its cosmology, you've got an incredibly weird and un-Tolkien world with a whole solar system to explore orbiting around it. There's an interplanar spaceship-castle piloted by a dragon god, forest elves living in an asteroid cluster, a gas giant inhabited by dragons, several interplanetary wars worth of history, and a bunch of strange anomalies to Boldly Go to, etc.
Forgotten Realms: Another massive kitchen sink, albeit one I'm not quite as familiar with. However, the sheer amount of meddling that the gods have done in Faerun and the amount of magic that's being passed around in Faerun seems significantly higher than in LotR. There are also the other, decidedly un-Tolkien settings that exist in Toril, like Al-Qadim (D&D arabian nights) and Kara-tur (Toril's version of East Asia).
Eberron: 1000 words. (https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/12/a8/7e/12a87eecc766ed1bb1356336d6ac82dd.jpg)
Ravenloft: A demiplane ruled by Bad Things that grab heroes out of their own realities to solve occasional problems and in the process ruin the days of the darklords some more. It's simultaneously a Horror setting and a setting about trying to be Good regardless of how crappy it might be at times. Genre conventions of normal D&D are changed because of the constant danger and paranoia needed to survive, and it's probably best played in games where the characters are probably small fish in a big, scary, zombie-filled pond.
Dark Sun: The ɢʀɪᴍ ᴅᴀʀᴋɴᴇss brightness of the far future Athas, there is only ɢʀɪᴍᴅᴀʀᴋ. Terrifying cannibal halflings, arcane magic is outlawed, psionics all around, and overall, a significantly more brutal world than LotR or even other D&D settings. There's a joke I heard a while back about an Athasian who managed to make his way to the Abyss. Something like:

Athasian: "This place is paradise!"
Other guy: "It's raining fireballs!"
Athasian: "Yeah, it's raining!"
You don't find this sort of grimdark in Middle Earth.
Planescape: Take all of the above and mash them up. Lots and lots of the standard D&D stuff is flipped on its head, and even more of it is played hilariously straight. Interplanar politics, weird, weird monsters, the occasional spaceship, and the possibility of everyone being a fish out of water. The Clueless prime material residents don't know what they're missing, really.


Anyway, my point is, if you removed all the blatant Tolkien (or even the non-blatant Tolkien) from D&D, you'd probably end up with stuff that's still recognizably D&D, because the settings themselves are so far removed from Middle Earth that they're not really comparable except on the most superficial of levels. Sure, there are definitely some things that feel Tolkien-esque or are pretty blatantly inspired by them, but if you remove the Tolkien from the equation, there's enough left over that not much changes.

TheCountAlucard
2015-06-09, 02:24 AM
Right, but all that is imposed on them by a supernatural god (I know, not technically a god) of evil and his bevy of supernatural minions."A superhuman being or spirit worshipped as having power over nature or human fortunes."

Superhuman? Check.
Being or spirit? Check.
Worshipped as having power over nature? Dunno about that one.
Worshipped as having power over human fortunes? I seem to recall he was by at least some people, though it depends whether or not orcs count. :smalltongue:

He may not be an Extraplanar Outsider with bundles of Hit Dice, spell-like abilities/spells, Divine Ranks, and the ability to grant spells to clerics, but I'd say he's close enough to the definition.

VoxRationis
2015-06-09, 02:27 AM
I was referring to "god" by Tolkienian definition, not D&D.

Milo v3
2015-06-09, 02:55 AM
I was referring to "god" by Tolkienian definition, not D&D.

Well, that's the dictionary definition, not D&D's. Sorry

TheCountAlucard
2015-06-09, 03:02 AM
I was referring to "god" by Tolkienian definition, not D&D.Considering this is an RPG forum, it's often helpful to double-check, but yeah, Sauron fits exactly with the dictionary definition of a god.

Keltest
2015-06-09, 05:17 AM
Considering this is an RPG forum, it's often helpful to double-check, but yeah, Sauron fits exactly with the dictionary definition of a god.

As does Morgoth, though in Tolkien mythology they are more like angels and Archangels than full on gods. I assume the parallels were deliberate.

TheCountAlucard
2015-06-09, 07:00 AM
Angels and archangels got their starts as gods, too. Certain monotheistic religions weren't always all that monotheistic.

Heck, even in polytheistic religions the line was fuzzy at times: Hermes was often called the messenger of the gods, but he was a god himself. In quite a few cases the servants and messengers of gods were themselves gods (albeit generally lesser ones, but a lesser god is still a god).

SimonMoon6
2015-06-09, 08:55 AM
I haven't had the chance to read the whole thread, so someone tell me if this has been mentioned already, but what's there to remove? No wait, hear me out! :smalltongue:

I'm not trying to deny that there are things that definitely feel like Tolkien's stuff (orcs and elves, dwarves, hobbits...), but if you look into the settings

The settings are definitely melting pots of all sorts of stuff.

But when you focus on what a player encounters first (rather than what a DM encounters first), such as the character creation system, it feels heavily drenched in Tolkien.

What races can you play? Well, you can play any of the "good guy" races from Tolkien: humans, elves, dwarves, hobbits, half-elves. You can even sort of be a bad guy race, a half-orc. What's an orc? Oh, yeah that creature from Tolkien that (apart from obscure language technicalities) only ever appeared in Tolkien before people copied him. And that's pretty much it, apart from gnomes... because the game can't be *just* Tolkien (though I hear 4th edition even took out gnomes).

What classes can you play? Well you can be a burglar (thief/rogue) just like Bilbo. You can be a ranger just like Aragorn. You can be generic fighters like all the dwarves. You can be a wizard (magic-user or mage) just like Gandalf (except, well, you can cast spells). Heck, if you're in Basic D&D, "elf" might even be a class of its own, so you can play Legolas. Then, we have to throw in some stuff to not be a complete rip-off of Tolkien... okay, have some religious characters. And variants on wizards. Done.

And, yes, a lot of that stuff is found in other sources than Tolkien. But this *particular* collection of stuff neatly intersects with precisely what exists in Tolkien's works.

SimonMoon6
2015-06-09, 09:01 AM
{scrubbed}

Blake Hannon
2015-06-09, 11:23 AM
Get rid of elves, dwarves, and halflings, or at least reinterpret their source mythology in a different way than Tolkien did.

Do away with the concept of mook races of Always Chaotic Evil humanoids that mill about in their primitive tribes whenever there isn't a Dark Lord to rally around.

Try to avoid the theme of "the world used to be super magical but now its all slowly becoming mundane." Tolkien didn't invent this trope, but its one that many people identify with his work.

And really, that's it. Aside from a short list of races and monsters, DnD never borrowed that much from Tolkien in the first place. The only reason people think it did is because a few of those elements are disproportionately visible (elves, dwarves, and halflings are core player races, and thus get a lot of attention).

Wardog
2015-06-09, 04:52 PM
And the whole orcs using tech was from the movies, so that's not Tolkien's orcs that's Jackson's orcs (trying to emphasize the Isengard = Industry idea).

"Now goblins are cruel, wicked, and bad-hearted. They make no beautiful things, but they make many clever ones. They can tunnel and mine as well as any but the most skilled dwarves, when they take the trouble, though they are usually untidy and dirty. Hammers, axes, swords, daggers, pickaxes, tongs, and also instruments of torture, they make very well, or get other people to make to their design, prisoners and slaves that have to work till they die for want of air and light. It is not unlikely that they invented some of the machines that have since troubled the world, especially the ingenious devices for killing large numbers of people at once, for wheels and engines and explosions always delighted them, and also not working with their own hands more than they could help; but in those days and those wild parts they had not advanced (as it is called) so far. "
~ The Hobbit

Kami2awa
2015-06-11, 02:24 AM
"Now goblins are cruel, wicked, and bad-hearted. They make no beautiful things, but they make many clever ones. They can tunnel and mine as well as any but the most skilled dwarves, when they take the trouble, though they are usually untidy and dirty. Hammers, axes, swords, daggers, pickaxes, tongs, and also instruments of torture, they make very well, or get other people to make to their design, prisoners and slaves that have to work till they die for want of air and light. It is not unlikely that they invented some of the machines that have since troubled the world, especially the ingenious devices for killing large numbers of people at once, for wheels and engines and explosions always delighted them, and also not working with their own hands more than they could help; but in those days and those wild parts they had not advanced (as it is called) so far. "
~ The Hobbit

So that's humans, what about the goblins?

KnightOfV
2015-06-12, 06:55 AM
Hobbits were peaceful country folk with some innate roguish traits and remarkable inner spirit if pushed. Halflings are charismatic well traveled gypsies always looking for mischief and adventure, and tend have magical singing abilities.
Elves went from perfect angelic beings to quick, frail, innately magical and somewhat prissy, bickering, arrogant flawed creatures.
Dwarves... yea people just like Tolkien Dwarves. But you can always play up the religious aspect DnD brought in with the clerics and such.
Half-orcs can be heroes, unlike the all evil orc/human crossbreeds in Tolkien's world.

Gnomes, dragonborn, Tieflings, Aasimars and such are all very un-Tolkien.

I could see pre-Drizzt DnD feeling like a Tolkien rip off, but each feels like it's own thing to me with all the many editions, lore and video games that have come and gone.

Wardog
2015-06-13, 03:40 AM
Dwarves... yea people just like Tolkien Dwarves. But you can always play up the religious aspect DnD brought in with the clerics and such.


Even there, I think there is a big difference between Tolkien and D&D dwarves.

D&D (and derivitive fantasy) dwarves seem to be based on a Flanderized version of Gimli ("Tough warrior, uses an axe"), with a load of other tropes added on that don't seem to come from Tolkien: hard-drinking, uncultured, non-magical or anti-magical (pre-3rd edition), and Scottish (not sure if that one's from D&D).

But Tolkien dwarves aren't an inherently martial people (the opposite in fact). Making dwarves into natural warriors because (some) of the main characters in the stories are is like making all humans into Boromir-clones. And when they do fight, they don't just use axes.

They are also highly cultured, good singers, make and play harps (which D&D seems to associate with elves), use magic in their crafts, and often highly emotional (weeping when mourning or distressed). And they're not Scottish - their names are Norse, and their language is based on Semitic languages.


As far as I can tell, apart from "small", "live underground" and "good at crafts" (which all come from pre-existing mythology), they only generic dwarf traits that carried through from Tolkien to D&D seem to be "beards" and "don't like elves". Everything else seems to be either something one dwarf did, or else made up completely.

Marlowe
2015-06-13, 04:14 AM
http://i368.photobucket.com/albums/oo121/Joncharlesspencer/carmilla.jpg
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http://i368.photobucket.com/albums/oo121/Joncharlesspencer/var.jpg