Dwarves aren't cool anymore

[Jay R]

Playing a dwarf isn't about being cool

Playing a dwarf is about doing your duty, even if it makes you uncool.

Love it.

Also have to ask if dwarves were ever popular pre LOTR and this is just a reversion to the norm.

I know you probably meant the movies, but there is *no* role-playing before LotR. None. Those books were incredibly popular with the subset of boomers who became gamers.

It is impossible to overstate the influence of LotR on 1970s college student nerds. In original D&D, the races available to play were men¹, elves, dwarves, and hobbits². The game included ents and balrogs. Even orcs, as a human-sized humanoid race, is a purely Tolkien invention, using an older word that had a very different meaning. Rangers were added in a magazine article a year later.

¹Yes. It was a different time.
²No, not halflings. Hobbits. That's what the rules said.

I assumed that I could refer to a line from the books and expect all the players to recognize it -- like Monty Python soon after. The first time I met a D&D player who wasn't a major LotR nerd I was almost shocked.

And yes, dwarves were popular back in the 1970s. My first few characters included a hobbit and a dwarf.