De-Tolkienizing D&D

[LibraryOgre]

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]

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]

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.

[YossarianLives]

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]

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]

Get rid of the adventuring party

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.

Spoiler: Fantasy history rant

Show

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]

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]

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

[Tvtyrant]

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]

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]

Ironically, I've always thought that D&D was pretty far away from Tolkien's fantasy. Well, except for the elves, maybe.

[goto124]

Why are we removing the 'Tolkien' influences anyway?

[Marlowe]

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]

Just go to the underdark and you're golden.

[Honest Tiefling]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

(or, at least, Smaug, who is the only dragon anyone ever talks to)

Glaurung begs to differ.

[Necroticplague]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.