Though this blog has, since its inception nearly eighteen years ago, been a staunch advocate for recognizing and celebrating the debt Dungeons & Dragons owes to pulp fantasy literature, there can be no doubt, despite the protestations of some (including myself, from time to time), that it also owes a significant debt to J. R. R. Tolkien, born on this day in 1892. That debt is not merely a matter of surface details, such as the presence of elves, dwarves, or halflings, nor even of familiar narrative trappings like ancient evils and lost kingdoms. Rather, Tolkien’s influence runs deeper, shaping expectations about the coherence of secondary worlds, the moral weight of history, and the idea that fantasy settings might possess an internal logic and gravitas extending far beyond the immediate needs of any single adventure.
Even when early role-playing games diverged from Tolkien’s sensibilities – or, in some cases, reacted against them – they did so in dialog with a vision of fantasy he helped to define. The very act of distinguishing pulp fantasy from Tolkienian (or "high") fantasy implicitly acknowledges the latter as a point of reference. On Tolkien’s birthday, then, it seems appropriate to set aside old debates long enough to acknowledge that, however indirect or contested it may sometimes be, his influence on Dungeons & Dragons and the broader hobby is both real and enduring.
Happy birthday, Professor Tolkien!
Rather than treat swords & sorcery and Tolkien as two opposed things, I ignore The Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion. I then place The Hobbit into the same mix as The Dying Earth (1950 only), Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Conan, Elric, Kull, Kothar, etc. It's swords & sorcery Middle-earth.
ReplyDeleteI’d not looked at it that way but that’s a solid take.
DeleteThe Hobbit probably makes a better basis for D&D than LotR because it's more about actions in the present than the long backstories of the characters, the setting, etc. (I'm speaking relatively here.)
DeleteWhen I was 10 and saw the cover of the Holmes Basic Set for the first time, I thought Smaug and "The Hobbit," and when I opened the cover of the book and saw the party fighting hordes of orcs coming up out of the dungeon depths, I thought "Moria." So both Tolkien works are inspirational, but yeah, overall the Hobbit is more D&Dish, and it works better for D&D setting.
ReplyDeleteThe absolutely brilliant Edwardian fantasy The Black Douglas, which was published when he was about 5 years old, was a massive childhood influence on Tolkien.
ReplyDeleteThe book is great: werewolves, secret chainmail tunics, battles that clearly influenced the description of both the Battle of Gondor and the Warg encounter in the Hobbit.
I think it is so easy to separate Tolkien from the pulp influences on D&D just because he is today thought of as a Beowulf-influenced academic and linguist...but it is important to remember that in the 1970s, Tolkien was viewed as a professor whose fantasy-ghetto fiction wasn't worthy of academic note, and that The Hobbit which really started the whole thing as a viable genre rather than an intellectual's secret project, was a children's book.
From The Black Douglas:
"A chill wind from the sea blew through the forest. The pines bent soughing towards the adventurers. The night grew denser and blacker about them, as with the wan waters of the marismas on one side and the sombre arches of the forest on the other, they advanced sword in hand, praying that that which should happen might happen quickly.
But as they went the woods about them grew clamorous with horrid noises. All the evil beasts of the world seemed abroad that night in the forests of Machecoul. Presently they issued forth into a more open space. The greyish dark of the turf beneath their feet spread further off. The black blank wall of the pines retreated and they found themselves suddenly with the stars twinkling infinitely chill and remote above them.
They were now, however, no more alone, for round them circled and echoed the crying of many packs of wolves. In the forest of Machecoul the guardian demons of its lord had been let loose, and throughout all its borders poor peasant folk shivered in their beds, or crouched behind the weak defences of their twice barred doors. For they knew that the full pack never hunted in the Pays de Retz without bringing death to some wanderer found defenceless within the borders of that region of dread."
Compare to The Hobbit:
"All of a sudden they heard a howl away down hill, a long shuddering howl. It was answered by another away to the right and a good deal nearer to them; then by another not far away to the left. It was wolves howling at the moon, wolves gathering together!
There were no wolves living near Mr. Baggins’ hole at home, but he knew that noise. He had had it described to him often enough in tales. One of his elder cousins (on the Took side), who had been a great traveller, used to imitate it to frighten him. To hear it out in the forest under the moon was too much for Bilbo. Even magic rings are not much use against wolves—especially against the evil packs that lived under the shadow of the goblin-infested mountains, over the Edge of the Wild on the borders of the unknown. Wolves of that sort smell keener than goblins, and do not need to see you to catch you!
“What shall we do, what shall we do!” he cried. “Escaping goblins to be caught by wolves!” he said, and it became a proverb, though we now say “out of the frying-pan into the fire” in the same sort of uncomfortable situations.
“Up the trees quick!” cried Gandalf..."
And...just to tie it all together, from B10, the extremely underrated Night's Dark Terror module:
'“Look out!" cries a man’s voice from the gatehouse across the bridge, and, through the smoke you see a squad of goblins mounted on huge wolves charging wildly along the river bank towards you. “Quick, before they cut you off!", the voice continues, and the gate starts to swing open. There is not a moment to lose...'