5 ms·

I grew up reading Tolkein and then playing D&D. It seemed to me along with everyone in our playing sphere that D&D was set in Middle Earth, not Medival Times. I

by mybrid 2y ago

I grew up reading Tolkein and then playing D&D. It seemed to me along with everyone in our playing sphere that D&D was set in Middle Earth, not Medival Times. It wasn't long after the original release when the Gods & Demigods manual was released to help clerics have someone specifically to worship. I never ever thought this game was in any way trying to model reality. Then, of course, you have the various astral and god planes of existence. The only "setting" that makes sense to me for D&D is bringing Middle Earth and myths into a game setting.

jncfhnb 2y ago
I’m amused that people use the actual canon and not just asserting a god into existence
- Forgeties79 2y ago
  A lot of that is because the gods are usually part of some sort of pantheon or otherwise juxtaposed with other deities in some fashion. They have followers and creeds and lore and all these other elements that slot into the larger world. If you scoop them out, aside from just changing their name/look, you have to replace all of that in theory.
  - jncfhnb 2y ago
    I find this surprising. I can barely get my players to learn the rules properly. I struggle to imagine people making lore accurate characters. One, because it’s a lot to learn. Two, because it’s specific and kind of dumb. We just use dnd canon at will to supplement but otherwise make everything up as desired.
    - pdpi 2y ago
      Different strokes for different folks. Many people actively enjoy having a mass of written lore to consume, and prefer having a well-defined setting to act as a foundation to their stories. It's a safety net of sorts.
    - kergonath 2y ago
      Back in the day we’d play the same characters for a year or so. Some background lore is nice to have in this case. It makes everything more interesting.
    - ecshafer 2y ago
      My primary gaming group everyone goes out of their way to learn the rules and make lore accurate characters, or build onto the lore. Regardless of which system, setting or game we are playing. We do a lot of homebrew though.
    - scruple 2y ago
      In a current PF2E game, my Cleric has a deity and I do RP him to stay in Ragathiel's favor. It's explicitly called out and I don't think it's dumb at all...
      - jncfhnb 2y ago
        Sure. But is Ragathiel any better than Bjorn’er, the god of rapturous dance that I just made up? Imo, no. If someone wants to choose a predefined god, sure. If someone wants to make one up? Also sure. The only thing I’d be fairly vocal about is that until some lore has reason to enter the narrative, it isn’t canon. E.g. the space faring races that appear in both dnd and pathfinder
        hinkley 2y ago
        You made up god may turn out to be an arch-fey who got a little in over his head.
        scruple 2y ago
        I mean, objectively yes I do think Ragathiel is better than Bjorn’er because there is actual lore, thought, and consistency there. [0] Look by all means, if you want to bring your own deity or $WHATEVER to a table I don't think most reasonable DMs and players would even bat an eye but you'll absolutely be expected to put some degree of effort into this beyond just showing up unprepared and cooking shit up on the fly. [0]: https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Ragathiel https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Ragathiel
        jncfhnb 2y ago
        I would argue it’s even better role play if players don’t know things though. If you meet some followers of Bane, a player who knows the lore will probably deem them to be a bad guy. If they have no idea, they will roll knowledge to see if their character would know. The DM providing information based on character knowledge checks is generally a great source of fun. The DM saying “yeah I know you know Bane is a bad guy but I made your roll for it and you failed so you need to pretend you don’t know that” is never very good even if the players try to obey the spirit of things.
    - Joel_Mckay 2y ago
      Indeed, some folks do re-role until fate favors their egos... lol =3 In a way, the more modern video game mechanics based on traditional starter-map games must also choose between a chaotic open-world, or a structured linear mission story (often degrading into a rail-game like snakes/chutes-and-ladders.) Certainly, many of the iconic characters were a mix of several genres: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Dealer_(painting) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Dealer_(painting) It was initially about people having fun, and a shared experience with friends on a rainy day. The golden age before the rise of the Internet. =3
    - saghm 2y ago
      In higher level campaigns, you can literally go to other planes and interact with the beings there. The deities in D&D are literal physical beings that you could just go and interact with (although depending on the deity and the context they might not take kindly to being bothered). A lot of prewritten modules specifically are about stuff with various deities; even Baldur's Gate 3, arguably the most played prewritten module in some time (it was popular enough to go mainstream and win GotY) heavily features lore from deities and in a few places in the story you (or another character) can directly have short conversations with some of the deities. I don't see why it's "kind of dumb" if people enjoy playing that way. Tabletop RPGs have always had a wide spectrum of playstyles where some people follow the rules rigorously and some people ignore them entirely, and being consistent with lore is just another dimension on that. Every successful group will settle into a pattern that's comfortable for them.
      - jncfhnb 2y ago
        The lore itself is kind of dumb. That’s ok. Most TTRPG stories will be pretty dumb. They can still be awesome. Imo plying your own dumb story is a lot better than someone else’s dumb story. I would say it’s not ideal for different players to have different levels of knowledge about the world for non game reasons though. It’s better when most of it is freshly discovered.
- BizarroLand 2y ago
  I used to play with a guy whose character was a Paladin of the God of hardtack, and before he used his Paladin skills he would in real life take out a plain white cracker and eat it.
- rcfox 2y ago
  There's actually a race in D&D, the Kuo-toa, that did exactly that.
Jeff_Brown 2y ago
Yeah, the way I played, I read the parts of the books about magic, combat, monsters and chatacter development, and ignored anything about society, filling it in with my own teenage ideas.
ants_everywhere 2y ago
D&D was definitely, uh, borrowed quite heavily from Tolkein. Even using creatures that Tolkein invented. Tolkein, I think, is pretty much Beowulf + WWII
- actionfromafar 2y ago
  Pretty much, except World War 1.
  - HotHotLava 2y ago
    I must have missed the part where Gondorians and Orcs where sitting for months in trenches opposite to each other fighting for the same few kilometers of ground? The entire war of the ring lasts less than a year, and most battles are won after at most a few days of fighting by glorious charges on horseback with the leader in front of his men. Making them far more similar to the battles of Arthurian legend rather than anything contemporary to Tolkien.
    - ekianjo 2y ago
      from ww1 we know that Tolkien took a strong dislike in industrialisation which made war and killing much more effective than before. Hence the "good" hobbits as traditional farmer-like society, and evil portayed as destroying the natural realm.
    - openasocket 2y ago
      Tolkien has specifically stated that the Dead Marshes were inspired by the appearance of Northern France after the battle of the Somme. And that Sam is a reflection of the privates and batman he served with. That said, he explicitly denies that WW1 or WW2 had any influence on the actual plot. I don't know how much you want to take the Tolkien's word for it (death of the author and all that) but there it is.
    - clarionbell 2y ago
      That's the "hot" period of the war. Before that there were several centuries long war of attrition between Dunedain, their allies and proxies of Sauron. The capital city of Gondor, Osgiliath, was turned into ruins, front going straight through. And before that, the same thing happened to Minas Ithil. Those big towers next to Black Gate? Those were fortifications built by Gondor. But after Great Plague, which was probably a biological weapon of sorts, there weren't enough people to man them. What we see in lotr, is essentially last days of war. When one side is barely clinging on, and can muster only localized offensives.
the_af 2y ago
Hm, while D&D borrowed a lot of the trappings (and creatures) from Tolkien, I think Middle Earth is all about birthrights and kings and noble (elven or "old human") bloodlines. Tolkien is all about the legacy of your blood, ancient prophecies fulfilled that have to do with birthrights, vassals and fealty and whatnot... and I believe none of this plays an important part (or at all) in classic D&D.
- vantassell 2y ago
  If you like at the skills of each class then it's pretty obvious that wizards, rangers, halflings, elves, dwarves, and orcs are modeled after Gandalf, Aragorn, the hobbits, etc. Gandalf calls Aragorn the world's best hunter, and Aragorn literally listens to the earth (in the pursuit of Merry and Pippin) like the Ranger class skill. If D&D isn't based on LOTR, weird that so many of the classes are 1:1. Then look at the way Dragons in D&D affect their environment (e.g. the weather changes as you get near a dragon's den) and it's even more obvious that D&D is based off LOTR. Not to mention the assault on Minas Tirith beginning with a change in weather due to the power of Sauron (or the way Saruman changes the weather on Caradhras). Or look at the mechanics of being frightened, that's pretty much the core class trait of the Nazgul. Reading LOTR after reading through the Player's Manual makes it extremely obvious where each of the class skills came from - the came from events in LOTR.
  - the_af 2y ago
    Yes, but that's it: the trappings of LotR. I don't think there's anybody that would deny the elf, dwarf, halfling, ranger, wizard [1] of D&D are based on LotR. The thing is D&D stops at the trappings of LotR, and completely ignores Tolkien's world is a kind of feudalism, with vassals, oaths, birthrights, "noble blood", etc. Upstarts are frowned upon in Middle Earth, and in fact, much shedding of tears is caused by people overstepping their bounds or wishing to dethrone their rightful lords. The very concept of "rightful lord" is so very Tolkenian. Denethor in his pride forgets he is a mere steward and not the rightful king of Gondor. Saruman in his pride forgets he is tasked with a "sacred" task and should seek no earthly glory. Wormtongue covets both Eowyn and the throne of Rohan. D&D has none of this, as the article explains. You can "earn" your way to having a fortress, lands, etc, without the pesky concept of vassalage. D&D is all about the upstarts seeking fame, coin and glory. [1] except D&D's magic is Vancian in nature, unlike LotR's. You cannot "learn spells" in LotR, and in fact, Elves don't even consider what they do magic and are suprised of it being called as such.
lnxg33k1 2y ago
Also for me same experience, only difference is the setting, I was playing Dragonlance
tarsinge 2y ago
D&D world draw heavily from Middle Earth but also from other authors like Vance, Moorcock, Leiber, … The list is officially documented as “Appendix N” in AD&D 1st ed manual[0] Kind of like Warcraft, I personally started playing around the Warcraft 2 release and it was always kind of the same world of everything medieval fantasy mixed in, never realistic. [0]https://goodman-games.com/blog/2018/03/26/what-is-appendix-n/ https://goodman-games.com/blog/2018/03/26/what-is-appendix-n... From the D&D original author: > The most immediate influences upon AD&D were probably de Camp & Pratt, R. E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, H. P. Lovecraft, and A. Merritt; but all of the above authors, as well as many not listed, certainly helped to shape the form of the game. Edit: citation
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
SeanLuke 2y ago
IIRC D&D was so directly based on Tolkien that they used the terms "halfling", "goblin", and "magic user" to avoid a fight with the Tolkien Estate over the terms "hobbit", "orc", and "wizard". This article thus makes little sense to me: how many half-elf magic users do you see popping up in medieval history?

by mybrid 2y ago

jncfhnb 2y ago

I’m amused that people use the actual canon and not just asserting a god into existence

Forgeties79 2y ago
A lot of that is because the gods are usually part of some sort of pantheon or otherwise juxtaposed with other deities in some fashion. They have followers and creeds and lore and all these other elements that slot into the larger world. If you scoop them out, aside from just changing their name/look, you have to replace all of that in theory.
- jncfhnb 2y ago
  I find this surprising. I can barely get my players to learn the rules properly. I struggle to imagine people making lore accurate characters. One, because it’s a lot to learn. Two, because it’s specific and kind of dumb. We just use dnd canon at will to supplement but otherwise make everything up as desired.
  - pdpi 2y ago
    Different strokes for different folks. Many people actively enjoy having a mass of written lore to consume, and prefer having a well-defined setting to act as a foundation to their stories. It's a safety net of sorts.
  - kergonath 2y ago
    Back in the day we’d play the same characters for a year or so. Some background lore is nice to have in this case. It makes everything more interesting.
  - ecshafer 2y ago
    My primary gaming group everyone goes out of their way to learn the rules and make lore accurate characters, or build onto the lore. Regardless of which system, setting or game we are playing. We do a lot of homebrew though.
  - scruple 2y ago
    In a current PF2E game, my Cleric has a deity and I do RP him to stay in Ragathiel's favor. It's explicitly called out and I don't think it's dumb at all...
    - jncfhnb 2y ago
      Sure. But is Ragathiel any better than Bjorn’er, the god of rapturous dance that I just made up? Imo, no. If someone wants to choose a predefined god, sure. If someone wants to make one up? Also sure. The only thing I’d be fairly vocal about is that until some lore has reason to enter the narrative, it isn’t canon. E.g. the space faring races that appear in both dnd and pathfinder
      - hinkley 2y ago
        You made up god may turn out to be an arch-fey who got a little in over his head.
      - scruple 2y ago
        I mean, objectively yes I do think Ragathiel is better than Bjorn’er because there is actual lore, thought, and consistency there. [0] Look by all means, if you want to bring your own deity or $WHATEVER to a table I don't think most reasonable DMs and players would even bat an eye but you'll absolutely be expected to put some degree of effort into this beyond just showing up unprepared and cooking shit up on the fly. [0]: https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Ragathiel https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Ragathiel
        jncfhnb 2y ago
        I would argue it’s even better role play if players don’t know things though. If you meet some followers of Bane, a player who knows the lore will probably deem them to be a bad guy. If they have no idea, they will roll knowledge to see if their character would know. The DM providing information based on character knowledge checks is generally a great source of fun. The DM saying “yeah I know you know Bane is a bad guy but I made your roll for it and you failed so you need to pretend you don’t know that” is never very good even if the players try to obey the spirit of things.
  - Joel_Mckay 2y ago
    Indeed, some folks do re-role until fate favors their egos... lol =3 In a way, the more modern video game mechanics based on traditional starter-map games must also choose between a chaotic open-world, or a structured linear mission story (often degrading into a rail-game like snakes/chutes-and-ladders.) Certainly, many of the iconic characters were a mix of several genres: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Dealer_(painting) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Dealer_(painting) It was initially about people having fun, and a shared experience with friends on a rainy day. The golden age before the rise of the Internet. =3
  - saghm 2y ago
    In higher level campaigns, you can literally go to other planes and interact with the beings there. The deities in D&D are literal physical beings that you could just go and interact with (although depending on the deity and the context they might not take kindly to being bothered). A lot of prewritten modules specifically are about stuff with various deities; even Baldur's Gate 3, arguably the most played prewritten module in some time (it was popular enough to go mainstream and win GotY) heavily features lore from deities and in a few places in the story you (or another character) can directly have short conversations with some of the deities. I don't see why it's "kind of dumb" if people enjoy playing that way. Tabletop RPGs have always had a wide spectrum of playstyles where some people follow the rules rigorously and some people ignore them entirely, and being consistent with lore is just another dimension on that. Every successful group will settle into a pattern that's comfortable for them.
    - jncfhnb 2y ago
      The lore itself is kind of dumb. That’s ok. Most TTRPG stories will be pretty dumb. They can still be awesome. Imo plying your own dumb story is a lot better than someone else’s dumb story. I would say it’s not ideal for different players to have different levels of knowledge about the world for non game reasons though. It’s better when most of it is freshly discovered.
BizarroLand 2y ago
I used to play with a guy whose character was a Paladin of the God of hardtack, and before he used his Paladin skills he would in real life take out a plain white cracker and eat it.
rcfox 2y ago
There's actually a race in D&D, the Kuo-toa, that did exactly that.

Jeff_Brown 2y ago

Yeah, the way I played, I read the parts of the books about magic, combat, monsters and chatacter development, and ignored anything about society, filling it in with my own teenage ideas.

ants_everywhere 2y ago

D&D was definitely, uh, borrowed quite heavily from Tolkein. Even using creatures that Tolkein invented. Tolkein, I think, is pretty much Beowulf + WWII

actionfromafar 2y ago
Pretty much, except World War 1.
- HotHotLava 2y ago
  I must have missed the part where Gondorians and Orcs where sitting for months in trenches opposite to each other fighting for the same few kilometers of ground? The entire war of the ring lasts less than a year, and most battles are won after at most a few days of fighting by glorious charges on horseback with the leader in front of his men. Making them far more similar to the battles of Arthurian legend rather than anything contemporary to Tolkien.
  - ekianjo 2y ago
    from ww1 we know that Tolkien took a strong dislike in industrialisation which made war and killing much more effective than before. Hence the "good" hobbits as traditional farmer-like society, and evil portayed as destroying the natural realm.
  - openasocket 2y ago
    Tolkien has specifically stated that the Dead Marshes were inspired by the appearance of Northern France after the battle of the Somme. And that Sam is a reflection of the privates and batman he served with. That said, he explicitly denies that WW1 or WW2 had any influence on the actual plot. I don't know how much you want to take the Tolkien's word for it (death of the author and all that) but there it is.
  - clarionbell 2y ago
    That's the "hot" period of the war. Before that there were several centuries long war of attrition between Dunedain, their allies and proxies of Sauron. The capital city of Gondor, Osgiliath, was turned into ruins, front going straight through. And before that, the same thing happened to Minas Ithil. Those big towers next to Black Gate? Those were fortifications built by Gondor. But after Great Plague, which was probably a biological weapon of sorts, there weren't enough people to man them. What we see in lotr, is essentially last days of war. When one side is barely clinging on, and can muster only localized offensives.

the_af 2y ago

Hm, while D&D borrowed a lot of the trappings (and creatures) from Tolkien, I think Middle Earth is all about birthrights and kings and noble (elven or "old human") bloodlines. Tolkien is all about the legacy of your blood, ancient prophecies fulfilled that have to do with birthrights, vassals and fealty and whatnot... and I believe none of this plays an important part (or at all) in classic D&D.

vantassell 2y ago
If you like at the skills of each class then it's pretty obvious that wizards, rangers, halflings, elves, dwarves, and orcs are modeled after Gandalf, Aragorn, the hobbits, etc. Gandalf calls Aragorn the world's best hunter, and Aragorn literally listens to the earth (in the pursuit of Merry and Pippin) like the Ranger class skill. If D&D isn't based on LOTR, weird that so many of the classes are 1:1. Then look at the way Dragons in D&D affect their environment (e.g. the weather changes as you get near a dragon's den) and it's even more obvious that D&D is based off LOTR. Not to mention the assault on Minas Tirith beginning with a change in weather due to the power of Sauron (or the way Saruman changes the weather on Caradhras). Or look at the mechanics of being frightened, that's pretty much the core class trait of the Nazgul. Reading LOTR after reading through the Player's Manual makes it extremely obvious where each of the class skills came from - the came from events in LOTR.
- the_af 2y ago
  Yes, but that's it: the trappings of LotR. I don't think there's anybody that would deny the elf, dwarf, halfling, ranger, wizard [1] of D&D are based on LotR. The thing is D&D stops at the trappings of LotR, and completely ignores Tolkien's world is a kind of feudalism, with vassals, oaths, birthrights, "noble blood", etc. Upstarts are frowned upon in Middle Earth, and in fact, much shedding of tears is caused by people overstepping their bounds or wishing to dethrone their rightful lords. The very concept of "rightful lord" is so very Tolkenian. Denethor in his pride forgets he is a mere steward and not the rightful king of Gondor. Saruman in his pride forgets he is tasked with a "sacred" task and should seek no earthly glory. Wormtongue covets both Eowyn and the throne of Rohan. D&D has none of this, as the article explains. You can "earn" your way to having a fortress, lands, etc, without the pesky concept of vassalage. D&D is all about the upstarts seeking fame, coin and glory. [1] except D&D's magic is Vancian in nature, unlike LotR's. You cannot "learn spells" in LotR, and in fact, Elves don't even consider what they do magic and are suprised of it being called as such.

lnxg33k1 2y ago

Also for me same experience, only difference is the setting, I was playing Dragonlance

tarsinge 2y ago

D&D world draw heavily from Middle Earth but also from other authors like Vance, Moorcock, Leiber, … The list is officially documented as “Appendix N” in AD&D 1st ed manual[0] Kind of like Warcraft, I personally started playing around the Warcraft 2 release and it was always kind of the same world of everything medieval fantasy mixed in, never realistic. [0]https://goodman-games.com/blog/2018/03/26/what-is-appendix-n/ https://goodman-games.com/blog/2018/03/26/what-is-appendix-n... From the D&D original author: > The most immediate influences upon AD&D were probably de Camp & Pratt, R. E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, H. P. Lovecraft, and A. Merritt; but all of the above authors, as well as many not listed, certainly helped to shape the form of the game. Edit: citation

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

SeanLuke 2y ago

IIRC D&D was so directly based on Tolkien that they used the terms "halfling", "goblin", and "magic user" to avoid a fight with the Tolkien Estate over the terms "hobbit", "orc", and "wizard". This article thus makes little sense to me: how many half-elf magic users do you see popping up in medieval history?