5 ms·

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.
  - boccaff 2y ago
    This impression looks more like the main events of the movie. You have the several turns on the Battle of Osgiliath, and Boromir alluding to Gondor paying the cost for holding the frotiers with Mordor.
  - alexey-salmin 2y ago
    I think the Osgiliath battle lasted for many years? Not exactly trenches, but it was the only suitable river crossing in that area
    - HotHotLava 2y ago
      It was one swift attack that managed to push the Gondorians out of the eastern half of the town, that also marked the beginning of the war, and one surprise attack with boats 9 months later to take the western half that a few weeks before the end of the war. I don't know if it's mentioned anywhere what happened in the meantime, but Denethor says he's expecting an enemy strike against Osgiliath shortly before the second attack happens, so it can't have been an active frontline at the time.
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    Trench warfare thing is a thing, a big thing, about WW1. But it isn’t the only thing that happened in WW1. It looms large in our imaginations, probably because it impacted the geopolitical situation, and that’s what we see through the zoomed out lens of history. But Tolkien experienced WW1 in first person. When people say his books were influenced by WW1, I think they mean the experience of soldiering. Somebody already mentioned the marshes. The Nazgûl are also described as spreading a sort of deep, supernatural sort of dread; not normal fear, but something that shatters the will of hardened soldiers, just by looming over the siege of Gondor. That could be influenced by the experience of artillery bombardments, without explicitly referencing it. It is also a story in which the good guys are agrarian, and the bad guys are industrial; this was possibly influenced by the experience of being on the receiving end of industrial warfare. I hear it is unpleasant.
- Jeff_Brown 2y ago
  Wasn't "one ring to rule them all" a metaphor for nukes?
  - jawilson2 2y ago
    Not really, though I suppose you can interpret art how you like: The Lord of the Rings was actually begun, as a separate thing, about 1937, and had reached the inn at Bree, before the shadow of the second war. Personally I do not think that either war (and of course not the atomic bomb) had any influence upon either the plot or the manner of its unfolding. Perhaps in landscape. The Dead Marshes and the approaches to the Morannon owe something to Northern France after the Battle of the Somme. They owe more to William Morris and his Huns and Romans, as in The House of the Wolfings or The Roots of the Mountains. Letters, no. 226
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    Probably not, it doesn’t seem to have any direct power to just, like, blast stuff, as far as we see on the page. I think it is more like a wide-ranging enhancement to all the forces of evil if they get it. The power of every orc waking up on the right side of the bed to go do the day-to-day work of evil every morning.
- ants_everywhere 2y ago
  There's no doubt a lot of WWI in there. I would guess that part of his goal was to talk about the universality of much of what was going on. For that he'd need to draw from a lot of history, and he had first-hand experience with WWI. But the major plot element of having a weapon too powerful for humans (and humanoids) to wield (and which must be destroyed) is clearly influenced by his reaction to the atomic bomb. The ring gets a pretty big promotion from an Gyges-style invisibility ring in the original edition of the Hobbit, to a civilization-destroying force in LOTR. There's also arguably a Japanese influence on the Orcs, as an army of people who don't look quite like the English and are fighting hard for a way of life the English don't understand. Japan was England's ally in WWI but an enemy in WWII.
  - KineticLensman 2y ago
    > But the major plot element of having a weapon too powerful for humans (and humanoids) to wield (and which must be destroyed) is clearly influenced by his reaction to the atomic bomb. Sorry but no. The ring had been written into existence before 1937 (in the Hobbit) and it's darker nature in TLOTR was defined sometime in 1938, long before anyone knew about the bomb [0]. Much later, Tolkien specifically addressed the relationship with WW2 by saying IIRC that if the ring war had reflected the real war, the allies would have used the ring against Sauron and Saruman probably would have made his own in the chaos that followed. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructing_The_Lord_of_the_Rings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructing_The_Lord_of_the_R...
    - bee_rider 2y ago
      The Ring also has some very nebulous power up effect that it would give to the forces of evil. It isn’t at all clear what it does, just that it would be real bad for the bad guys to get it. If it was a nuke, presumably Elrond would have mentioned that, haha. I think it has more of a wide ranging philosophical power or something like that. If it fell into the hands of evil, it would mean the arc of history was going their way, all the little dice rolls would bend imperceptibly their way, they’d wake up just a little more energized than the forces of good every day, etc etc. It is better that way, because it becomes a battle for the soul of Middle Earth.
- AnotherGoodName 2y ago
  Definitely both imho. Tolkien’s own ww1 experience shines through. But then his sons served in ww2 and you can feel a lot of bilbos pain come through as Frodo has to take on the burden of fighting evil. You can clearly see the pain at the end of return of the king where Frodo and Bilbo together just leave. They had both been through too much and are basically shell shocked. It’s really hard to not view it as an allegory of the journey of two generations through ww1 and ww2 imho.
ekianjo 2y ago
thats a little reductive. Tolkien was influenced by many things, such as the rings of the nibelungen and other proto germanic stories, his studies of the english language especially in its older forms, christianity for core values, and indeed his experiences in ww1.
- ants_everywhere 2y ago
  Yes, of course. Tolkien was massively well read and obsessively created whole worlds, as can be seen in things like The Silmarillion. > thats a little reductive. I prefer to think of it as dimensionality reduction :)
Zardoz89 2y ago
DnD is primarily based on Jack Vance and Michael Moorecock’s fantasy. Moorecock’s work being a direct rebuttal of the pastoral conservatism Tolkien was peddling. Gygax was adamantly not a fan of LoTR. The creatures of DnD are clearly not based on Tolkien’s works, and the player races you believe Tolkien invented predate his work by centuries.
- gotoeleven 2y ago
  Damn peddled pastoral conservatism! I far prefer the pansexual libertines of Baldur's Gate 3.
- panzagl 2y ago
  Howard and Burroughs rather than Vance and Moorcock, though Tolkien would be number three. Gygax only argued otherwise after he was sued by the Tolkien estate.
- p0w3n3d 2y ago
  I would say that the description of dwarves as middle-sized strong men that live underground and are known for good forgery, and elves being tall, old, singing folk indeed comes from Tolkien. Previously Dwarves were imagined as magical folk with powers more close to Cinderella's God Mother, and if I'm not mistaken, Elves too (i.e. dwarves were elves really) according to Germanic mythology. For example, if you read Andre Norton's Witch World this world differs greatly from Tolkiens' - especially in this matter.
  - hinkley 2y ago
    Elves were more imps than tall, eternal sages. See Santa’s elves.
    - BizarroLand 2y ago
      The word "Eldritch" as in "Eldritch Horror" comes from the same root as the word Elf. Elves were terrifying forest creatures akin to djinn. They were horrors that would give you amazing things at a terrible cost, and from the medieval period we hear only the stories of the rare survivors of their actions. (like Tam Lin who was given temporary immortality at the cost of being the slave of the elf queen and being tithed to hell unless some other mortal saved him) or would literally kill you and drag your soul to hell if they encountered you (the Wild Hunt) or tricksters who would ask you for a favor and in the process attempt to steal you away as a slave (there was a midwife who was summoned to help with an elven childbirth, after she was done the husband tried to get her to eat or drink of their food, but the elf-wife had warned her that if she did she would become his property) They were not cutesy Santa's helpers or Legolases (Legolai?) or whatever flavor anime blonde girl you're thinking of. They were horrors you hoped to never encounter, the dark things in the forest looking for their next plaything.
PhasmaFelis 2y ago
Not as much as you'd think. D&D's conception of elves, dwarves, and halflings was straight out of Tolkien, and...that was very nearly it as far as really unique elements (barring a few monster names and specific magic items, out of hundreds). Those three races are highly visible but kinda superficial. The Howard/Burroughs/Vance/Moorcock/etc. style of swords-and-sorcery/murderhoboism is a lot more deeply baked in.
mmooss 2y ago
> Tolkein, I think, is pretty much Beowulf + WWII Tolkien was a/the leading scholar and Old English and the associated languages and cultures, including the myths. His knowledge was far deeper and wider than Beowulf. Much of the material in his books were from those myths. Also, WWI was perhaps the greatest influence on Tolkien's life. Tolkien was an officer at the front; almost all his friends died in that war and his entire battalion was killed or taken prisoner (while Tokien was away recovering from illness).

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.
- boccaff 2y ago
  This impression looks more like the main events of the movie. You have the several turns on the Battle of Osgiliath, and Boromir alluding to Gondor paying the cost for holding the frotiers with Mordor.
- alexey-salmin 2y ago
  I think the Osgiliath battle lasted for many years? Not exactly trenches, but it was the only suitable river crossing in that area
  - HotHotLava 2y ago
    It was one swift attack that managed to push the Gondorians out of the eastern half of the town, that also marked the beginning of the war, and one surprise attack with boats 9 months later to take the western half that a few weeks before the end of the war. I don't know if it's mentioned anywhere what happened in the meantime, but Denethor says he's expecting an enemy strike against Osgiliath shortly before the second attack happens, so it can't have been an active frontline at the time.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  Trench warfare thing is a thing, a big thing, about WW1. But it isn’t the only thing that happened in WW1. It looms large in our imaginations, probably because it impacted the geopolitical situation, and that’s what we see through the zoomed out lens of history. But Tolkien experienced WW1 in first person. When people say his books were influenced by WW1, I think they mean the experience of soldiering. Somebody already mentioned the marshes. The Nazgûl are also described as spreading a sort of deep, supernatural sort of dread; not normal fear, but something that shatters the will of hardened soldiers, just by looming over the siege of Gondor. That could be influenced by the experience of artillery bombardments, without explicitly referencing it. It is also a story in which the good guys are agrarian, and the bad guys are industrial; this was possibly influenced by the experience of being on the receiving end of industrial warfare. I hear it is unpleasant.
Jeff_Brown 2y ago
Wasn't "one ring to rule them all" a metaphor for nukes?
- jawilson2 2y ago
  Not really, though I suppose you can interpret art how you like: The Lord of the Rings was actually begun, as a separate thing, about 1937, and had reached the inn at Bree, before the shadow of the second war. Personally I do not think that either war (and of course not the atomic bomb) had any influence upon either the plot or the manner of its unfolding. Perhaps in landscape. The Dead Marshes and the approaches to the Morannon owe something to Northern France after the Battle of the Somme. They owe more to William Morris and his Huns and Romans, as in The House of the Wolfings or The Roots of the Mountains. Letters, no. 226
- bee_rider 2y ago
  Probably not, it doesn’t seem to have any direct power to just, like, blast stuff, as far as we see on the page. I think it is more like a wide-ranging enhancement to all the forces of evil if they get it. The power of every orc waking up on the right side of the bed to go do the day-to-day work of evil every morning.
ants_everywhere 2y ago
There's no doubt a lot of WWI in there. I would guess that part of his goal was to talk about the universality of much of what was going on. For that he'd need to draw from a lot of history, and he had first-hand experience with WWI. But the major plot element of having a weapon too powerful for humans (and humanoids) to wield (and which must be destroyed) is clearly influenced by his reaction to the atomic bomb. The ring gets a pretty big promotion from an Gyges-style invisibility ring in the original edition of the Hobbit, to a civilization-destroying force in LOTR. There's also arguably a Japanese influence on the Orcs, as an army of people who don't look quite like the English and are fighting hard for a way of life the English don't understand. Japan was England's ally in WWI but an enemy in WWII.
- KineticLensman 2y ago
  > But the major plot element of having a weapon too powerful for humans (and humanoids) to wield (and which must be destroyed) is clearly influenced by his reaction to the atomic bomb. Sorry but no. The ring had been written into existence before 1937 (in the Hobbit) and it's darker nature in TLOTR was defined sometime in 1938, long before anyone knew about the bomb [0]. Much later, Tolkien specifically addressed the relationship with WW2 by saying IIRC that if the ring war had reflected the real war, the allies would have used the ring against Sauron and Saruman probably would have made his own in the chaos that followed. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructing_The_Lord_of_the_Rings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructing_The_Lord_of_the_R...
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    The Ring also has some very nebulous power up effect that it would give to the forces of evil. It isn’t at all clear what it does, just that it would be real bad for the bad guys to get it. If it was a nuke, presumably Elrond would have mentioned that, haha. I think it has more of a wide ranging philosophical power or something like that. If it fell into the hands of evil, it would mean the arc of history was going their way, all the little dice rolls would bend imperceptibly their way, they’d wake up just a little more energized than the forces of good every day, etc etc. It is better that way, because it becomes a battle for the soul of Middle Earth.
AnotherGoodName 2y ago
Definitely both imho. Tolkien’s own ww1 experience shines through. But then his sons served in ww2 and you can feel a lot of bilbos pain come through as Frodo has to take on the burden of fighting evil. You can clearly see the pain at the end of return of the king where Frodo and Bilbo together just leave. They had both been through too much and are basically shell shocked. It’s really hard to not view it as an allegory of the journey of two generations through ww1 and ww2 imho.

ekianjo 2y ago

thats a little reductive. Tolkien was influenced by many things, such as the rings of the nibelungen and other proto germanic stories, his studies of the english language especially in its older forms, christianity for core values, and indeed his experiences in ww1.

ants_everywhere 2y ago
Yes, of course. Tolkien was massively well read and obsessively created whole worlds, as can be seen in things like The Silmarillion. > thats a little reductive. I prefer to think of it as dimensionality reduction :)

Zardoz89 2y ago

DnD is primarily based on Jack Vance and Michael Moorecock’s fantasy. Moorecock’s work being a direct rebuttal of the pastoral conservatism Tolkien was peddling. Gygax was adamantly not a fan of LoTR. The creatures of DnD are clearly not based on Tolkien’s works, and the player races you believe Tolkien invented predate his work by centuries.

gotoeleven 2y ago
Damn peddled pastoral conservatism! I far prefer the pansexual libertines of Baldur's Gate 3.
panzagl 2y ago
Howard and Burroughs rather than Vance and Moorcock, though Tolkien would be number three. Gygax only argued otherwise after he was sued by the Tolkien estate.
p0w3n3d 2y ago
I would say that the description of dwarves as middle-sized strong men that live underground and are known for good forgery, and elves being tall, old, singing folk indeed comes from Tolkien. Previously Dwarves were imagined as magical folk with powers more close to Cinderella's God Mother, and if I'm not mistaken, Elves too (i.e. dwarves were elves really) according to Germanic mythology. For example, if you read Andre Norton's Witch World this world differs greatly from Tolkiens' - especially in this matter.
- hinkley 2y ago
  Elves were more imps than tall, eternal sages. See Santa’s elves.
  - BizarroLand 2y ago
    The word "Eldritch" as in "Eldritch Horror" comes from the same root as the word Elf. Elves were terrifying forest creatures akin to djinn. They were horrors that would give you amazing things at a terrible cost, and from the medieval period we hear only the stories of the rare survivors of their actions. (like Tam Lin who was given temporary immortality at the cost of being the slave of the elf queen and being tithed to hell unless some other mortal saved him) or would literally kill you and drag your soul to hell if they encountered you (the Wild Hunt) or tricksters who would ask you for a favor and in the process attempt to steal you away as a slave (there was a midwife who was summoned to help with an elven childbirth, after she was done the husband tried to get her to eat or drink of their food, but the elf-wife had warned her that if she did she would become his property) They were not cutesy Santa's helpers or Legolases (Legolai?) or whatever flavor anime blonde girl you're thinking of. They were horrors you hoped to never encounter, the dark things in the forest looking for their next plaything.

PhasmaFelis 2y ago

Not as much as you'd think. D&D's conception of elves, dwarves, and halflings was straight out of Tolkien, and...that was very nearly it as far as really unique elements (barring a few monster names and specific magic items, out of hundreds). Those three races are highly visible but kinda superficial. The Howard/Burroughs/Vance/Moorcock/etc. style of swords-and-sorcery/murderhoboism is a lot more deeply baked in.

mmooss 2y ago

> Tolkein, I think, is pretty much Beowulf + WWII Tolkien was a/the leading scholar and Old English and the associated languages and cultures, including the myths. His knowledge was far deeper and wider than Beowulf. Much of the material in his books were from those myths. Also, WWI was perhaps the greatest influence on Tolkien's life. Tolkien was an officer at the front; almost all his friends died in that war and his entire battalion was killed or taken prisoner (while Tokien was away recovering from illness).