grodog wrote:Interesting stuff, grubbiv. I'm not well-versed in the history of wargames publishing, and don't really have any references to dig into how which medieval wargames were published prior to Chainmail. It would certainly be interesting to research this, since it would shed additional light on just how revolutionary Chainmail and then D&D were---if there was no market at all for medieval wargaming (whether true wargames or the nascent rpg "wargaming" market), then that places the initial rejections of D&D by AH and others (who?) in a different (more reasonable) light, and also makes the two games even more revolutionary than they already are: they not only created a completely new field of gaming, but they essentially created a new genre for wargaming, too (if this hypothosis is true). Thoughts?
MShipley88 wrote: Stephen King has said it well...all the rest of the fantasy writers since Tolkien have been trying to bring Frodo back from the Grey Havens and re-kindle the story.Mark
MShipley88 wrote:There is no way that a hobby pursued by a few hundred 30ish men could have prepared the way for Dungeons and Dragons. If all of them had bought the game four times, it could not have sparked the phenomenon.You need look no further back than 1957 and the first publication of The Lord of the Rings, and the Ace Paperback lawsuit that gave the book prominent national coverage.With the appearance of The Lord of the Rings on the 1960's college mind, Dungeons and Dragons was (in retrospect) an inevitable step.The market for D&D was primed by the 1970's publication of several paperback editions of the trilogy, as well as the 1977 airing of The Hobbit, by Rankin Bass. Despite Gygax's own attempt to distance his game from Tolkien, the hard core of interested gamers...who recruited an unprecedented number of high school and junior high intellectuals...were fans of the trilogy who wanted more. D&D was and is a facet of the Tolkien phenomenon. IF you have not read Tolkien personally, you were recruited for the game by a friend, brother or cousin who did.Stephen King has said it well...all the rest of the fantasy writers since Tolkien have been trying to bring Frodo back from the Grey Havens and re-kindle the story.Mark
Marlith wrote:MShipley88 wrote: Stephen King has said it well...all the rest of the fantasy writers since Tolkien have been trying to bring Frodo back from the Grey Havens and re-kindle the story.Mark Is that an exact quote or paraphrase? Also do you remember where you read that as I would like to read the article or what not he wrote that line in.
MShipley88 wrote:Marlith wrote:MShipley88 wrote: Stephen King has said it well...all the rest of the fantasy writers since Tolkien have been trying to bring Frodo back from the Grey Havens and re-kindle the story.Mark Is that an exact quote or paraphrase? Also do you remember where you read that as I would like to read the article or what not he wrote that line in.It's a paraphrase...I'll have to dig up the exact quote for you.Mark
MShipley88 wrote:Almost all boys played cops and robbers or cowboys and indians. The ones who read Tolkien, however, were the ones who went on to play Conan versus Cthulhu. A friend of mind criticized the first Lord of the Rings movie for incorporating, "too many fantasy cliches." I pointed out to him that it was impossible for Tolkien to utilize "cliches" in his writing...Tolkien is the father of the genre. Everyone else is copying him. The imagery, history, races and structure of a medieval fantasy world are his creation...so much so that the current fashion is to be as unlike Tolkien as possible...which is also a nod to his influence. Certainly, there were other writers dealing with fantasy material before Tolkien was published...E.R. Eddison (sp?), R.E. Howard and more... Eddison could even be described as high fantasy, but.... Aside from the superficial presence of swords and magic, Tolkien and Howard have little in common. Tolkien brought the concept of the high fantasy quest to the modern mind. REH (of whom I doubt Tolkien was even aware) was a writer of low fantasy. His best stories all involve sordid events, amidst ruins, with sub-humans or human degenerates and an atavistic struggle over money and women. (Hey...works for me! No need to apologize. We could really use REH today, when so much of the fantasy genre has degenerated into a rather cloying stew of secular/feminist/lesbian/wicca/treehugger tripe.) REH is uncomfortable with material that rises above low fantasy...in The Hour of the Dragon, for instance, there is a clash of kingdoms involving ancient sorcery, but REH sends his main character off on a series of personal adventures in quest of the usual plot-device/gubbins/object...through ruins and against human degenerates. Even his final battle scene is essentially a largescale personal combat. This is low fantasy that barely resembles any of Tolkien's work. I admire Howard's work, but he owes the regeneration of his status as a writer to Tolkien's coat tails. This is not to denegrate REH. If it had not been for the demand created by Tolkien, even a deserving writer like REH might not have seen the wide paperback distribution that made his character famous. D&D is Tolkien, written small because Conan is a lot easier to re-produce on the tabletop than Tolkien's complex characters and large-scale situations. But all of those hack-n-slash barbarians are battling against a background of elves, dwarves, goblins, orcs, kingdoms, wizards and dragons that are essentially Tolkien's creations. I realize I am droning on, so: As much as I admire the work of Gary Gygax, his creation is destined to be remembered within the context of the Tolkien phenomenon, as is Howard. Mark
MShipley88 wrote:(Hey...works for me! No need to apologize. We could really use REH today, when so much of the fantasy genre has degenerated into a rather cloying stew of secular/feminist/lesbian/wicca/treehugger tripe.)Mark
MShipley88 wrote:REH (of whom I doubt Tolkien was even aware)
MShipley88 wrote:The paraphrase of Stephen King almost certainly comes from his really great book, On Writing.
Xaxaxe wrote:MShipley88 wrote:The paraphrase of Stephen King almost certainly comes from his really great book, On Writing.Indeed. An excellent book ... which contains passages such as:"A thousand pages of hobbits hasn't been enough for three generations of post-World War II fantasy fans; even when you add in that clumsy, galumphing dirigible of an epilogue, The Silmarillion, it hasn't been enough. Hence Terry Brooks, Piers Anthony, Robert Jordan, the questing rabbits of Watership Down, and half a hundred others. The writers of these books are creating the hobbits they still love and pine for; they are trying to bring Frodo and Sam back from the Grey Havens because Tolkien is no longer around to do it for them."(emphasis mine, obviously)
MAZES & MINOTAURSThere was no LOTR-inspired D&D. Gygax and Arneson were gaming with Greek armies in the 1970s. Behold Mazes & Minotaurs: roleplaying was born! Download a new edition of that 1972 original game!http://storygame.free.fr/MAZES.htm
Mazes & Minotaurs is what the first fantasy roleplaying game could have been if its authors had taken their inspiration from Jason & the Argonauts (yes, the 1963 movie with all the cool Ray Harryhausen monsters) and Homer's Odyssey rather than from Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings or Poul Anderson's Three Hearts & Three Lions. In other words, Mazes & Minotaurs is :- a nostalgic pastiche of early fantasy roleplaying games- a tongue-in-cheek tribute to old-school gaming- a complete and fully playable roleplaying game !
