Quote from: LordVreeg;920046But you might be right in the fact that the width of what is Tolkienesque might cover a larger amount of ground.

Tolkinesque doesn't mean D&D = Tolkien. "esque" means "like".

In traditional european fantasy elves are little people and dwarves wear pointy hats. Most non-humans are "fairy folk" and flit in and out of existence.

Tolkien altered that to make them biological races more like human in that they had habitats and customs. Elves are tall and thin. Dwarves are miners and sturdy.  Ogres are not malicious spirits, but brutish humanlike creatures. The difference from classical fantasy is significant.

Because D&D follows this concept of creatures being more physical than they are magical, it breaks with the classic "fantasy" and follows Tolkien. Look up paintings of victorian fantasy. It does not look at all like D&D. Only in the case of dragons does it meet any kind of traditional fantasy setting.

Quote from: Onix;920052Tolkinesque doesn't mean D&D = Tolkien. "esque" means "like".

In traditional european fantasy elves are little people and dwarves wear pointy hats. Most non-humans are "fairy folk" and flit in and out of existence.

Tolkien altered that to make them biological races more like human in that they had habitats and customs. Elves are tall and thin. Dwarves are miners and sturdy.  Ogres are not malicious spirits, but brutish humanlike creatures. The difference from classical fantasy is significant.

Because D&D follows this concept of creatures being more physical than they are magical, it breaks with the classic "fantasy" and follows Tolkien. Look up paintings of victorian fantasy. It does not look at all like D&D. Only in the case of dragons does it meet any kind of traditional fantasy setting.

No disagreement.
And that is also a good point.  And, Orcs.

Quote from: Simlasa;920009Weren't the first couple adventures for Traveller pretty much dungeon crawls (I'm thinking Annic Nova/Shadows). Would non-Tolkien settings do better if they pushed the dungeon raid scenarios? Or would they just be backdoor D&D?

I don't know. As others have mentioned I think it's the name recognition, the momentum and critical mass of D&D (and D&D variants) that keeps it ahead of the rest by such an vast margin.

Gamma World originally was D&D reskinned in a post-apocalyptic setting. The early adventures were mostly dungeon crawls, the system had all the same features of D&D. It was never more than a moderate success.  

Likewise there were fantasy games that have focused on dungeon crawling that weren't D&D and there were fantasy games that did not focus on dungeon crawling at all. Some of these games have a healthy following but again they still just playing in a different league.

Quote from: Soylent Green;920067I don't know. As others have mentioned I think it's the name recognition, the momentum and critical mass of D&D (and D&D variants) that keeps it ahead of the rest by such an vast margin.

I agree. I brought up the Traveller adventures because, while I do see the appeal of dungeon crawls, I didn't think they were all that much to do with D&D-style fantasy lording it over everything else.
Everything about D&D has been copied by some other system... and lots has been improved upon (IMO)... but still it persists.

Quote from: daniel_ream;920042While that's true, I would argue that many more people are familiar with the D&D tropes than non-D&D fantasy, if only because so much non-D&D fantasy has been so heavily influenced by D&D by this point.

A few years ago I'd have said Game of Thrones is the exception that proves the rule, but there seems to be an explosion of fantasy based on history with a thin gloss of magic over it right now and I hope that helps drag the genre away from D&D.

Well in literature "dwarves, elves and orcs" fantasy is surprisingly thin on the ground. Off the top of my head I can't think of any popular dwarves/elves/orcs fantasy books that aren't tied to a gaming property since the 80's. Most popular fantasy literature is like Game of Thrones in that: non-Earth world, only humans (only very marginal non-humans) and magic that's not having a huge impact on the day to day life of a random Joe at the start of the books. Think everything from Eathsea to Wheel of Time to Chalion by Bujold. The main exceptions like Vlad Taltos and Malazan seem to directly spring from RPG campaigns.

Bog standard fantasy seems to spring more from gaming where you can see the influence of D&D really strongly, either directly or via Warhammer Fantasy and from there into Warcraft.

Don't really have a problem with dwarves, elves and orcs running around. The Tolkien-based thing that really gets to me is the Dark Lord. Any element that boils down the whole world into one central conflict vs. the Dark Lord makes a setting so much more boring. Tolkien had enough talent to pull it off but it's just fucking awful in the hands of his lesser imitators in a way that really turns me off. When I'm browsing the fantasy used book section any mention of some overarching Sauron-style Dark Lord gets the book put back on the shelf immediately.

Quote from: Daztur;920105Most popular fantasy literature is like Game of Thrones in that: non-Earth world, only humans (only very marginal non-humans) and magic that's not having a huge impact on the day to day life of a random Joe at the start of the books.

I wonder if part of that is authors hoping to sell movie rights, so keeping a lid on too many elements that would require huge FX budgets? I'm kinda basing that on some writers I know and how everything they do seems to be aimed at selling options on their books (also, they all seem to have history degrees for some reason).

Quote from: Daztur;920105Don't really have a problem with dwarves, elves and orcs running around. The Tolkien-based thing that really gets to me is the Dark Lord. Any element that boils down the whole world into one central conflict vs. the Dark Lord makes a setting so much more boring. Tolkien had enough talent to pull it off but it's just fucking awful in the hands of his lesser imitators in a way that really turns me off. When I'm browsing the fantasy used book section any mention of some overarching Sauron-style Dark Lord gets the book put back on the shelf immediately.

No way! Krull was awesome!

Quote from: Daztur;920105Well in literature [...]

That's where I'm going to stop you.  I would argue that that average media consumer is familiar with a wide variety of D&D tropes and that they got none of them from either playing D&D or reading fantasy literature (except perhaps licensed D&D novels).  They're absorbing them from the cultural zeitgeist, cartoons, video games, and movies.  I know a ton of millenials who love playing Munchkin and watching Adventure Time; none of them have ever played D&D (or indeed, any other RPG) and when I asked a couple of them they were surprised to learn that those properties were based on it.  They just accept the D&D tropes as something all fantasy has.

Quote from: Simlasa;920110I wonder if part of that is authors hoping to sell movie rights, so keeping a lid on too many elements that would require huge FX budgets? I'm kinda basing that on some writers I know and how everything they do seems to be aimed at selling options on their books (also, they all seem to have history degrees for some reason).

Really really doubt that. Writing fantasy with an adult audience with an eye for Hollywood money is insane. Just look at what's happened with attempts to adapt the Wheel of Time.

Also giving people pointy ears is hardly going to do much to the sfx budget. One of the hardest things is probably "in a city" just look at how much that cost Rome.

Now YA fiction, that's another story. Plenty of those look more like movie pitches than novels.

Quote from: Onix;920127No way! Krull was awesome!

Don't mind it in movies so much. A movie only has space for one real conflict. But if you have a six book series that all boils down to one conflict I'm going to get quite bored. For example even simple comic book good vs. evil storiea know enough to have lots of different sources of evil.

Quote from: daniel_ream;920133That's where I'm going to stop you.  I would argue that that average media consumer is familiar with a wide variety of D&D tropes and that they got none of them from either playing D&D or reading fantasy literature (except perhaps licensed D&D novels).  They're absorbing them from the cultural zeitgeist, cartoons, video games, and movies.  I know a ton of millenials who love playing Munchkin and watching Adventure Time; none of them have ever played D&D (or indeed, any other RPG) and when I asked a couple of them they were surprised to learn that those properties were based on it.  They just accept the D&D tropes as something all fantasy has.

The most successful D&D setting are not so much Tolkien-eqsue as they are kitchen sink settings.  Faerun and Golarion, taken as a whole, are both piles of various fantasy tropes and cliches.  They throw it all in there.  People are bound to find something they recognize or like in there somewhere.

Quote from: daniel_ream;920133That's where I'm going to stop you.  I would argue that that average media consumer is familiar with a wide variety of D&D tropes and that they got none of them from either playing D&D or reading fantasy literature (except perhaps licensed D&D novels).  They're absorbing them from the cultural zeitgeist, cartoons, video games, and movies.  I know a ton of millenials who love playing Munchkin and watching Adventure Time; none of them have ever played D&D (or indeed, any other RPG) and when I asked a couple of them they were surprised to learn that those properties were based on it.  They just accept the D&D tropes as something all fantasy has.

Indeed. Just a few pages back people were exaggerating the amount of elf/dwarf/orc fantasy literature when it's really pretty thin on the groud outside of 80's Tolkien rip-off and stuff with a direct D&D connection. Even 90's doorstoppers with very Tolkien plots don't have a lot of those elements.

Of course as you say most of this doesn't come from books. It's interesting seeing where it does come from though. A few years back my Korean students gave me a lot of "Poseidon summoned the zerg!" but these days Greek myth and Starcraft have both faded and I get a lot more Marvel doing Disney fairy tale cosplay. Frozen was a big bridge here as she's a Disney princess whose's also basically an X-Man. So lots of stories about princesses, witches, princes and heroes with super hero style powers. This has its upsides and downsides but it does make Vancian magic pretty alien.

Quote from: Onix;920052Tolkinesque doesn't mean D&D = Tolkien. "esque" means "like".

In traditional european fantasy elves are little people and dwarves wear pointy hats. Most non-humans are "fairy folk" and flit in and out of existence.

Tolkien altered that to make them biological races more like human in that they had habitats and customs. Elves are tall and thin. Dwarves are miners and sturdy.  Ogres are not malicious spirits, but brutish humanlike creatures. The difference from classical fantasy is significant.

Because D&D follows this concept of creatures being more physical than they are magical, it breaks with the classic "fantasy" and follows Tolkien. Look up paintings of victorian fantasy. It does not look at all like D&D. Only in the case of dragons does it meet any kind of traditional fantasy setting.

This is a bit iffy of a conjecture. For one, while Tolkien did indeed popularize the notions you put forth,he was neither the first, nor is his interpretation that incongruent with folklore and myth. Victorian fantasy, if anything is the outlier. Anyone familiar with the Norse and Celtic mythology that Tolkien was drawing upon recognizes his interpretations as merely drawing on older sources than what would have been the "pop culture" or zeitgeist of his era (e.g. the Victorian nursery fairies). Moreover, in this regard, Tolkien was following in a tradition started before him with Lord Dunsany, William Morris, E.R. Eddison, etc. Beyond that, the elements you're claiming as "Tolkienesque" were not intrinsic to D&D, in fact not present at all in OD&D. They were a veneer dropped on after the fact, and by that point there were a number of other significant influences such as Poul Anderson that combined into a D&D interpretation of, for example, elves, which are not much like Tolkien's elves at all. Certainly the triad of Elf/dwarf/halfling is directly lifted from Tolkien, but its a surface addition to the game that in and of itself doesn't define D&D in any meaningful way.

Quote from: TristramEvans;920164This is a bit iffy of a conjecture. For one, while Tolkien did indeed popularize the notions you put forth,he was neither the first, nor is his interpretation that incongruent with folklore and myth. Victorian fantasy, if anything is the outlier. Anyone familiar with the Norse and Celtic mythology that Tolkien was drawing upon recognizes his interpretations as merely drawing on older sources than what would have been the "pop culture" or zeitgeist of his era (e.g. the Victorian nursery fairies). Moreover, in this regard, Tolkien was following in a tradition started before him with Lord Dunsany, William Morris, E.R. Eddison, etc. Beyond that, the elements you're claiming as "Tolkienesque" were not intrinsic to D&D, in fact not present at all in OD&D. They were a veneer dropped on after the fact, and by that point there were a number of other significant influences such as Poul Anderson that combined into a D&D interpretation of, for example, elves, which are not much like Tolkien's elves at all. Certainly the triad of Elf/dwarf/halfling is directly lifted from Tolkien, but its a surface addition to the game that in and of itself doesn't define D&D in any meaningful way.

And Edison didn't invent the light bulb by himself. He had a crew of researchers. But he was the person who brought it to the public. In the same way, Tolkien didn't create in a vacuum but he popularized the genre. Even if D&D's creators read all Tolkien's influences and contemporaries (which they likely did) through the 80's and 90's whenever someone tried to pitch a D&D game, they would ask "Have you read Lord of the Rings?" It is the touchstone that people would reference.

Again I'm not saying D&D = Tolkien, but you're suffering from the curse of knowledge. As someone who has dipped deeply into the game and compared it to the literature, the gulf seems like the Mariana Trench. To anyone else who looks at the map, and compares the two, it's just a line on the map and the two are situated right next to each other. Sure there's some water between them, but they're in the same region.

Because of the curse of knowledge I doubt you'll be able to see it from that perspective though. That's okay, but for the majority of humans, D&D bears more than a passing resemblance to Tolkien. Yes there are differences, I'll grant that in spades. It was clearly written with many influences but when you make the D&D poster it looks an awful lot like the Lord of the Rings roster in a dungeon fighting Smaug.

Quote from: daniel_ream;920133That's where I'm going to stop you.  I would argue that that average media consumer is familiar with a wide variety of D&D tropes and that they got none of them from either playing D&D or reading fantasy literature (except perhaps licensed D&D novels).  They're absorbing them from the cultural zeitgeist, cartoons, video games, and movies.  I know a ton of millenials who love playing Munchkin and watching Adventure Time; none of them have ever played D&D (or indeed, any other RPG) and when I asked a couple of them they were surprised to learn that those properties were based on it.  They just accept the D&D tropes as something all fantasy has.

On the other hand, it mostly has to do that a large number (if not majority) of culture's creators nowadays did play RPGs when they were cutting their teeth in creation aspect.