The Literary Influences on D&D

It's Pulp!

This is part of my video series on 0e Dungeons & Dragons. Watch it here:

In 1974, the wargaming world was changed forever, and a new hobby emerged. Role-playing games were now a thing, though there was no real name for a “pen and paper role-playing game” yet. Dungeons and Dragons - Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames campaigns Playable with Paper and Pencil and Minature Figures released in a boxed set. Since then, it has fascinated and enthralled gamers and gaming groups for 50 years. But let us propose a question:

What if the game's goal, tone, and point were largely misunderstood at the moment of its public introduction?

This is a question many who have purchased or were given the boxed set of three little brown books 50 years ago often raise their pitchforks in anger. But consider this a moment. Remove any bias you may have and consider the rules as they are, not what you want them to be or what you think they should be. If you can do this, you will find this an interesting question to ponder.

Let’s start by considering the literary influences of Dungeons and Dragons. In Book 1, “Men and Magic,” in the 1974 boxed set, Gary says the following in the forward:

“These rules are strictly fantasy. Those wargamers who lack imagination, those who don’t care for Burroughs’ Martian adventures where John Carter is groping through black pits, who feel no thrill upon reading Howard’s Conan saga, who do not enjoy the de Camp & Pratt fantasies or Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser pitting their swords against evil sorceries will not be likely to find DUNGEONS & DRAGONS to their taste. But those whose imaginations know no bounds will find that these rules are the answer to their prayers.”

I’ve made this point countless times. Dungeons and Dragons is a pulp simulation experience. The rules simulate the sorts of adventures Dave Arneson and Gary Gygax read. This means exploration of strange and alien places, like Guyal of Sfere, exploring the lands of the Dying Earth to seek the knowledge of the Curator. It is Prince Corum, Jhary-a-Conel, and Rhalina exploring the chaotic lands of Queen Xiombarg. It is John Carter surviving the world of Barsoom. It is Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser raiding the thieves guild hall of Lankhmar. It is Cudgel traveling far and wide over the dying earth in search of jewels and treasure at the behest of a sorcerer.

But what about Tolkien?

Gary had the following to say about the Professor:

“What other sources of fantasy can compare to J.R.R. Tolkien? Obviously, Professor Tolkien did not create the whole of his fantasies from within. They draw upon mythology and folklore rather heavily, with a few highly interesting creations which belong solely to the author such as the Nazgul, the Balrog, and Tom Bombadil. All of the other creatures are found in fairy tales by the score and dozens of other excellent writers who create fantasy works themselves: besides Howard whom I already mentioned, there are the likes of Poul Anderson, L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt, Fritz Leiber, H.P. Lovecraft, A. Merritt, Michael Moorcock, Jack Vance, and Roger Zelazny -- there are many more, and the omission [sic] of their names here is more of an oversight than a slight. In the creation of Chainmail and Dungeons & Dragons the concepts of not a few of such authors were drawn upon. This is principally due to the different aims of a fantasy novel (or series of novels) and a rule book for fantasy games. The former creation is to amuse and entertain the reader through the means of the story and its characters, while the latter creates characters and possibly a story which the readers then employ to amuse themselves. In general the "Ring Trilogy" is not fast-paced, and outside the framework of the tale many of Tolkien's creatures are not very exciting or different.

Tolkien includes a number of heroic figures, but they are not of the "Conan" stamp. They are not larger-than-life swashbucklers who fear neither monster nor magic. His wizards are either ineffectual or else they lurk in their strongholds working magic spells which seem to have little if any effect while their gross and stupid minions bungle their plans for supremacy. Religion with its attendant gods and priests he includes not at all. These considerations, as well as a comparison of the creatures of Tolkien's writings with the models they were drawn from (or with a hypothetical counterpart desirable from a wargame standpoint) were in mind when Chainmail and Dungeons & Dragons were created.

Take several of Tolkien's heroic figures for example. Would a participant in a fantasy game more readily identify with Bard of Dale? Aragorn? Frodo Baggins? or would he rather relate to Conan, Fafhrd, the Grey Mouser, or Elric of Melnibone? The answer seems all too obvious.”

Gary’s position amounts to, “Many fans expect hobbits and dwarves, so we added them. I don’t like that much, so I added the minimal amount possible to appease them. Tolkien's influence was minimal for me at best.” Greyhawk Grognard has a blog where he expounds on this. He says, “I am becoming ever-more convinced that Gygax’s attitude was influenced by the lawsuit from the estate of Prof. Tolkien that famously forced TSR to change hobbits to halflings and ents to treants, and may well have been an effort to avoid another.” This may be true. But I think, with the lack of Tolkien being mentioned in the forward despite the original 3LBBs having creatures like orcs and halflings or Chainmail having Balrogs, Gygax was not personally interested in Tolkien as much as maybe others were. He thoroughly appreciated the pulps in their frenetic style and adventure over the journeys of the professor. And I say this as someone who loves Tolkien and is an avid reader and rereader of his stories. Tolkien is just dressing in early D&D to a large extent.

When you look at the random encounter tables and see that a party can encounter a T-Rex while also encountering a band of orcs or that the deserts of 0e are simply Barsoom, full of Martians, you get a world that is not like Tolkien’s Middle-Earth at all. It is closer to a world seen in a campy pulp story.

Again, I say this as someone who loves Tolkien, but the Tolkien influence was something fans and gamers projected onto the game and not something as obviously projected onto it by its creators. However, I will concede to Greyhawk Grognard and others like The Alexandrian, who point out that it’s convenient to see Gary say he doesn’t care for Tolkien much while he is being sued by the Tolkien estate. What I am trying to say is that the feelings towards Tolkien seem similarly tainted as Gary’s feelings towards Arneson at the time. It’s hard to see them as objective. I have no dog in this fight, though; I just want to be objective here and be as close to the truth of the matter as possible. But I think the Tolkien influence, be it from players or from the designers, fostered an early expectation of the narrative game, which would later lead to Dragonlance and how that world and property fundamentally changed the expectations of games. But that is a whole other discussion for another day.

There is a lower level of stakes when you read many pulp stories. The Tower of the Elephant is not about Conan racing to end a dark lord or world-ending threat. Conan is trying to break into a wizard tower to steal a jewel. There is perhaps an element of this in Moorcock’s stories, though. In particular, I think of the Sword Trilogy. In The Queen of the Swords, Corum and his allies try to find a way to beat the extraplanar threat of Queen Xiombarg and her invading genocidal armies, ending with the final threat that still looms in the King of the Swords. That makes this story close to what many perceive as a modern D&D game. But I see this as an exception and not the rule in Gary's mind. But what about Dave Arneson?

Dave Arneson’s Blackmoor campaign was the progenitor of Dungeons & Dragons. Dave took Gary Gygax’s and Jeff Perren’s Chainmail rules and made something new, adding the dungeon delve to all the surface battles around Castle Blackmoor. Considering that in the Secrets of Blackmoor documentary and from what I can see of the campaign looking at it myself, the players fighting balrogs beneath the earth just scream Tolkien at me. And considering Tolkien for a bit, the Hobbit is not a world-ending adventure story. In my humble opinion, the Hobbit is closer to the Tower of the Elephant than the Lord of the Rings. A group of adventurers set out explicitly for treasure? Traveling through hostile elf lairs, maze-like forests full of spiders and misunderstood or forgotten sorcery, and eventually an actual underground dungeon delve into the lair of a dragon? Come on. That’s Dungeons and Dragons. However, even when asked, Arneson says the following about how the Blackmoor campaign came about:

“How did it all start in Blackmoor? I can’t really say. I had spent the previous day watching about five monster movies on Creature Feature weekend (ch. 5), reading a Conan book (I cannot recall which one but I always thought they were much the same) and stuffing myself with popcorn, doodling on a piece of graph paper. I was also quite tired of my [Napoleonic] Campaign with all its rigid rules, etc., and was perhaps rebelling against it too (in fact I’m sure I was!!).”

I notice a complete lack of Tolkien here, even from Arneson. This is not to say that once the idea of the Blackmoor campaign became more distilled, elements from Tolkien were not brought in. However, such a position seems closer to Gary’s view as well. That of Tolkien being ancillary, with pulp being the prime imaginative ignitor for it all.

This is just a long-winded way of saying there is a more nuanced view of the influences of the game’s assumed setting and tone. It’s a bit of Tolkien; he’s listed in Appendix N in AD&D1e, but Tolkien is only 1/29th or 3 to 4% of Appendix N.

If you want to understand what early D&D is trying to be, you need to read more than Tolkien. You must read Vance, Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Lovecraft, Poul Anderson, Burroughs, and others. This isn’t to say that Tolkien is bad. I love Tolkien. But if all you have is Tolkien as a reference, you are viewing D&D through only 3 to 4% of the lens of what the game is aspiring to be.