Xanther's Taxonomy of Alien Minds
Forgotten Futures - 'The Scientific Romance Role Playing Game'
Literary Sources of D&D
Rule 68A - A must read for Classic Traveller refs
Mustaches of the 19th Century
A Return to the Stars
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After a veeeeerrrryyyy long, and mostly unplanned, hiatus, Stuart and I got
together to play more Stargrave in recent days. It was good! It was also a
bit ...
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Posts
Re: Literary sources.
ReplyDeleteNice list and mostly spot-on, but I'd have to quibble with his attempt to reinsert Tolkien into the lists. I'm not sure that the books have anything Tolkien in them except the races, and dwarves and orcs and elves and such appear in plenty of pre-Tolkien sources such as The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson.
Certainly the style and atmosphere of pre-Dragonlance D&D looks more like the sword & sorcery stuff than Tolkien's epics. This changes drastically during the 80's and things begin to get a stronger and stronger Tolkien feel that culminates in 2nd Edition.
Gygax has mentioned on several occassions that he has only read LotR once and has a poor memory of it since he didn't like it. And, he only added dwarves, elves, halflings and the like because of the demand of players who did like Tolkien.
Oh, Three Hearts and Three Lions is not based on The Song of Roland.
One thing that everyone always forgets when speaking of half-elves is that the line of half-elves founded by Earendil and Elwing are special not just because they are half-men/half-elves, but also because they are also from the line of Thingol and Melian. Their ability to choose between mortal and elven lives are because their line is so closely intertwined with that of the Maia. Other half-elven lines, such as that of the princes of Dol Amroth, or most importantly the line of the Dunedain themselves, being descended from Elros and mortal yet very long lived and with no few "elvish" traits, are not of such importance, and if you look to the lifetimes of these half-elven lines it is these "half-elves" that were the basis for the D&D half-elf, not the specific members of the line of Earndil and Elwing.
ReplyDeleteI tried to read Three Hearts and Three Lions years ago, upon finding a copy at a used bookstore, but I just couldn't get very far into it. It just seemed odd and abrupt to me.
ReplyDeleteThe Lankhmar stories, on the other hand, I will recommend to anyone who likes D&D. I love Fritz Lieber's writing style - that was a guy who knew how to weave words together.