Tolkien and Gaming: Dungeons & Dragons
How Tolkien's work was stolen to create the most successful TTRPG ever
Welcome all to the first of a three part series which will examine the impact of J. R. R. Tolkien’s body of work, with particular focus on The Lord of the Rings, to the modern sphere of gaming, including video games, board games and tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs). Let us begin by looking at one of the longest-lasting and currently one of the most popular TTRPGs of all time: Dungeons & Dragons. I believe it is fair to say that D&D would not exist if it were not for the literature of Tolkien, or at the very least, it would be wildly different from the form it takes today.
For anyone unfamiliar with D&D or TTRPGs in general, Dungeons & Dragons is a game in which players design original characters, then play by describing their characters’ actions through speech, perhaps accompanied with gestures; oftentimes dice are rolled to determine whether or not the action the player wished to perform is successful. During a game, one player is designated as the Dungeon Master (DM) or Game Master (GM) whose role is to describe a fictional setting (typically in the fantasy genre) and circumstances to the other players, make judgements on certain rules, and act as all non-playable characters (NPCs), allies and enemies alike, as opposed to the other players who only act as the character they have created. While some players may wish to use a physical board or other means of representing the characters and setting of the game, this is not required – all that is needed is paper and pencil or other means of taking notes, and one set of six different types of die, which these days can be achieved with a number generator through the internet. At its core, D&D is a collaborative, improvisational story-telling experience which can showcase the imagination and creativity of its players.
Now, let us dive into the early history of the Dungeons & Dragons, its creation and subsequent versions, and what it all has to do with Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings. Much of the following information comes from an article written by Nicolas Ricketts, curator of The Strong National Museum of Play, which you can find here. The Strong is located in Rochester, NY, and specializes in the collection and history of toys and various types of games, and by the way is both incredibly interesting and entertaining – I highly recommend checking it out if you have the opportunity.
The 1st Edition of Dungeons & Dragons was designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, and a basic set was produced in 1973 before the first official edition was published by Gygax’s publishing house Tactical Studies Rules Inc. in 1974. D&D quickly became successful, allowing TSR to publish more titles. In 1975, and Larry Smith designed a tabletop “war game” he called Battle of the Five Armies, clearly based on the event of the same name in Tolkien’s The Hobbit. In 1976, TSR purchased the publishing rights to this game, which soon drew the attention of intellectual property lawyers from a firm which had licensed the rights to Tolkien’s work. The fact that the title of the game is so blatantly stolen from The Hobbit is still surprising to me, and clearly it was upsetting to the lawyers as well since they started an investigation into TSR’s other properties. While Gygax admitted to be a fan of Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings, he had stated during D&D’s development that there were not “any direct influences” to the author or his work. However, that didn’t stop TSR from receiving a cease-and-desist order in 1977, which then resulted in TSR changing the names of several of the creatures which appeared in D&D. Here are some of the most notorious examples:
· “Hobbits” were changed to “halflings.”
· “Ent” was changed to “treant.”
· “Nazgul” was changed to “wraith.”
· “Balrog” was changed to “balor.”
So I guess that whole “no direct influences” thing was lie. Gygax would go on to say years later that the works of Tolkien “had a strong impact on the development of Dungeons & Dragons” (Ricketts) – sure, but changing “strong impact” to “directly inspired by” may be more accurate.
Other terms such as “Elves,” “Dwarves,” and “Dragons” remained the same since Tolkien did not directly invent these concepts and they have been seen in the fantasy genre well before Lord of the Rings, harking back to the mythologies and stories from which Tolkien derived inspiration. Legally these name changes allowed TSR to continue to operate and prosper, but TSR was not required to alter the description of any of these creatures. The rules of D&D functioned in essentially the same way it had before; treants are still tree people, wraiths are still dark, spooky boys, and halflings are still short kings. By the way, I’m a bit surprised that TSR was able to get away with calling one of their races of people “halflings,” since that word is used in Lord of the Rings as another way to refer to the hobbits, most often by men of Gondor. It’s likely because “halfling” was a word with a different meaning before Tolkien used it; according to the Oxford English Dictionary, “halfling” dates back to 1656 in Scottland, Ireland, and regions of northern England derived from the Scot word hauflin and meant a young boy or girl who was not yet fully grown. The same idea can likely be applied to Orcs, which also appear in D&D. The concept of orcs as a fantasy race was popularized by Tolkien, but it was legally acceptable because the creatures were not actually invented by the author. The term seems to be derived from the Latin orcus (“hell”) or the Italian orco (“demon” or “monster”).
The point is, just because the names of certain things in Dungeons & Dragons were changed, it did not change the fact that the inspiration behind many of these things can be directly traced back to Tolkien and Lord of the Rings, and because of this, D&D simply would not be what it is today without him. Let’s take a moment to look at some of the other things the creators of D&D “borrowed” from the mythos of Tolkien.
Elves: The concept of elves has existed long before Tolkien, being popular figures in Norse and Germanic mythologies, however, they were very different from the elves of modern high fantasy. At the time of the Late Middle Ages, the English word “elf” has the same connotation as the word “fairy.” These elves were seen as small creatures – sometimes invisible or winged – with playful or mischievous dispositions. Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Nights Dream and his trickster character Puck played a large part in reinforcing this idea in the public consciousness well into the 19th and early 20th centuries. With The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien presented the idea that elves were more human-like: they were taller and more beautiful, more wise than the elves of the past and the humans of Middle-earth, skilled in magic, possessing sharper senses, and typically lovers of poetry and song (also they had pointed ears, which was actually not a staple of all elves). Tolkien also seems to be the first author to suggest that elves are immortal. Dungeon & Dragons chooses to present their playable race of elves with these characteristics, and D&D as well as other post-Tolkien elves are often described as skilled archers, which is almost certainly due to Legolas. Tolkien’s influence was so strong that at times even the older elves from the mythologies have been retroactively depicted more like the elves of modern fantasy – and example of this can be seen how the game God of War (2018) chooses to depict light and dark elves of Norse mythology. D&D also features a playable race called half-elves, the children of a human and an elf, which might be taken from Elrond.
Rangers: Rangers are a playable class for your character in Dungeons & Dragons for players who want to play as a skilled hunter and tracker. This is of course inspired by Aragorn’s title of Ranger from Lord of the Rings, but to provide further evidence, Professor Jeff MacLeod notes in his article “Tolkien and Dungeons & Dragons” that in the 1st Edition of the Player’s Handbook, “character progression titles for the ranger class bestow the title of ‘Strider’ (p. 25) at second level; Strider, of course, is the nickname given to Aragorn the ranger by the people of Bree and used affectionately by Sam Gamgee…” (MacLeod).
Mithril: Mithril is the fictional metal of the Dwarves of Moria, also called “truesilver.” Gandalf describes it this way in The Fellowship of the Ring: “All folk desired it. It could be beaten like copper, and polished like glass, and the Dwarves could make of it a metal, light and yet harder than tempered steel. Its beauty was like to that of common silver, but the beauty of mithril did not tarnish or grow dim” (Tolkien 317). In the world of Dungeons & Dragons, mithral with an “a” (though also sometimes spelled “mithril” *facepalm*), is a rare metal called “truemetal” by dwarves and is described as lighter and stronger than steel with a silvery-blue sheen when forged. Need I say more? In the game, mithral armor can act as an upgrade to other types of armor and can also protect from certain types of magic. To be fair to D&D, lots of other fantasy franchises have stolen the idea of mithril too; one example comes from the Elder Scrolls video game series.
Dungeons & Dragons has made a massive resurgence in popular culture in recent years – I imagine the success of Netflix’s Stranger Things and its depiction of the game helped contribute to this. I want to take a moment to mention just a few of the things that have emerged from the success of the TTRPG.
Dungeons & Dragons was an animated kids television show based on the game which ran for three seasons between 1983-1985. IMDb gives it an 8/10.
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023) is a fantasy/action film set in the world of D&D featuring an original story and actors such as Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Justice Smith, and Hugh Grant. IMDb gives it a 7.2/10.
The Legend of Vox Machina is an ongoing animated action show on Prime Video based on a campaign run by the internet series group Critical Role, featuring the original players of the campaign as the voice actors. At the time of writing it boasts an IMDb score of 8.2/10 and a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 100%. In addition to Critical Role, other popular groups which record their D&D game sessions for an internet audience include Dimension 20, High Rollers, Acquisitions Incorporated, and Legends of Avantris to name a few.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is an RPG developed by Larian Studies set in the world of D&D and plays with the set of rules from the 5th Edition. It recently won the award for Game of the Year for 2023.
Since what we know as Dungeons & Dragons would not exist without Tolkien and Lord of the Rings, none of the above titles would exist without the author either. People tend to recognize how pervasive Lord of the Rings is in pop culture, but I don’t think it is widely realized that what it has directly inspired is also such a dominant force in pop culture. I think it’s appropriate that a work with such an incredible story spawned a game system which is designed to tell stories and share them with others, much in the way that the Fellowship of the Ring often share their adventures with each other throughout The Lord of the Rings.
Works Cited:
Oxford English Dictionary. “halfling.” https://www.oed.com/dictionary/halfling_n?tab=meaning_and_use#2223416
MacLeod, Jeff. “Tolkien and Dungeons & Dragons.” The Artifice, the-artifice.com/tolkien-dungeons-dragons/.
Ricketts, Nicolas. “Cease-and-Desist: Don’t Mess with Tolkien.” The Strong National Museum of Play, 27 June 2022, www.museumofplay.org/blog/cease-and-desist-dont-mess-with-tolkien/.