Did Tolkien inspire Dungeons & Dragons?

Tolkien and Dungeons & Dragons have long been at the epicenter of the fantasy genre and its enthusiastic fan base, so you don’t have to look hard to find similarities between the two; both include similar races and character types, both involve large fantasy world-building, and both produce epic battles between good and evil characters.

Although there have been many cultural and literary influences on D&D, when it was first conceived, it eagerly made reference to the world of the Lord of the Rings, with Elves, Hobbits, Orcs and Ents included by name in the game. However, the actual relationship between the Lord of the Rings and D&D is both more complex and controversial, having shifted throughout the years owing to the assertion of intellectual property rights on behalf of Tolkien and his publishers.

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Here we look at how the Lord of the Rings influenced D&D and how this influence has waxed and waned throughout the game’s history.

Early Origins

D&D was first co-developed by Gary Gygax as an expansion of a medieval miniature tabletop game based on Chainmail wargaming rules, with the addition of fantasy elements and more developed character and skill classes. Released officially in 1974 with many variations developed throughout its long history, Gygax has cited pulp, fantasy and science fiction novels —such as Robert E. Howard’s Conan and Edgar Rice Burrough’s John Carter character books — as immediate influences on the game.

The importance of the Lord of the Rings to the genre of fantasy literature and culture as a whole has proved particularly enduring – providing a mature template for deep world-building, and laying out tropes in fantasy storytelling that felt real and historic.

Tolkien’s rich fantasy world, on the other hand, first reached the general public with The Hobbit (1937) and was followed by The Lord of the Rings (1954-1955), predating D&D by several decades. Despite being published in the 1950s, however, the Lord of the Rings only really became popular in the 1960s, when it received an immense public response in the United States, particularly on college campuses.

The result was a wave of pastiche fantasy novels that took from the series’ literary world, and a number of books that have been written as a kind of response to it. The fantasy landscape of the 1970s was therefore heavily influenced by the Lord of the Rings, with The Silmarillion — a collection recounting the history and mythology of the universe of Eä, including the land of Middle-Earth — being posthumously released in 1977.

Given that the Lord of the Rings was so immensely popular in the fantasy genre during the decades surrounding D&D’s creation, this inevitably seeped into the creation of the game and was ever-present in the imagination of those that played it. Nevertheless, the world of the Lord of the Rings itself has been influenced by a whole host of historical myths and legends of Norse, Greek, Germanic and Finnish origin, having been conceived as an attempt to create an English national mythology which therefore borrows far and wide. Concepts such as good vs evil or light vs dark are of course not original to the Lord of the Rings, but they may have fed through the filter of character and race traits into the alignment system of D&D.

The Lord of the Rings in D&D

Some of the most obvious Lord of the Rings influences are found in Dungeons & Dragons’ original character races, creatures and classes: Hobbits, Elves, Dwarves and Humans were included, with monsters such as Balrogs and Ents — which are highly unique to the Lord of the Rings — also being featured in the game. And just as they had done in the novels, Dwarves made sturdy fighters, Hobbits made good thieves and Elves made good rangers.

What’s more, the Ranger class itself was markedly taken from the character of Aragorn, with class traits like scrying resembling palantir use in the Lord of the Rings. The result of this obvious lifting in characterisation drew a lawsuit against D&D for plagiarising names and characters, after which they were forcibly changed. Hobbits became Halflings, Nazgûl became Wraiths, Ents became Treants and Balrogs became Balor. In terms of its world and characters — rather than its storyline and methods of play — D&D was therefore very much influenced by the world of the Lord of the Rings.

Understandably, D&D has traditionally downplayed this link to avoid litigations, with its creators remarking that they had only made reference to the Lord of the Rings from a marketing perspective. The truth, however, is probably somewhere in-between.

Attempts to Discount Influence

Although the influence of the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit on D&D seems fairly conspicuous, with creatures and races drawn both partially and specifically from the two works, the makers and publishers of D&D have attempted to resist comparison to affirm their intellectual property rights.

The truth behind the influence of the Lord of the Rings is perhaps more complicated than simply dismissing it as an attempt to avoid monetary losses. Although the Lord of the Rings was a cultural phenomenon that penetrated the fantasy world of the 1970s onward, D&D took on a far wider host of influences than just the popular world of Middle-Earth. The basic concept behind D&D has more to do with episodic pulp and adventure fiction which involved the raiding of dungeons in the search for hidden treasure, where allegiances can change based on insular quests of retrieval.

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The Lord of the Rings was at once immensely historical in its structure and moral in its message – the adventure by Frodo to destroy the ring was all-encompassing. In tone, then, D&D was and is worlds apart from the Lord of the Rings, replicating only some of its characters. Even then, there are broader differences. Elves are more like faeries than the ancient immortal kinds found in the Lord of the Rings, and the world is less the product of a complex cosmology than it is a multiverse filled with an array of demons and demigods.

Re-Acceptance

The Lord of the Rings still remains a pre-eminent tour de force in fantasy literature, having influenced countless writers since its first publication.

Yet where the world of Middle-Earth may continue to influence and inspire others as a solid work of fiction, D&D is fluid and ever-changing, drawing on a wider ancestry of influences with each new incarnation. Whether that’s in reference to contemporary fantasy literature, film or television, D&D has grown to include more complex and morally ambiguous characterisation, taking on influences like Ursula LeGuin’s Tales from Earthsea. This has seen a broader relaxation, too, in Gary Gygax’ relationship with the Lord of the Rings.

Where once the links between D&D and the Lord of the Rings were purposefully downplayed, now they are acknowledged within the context of the specific climate of the 1970’s fantasy subculture. Where the ancestry of the Lord of the Rings can be traced through D&D’s host of characters, classes and, indeed, its world, D&D remains an evolving, interactive game that brings in equal parts its own distinct fantasy world with that of its audience.

In the 1970s, that was the Lord of the Rings; now it is so much more.

Creative Commons credit: Mirkwood Ranger by J. Lazarus, A Hobbit by Julia Carral Escamilla and Wisterian Elder by Teri Grimm.