Given the age and vastness of Western fantasy tradition, how come that everyone nowadays views "elves, dwarfs, halflings" as the "default" set of races to treat in a game, rather than, like, "centaurs, fairies, trolls, goblins" or "werewolves, mermaids, giants, dwarfs" or really any other combination like that?
Because Tolkien invented the allegedly vast Western tradition.
>>48319988
>what are Greek mythology, European folklore, classical literature and fairytales
Tolkien and/or D&D are default fantasy in the popular mindset, therefore, their default is western fantasy's default. That's literally it.
>>48319988
Alright everybody, first retarded post of the thread.
>>48320384
You're not going to just come in here and deny that a LOT of fantasy works are either directly derivative of Tolkien, or inspired heavily by things like table-top RPG's which themselves were directly derived from Tolkien are you?
I'm not going to claim that unique and creative stuff doesn't exist, but there is a shitload of low-tier psuedo-Tolkien filler out there.
>>48320381
/thread
>>48319961
>elves, dwarfs, halflings
Same reason that all Star Trek aliens are just humans with funny colored skin or forehead ridges.
The more human your non-human races are, the easier it is to create a consistent and believable culture for them. It's easy to imagine what short people who like mining or tall people who live a long time would be like, but trying to figure out what a centaur civilization would be like is tricky.
>>48320415
There's a big difference between saying that and saying he invented western fantasy tradition, which has existed for thousands of years before in forms which are remembered to this day.
>>48320420
>The more human your non-human races are, the easier it is to create a consistent and believable culture for them. It's easy to imagine what short people who like mining or tall people who live a long time would be like, but trying to figure out what a centaur civilization would be like is tricky.
The Greeks didn't seem to mind it much. They're just Huns who are fused to their horses. It's about as in-depth as stereotypical dwarf culture, i.e. "mining, smithing, loves alcohol and being grumpy".
>>48320500
He invented the only part that anyone gives a shit about today, which is all that really matters for these kinds of arguments.
No one is reading the godamn Orlando Furioso or whatever other crap you had in mind.
>>48320420
What is the Horta?
>>48320525
And then you wonder why people call you a retard.
>>48319961
>how come that everyone nowadays views "elves, dwarfs, halflings" as the "default" set of races to treat in a game
Because D&D
>>48319961
DnD and Warcraft
>>48320535
You got an argument chief or just gonna keep plugging your ears and pretending to be above it all?
Greek myths get tossed into shit all the time, but elf/dwarf/orc has a chokehold on most fantasy and thats a fact.
To elaborate: because of D&D, there's an extremely deeply ingrained belief that the "default" gameplay of any TRPG consists of a bunch of murderhobos delving into a dungeon and climbing back up with the treasure so they can do it again somwehere else. One advantage of all the "like a human but with funny proportions" type races is that it's easy to write this kind of adventure for them.
Consider:
>Centaurs
Complicated to create enticing loot for, since their different body shape means they can't use a lot of the standard human loot.
>Fairies
Would be perceived as overpowered due to being able to fly (I'm talking Victorian flower fairies here, not "BEAUTIFUL AND TERRIBLE ELDRITCH GODLINGS" like the industry's milked dry today), which makes a lot of physical challenges/traps ineffective.
>Trolls
Too big to bring into a dungeon which would be just the right size for the other party members.
>Mermaids
Only useful if the adventure takes place by the sea, a.k.a Aquaman Syndrome
>Giants
See trolls above
>>48319961
Because you're the hero and you will easily identify with "humans, only shorter and tougher"
And before someone brings it up: one of the biggest slices of the population of folklore, mythology and fairytale characters, anthropomorphic animals, are completely impossible to bring into TRPGs nowadays because they either attract furries or people who are terrified of furries, and couldn't work back in the 60's because they were seen as childish. You're limited to the fantastic humanoids, and then because of the reasons described above you're limited only to those which are shaped, sized, and have roughly equivalent abilities to humans. You aren't left with a lot to work with.
>>48320532
Life, Jim, but not as we know it.
>>48320343
That isn't what we really draw our modern idea of typical high fantasy from. In the average person's mind, there is a divide between 'fantasy' and 'mythology'.
This divide exists in practice, too. High fantasy is generally about a fictional world with fictional rules and entire fictional races that live among humans. Mythology and folklore expands upon reality by adding supernatural beings that, for the most part, do not coexist with humans in close proximity. Greek mythology does not have a satyr empire anywhere, because that would clash entirely with reality.
Tolkien basically did invent the high fantasy genre.
>>48320588
Centaurs are also huge. Imagine bringing an entire horse man through a cramped dungeon. They could use human weapons, though, couldn't they?
Although I think other kinds of beastmen should be more prevalent, goatmen, ram-men, etc. They're humanoid enough to use most loot.
>>48320643
You're underestimating the laziness of 1970's game designers.
>Waitjustaminute, a faun wouldn't be able to use the same magic boots as everyone else, would they?
>My God, you're right! We'd need to invent something else just for them!
>QUICKLY, ERASE IT FROM THE LIST, REPLACE WITH HALFLING
>>48320620
Spectacular.
>>48320643
>goatmen
Every satyr is that guy by nature. They helped some heroes and gods but can easily become as annoying as kenders.
>>48320678
For a fair period in European history, they were toned down into basically "another kind of person", though. You can see sanitized vestiges of that in The Faerie Queene, they appear in quite a few Victorian fairy tales in the limited role of "someone who lives int he magic forest", and it continued all the way until C.S. Lewis and The Chronicles of Narnia (sure, Tolkien threw a fit at him that the satyr should totally try to rape the girl instead of serving her tea because it'd be "inaccurate" otherwise, but that just goes to show what kind of autistic That Guy Tolkien was).
>>48320700
Basically for a lot of European history most people thought of fauns as "how D&D treats elves, except with horns".
>>48320714
It seems that a lot of this family friendly stuff comes from 19th century. Can you find such examples from 17th century and earlier? I can't think of any.
>>48319961
>>48319988
>>48320384
>ask a question
>answer the question
>call the answerer a retard
/tg/ discussion at its finest!
>>48319961
It's a domino effect.
>Tolkien creates LOTR
>Moorcock et al. create grimdark anti-LOTR fantasy
>Gygax mixes Tolkien and Moorcock into D&D
>Games Workshop takes D&D, adds more grimdark anti-LOTR fantasy to make Warhammer
>Blizzard takes Warhammer and makes it cartoonier and less grimdark, creating Warcraft
>Blizzard continues, turning Warcraft into World of Warcraft
>>48320740
Well, The Faerie Queene is from 1590 or so. Amusingly, Sir Satyrane (clever naming) featured as a good guy in the chapter about chastity, of all things.
You read that correctly: the satyr wasn't just a good knight, he was a good knight who was most famous for keeping it in his furry pants.
>>48320775
Don't forget Conan - he was pretty essential for D&D too.
Him and the rest of Appendix N.
>>48319961
The Tolkien pundits have the truth of it.
Popularity of a single work leads to imitation. Those imitations permeate the public view until they become what is expected, regardless of nitche origin. They define the genre or at least what is considered conventional. Once something is accepted as conventional there becomes an antipathy against any deviation. Thus the new standard becomes the expected and any deviation is derided. Given time, the habit of equating older to better, using terms such as the original and classic, further establishes the trend setter until it becomes religiously above reproach.
Tolkien stepped into an under exploited nitche for his time. He did so in a manner that appealed to masses rather than a smaller target audience. Now we are stuck with him. Similar story with Gygax, not exactly, there was fr more backstabbing and politicking in that genre growth spurt. A very recent example is the d20 system.
>>48320913
On the plus side, it's not unthinkable that in 50 years or so something like Harry Potter might take its place. Then the standard races would be human, goblin, centaur, and house elf!
You know, the whole idea of "a party of adventurers composed of the members of different races" is pretty Tolkien-esque. While there were exceptions before that, it was mostly all humans all around.
>>48320929
What about werewolves, giants and veela?
>>48320929
I don't know about that. Potter flared up pretty big and inspired a lot of imitators, but the craze didn't last as long.
Things move way faster now than they did back when LoTR was published, and I don't think anything has enough time to embed itself as a permanent cultural phenomenon rather than a craze that lasts a few years.
>>48320975
They don't get statues in the Ministry of Magic, now do they? Neither do merpeople for that matter. Or any other kind of intelligent magical being.
>>48320988
well a bit point in the books was that wizard society is pretty fucking racist in general, its just that voldemort was a super racist by comparison
>>48320983
Depends on what you consider embedded. It did introduce the word "Muggle" into the common jargon, which is a pretty significant achievement (very few literary works have introduced new words into the English language in recent memory), for example. It also either revived or recreated, depending on whom you're asking, both the "Changeling Fantasy" (i.e. "your parents aren't really your parents and you're actually super special") and "Fantastic School" subgenres, especially in the sense of making them approachable to a more adult audience. Also, young adult heroes for fantasy/science fiction works not aimed specifically at children. Look over basically every mainsteam science fiction work nowadays. The vast, vast majority star teenagers whereas this wasn't the case before.
>>48321018
True, but thats not to say that fantasy/sci-fi for young adults and children was unknown before either:
See Heinlens juvenille works, most of Andre Norton, Piers Anthony, Bruce Coville, Jane Yolen & Goosebumps.
Each of those had a pretty big catalog of books, its just that Goosebumps aside they didn't have as big of an impact as the Potter series.
>>48321057
Oh, forgot to add in Applegates Animorphs series, which predated Potter as well and had a teen cast.
>>48321003
Voldemort was just making magical Britain great again.
>>48321057
>>48321073
True, but you can recognize that the conventions have changed. The heroes act different, the settings tend to have different elements, etc. Obviously, in some cases the differences are bigger or smaller (Applegate's works were always shockingly mature, while Goosebumps reads like the author thinks the target audience is three years younger than they are), but they are undeniably there.
>>48321018
>Also, young adult heroes for fantasy/science fiction works not aimed specifically at children.
LOL if you think that Harry Potter wasn't aimed at children. The books grew up with their intended audience but they weren't ever intended to be for adults, its just that childish adults latched onto them too.
>>48321093
That's less because of Harry Potter and more because of the more recent "revolutions" started by Twilight and The Hunger Games. Each one of those spawned a massive host of imitations in its time (The Hunger Games' "nonconformist girl rebels against a future dystopia which revolves around some highschool social convention" has practically become a subgenre all on its own). Harry Potter just happens to have happened long enough ago that we can say for certain that it had a degree of endurance that it's still unclear if these do.
I think it's because people will always waste too much time trying to figure out how to concievably fuck it, and things that are roughly human size/ shape make that easierI apologize if this becomes a monstergirl thread, but I still believe this
>>48321125
That's depressingly likely, though.
>>48321675
What is?
>>48320796
True, but the Conan strain of fantasy tends not to bother with nonhumans at all.
>>48322129
Well, Elric of Melnibone belongs in roughly the same genre, and it had Melniboneans and Myr people.
>>48322234
That's fair. Moorcock's work is much more an offshoot of sword and sorcery than a response to Tolkien. And a lot of the other s&s stories from around Moorcock's era also had demihumans; it was just less of the a thing in the original pulp magazine era.
Not sure if that change can be said to be a Tolkien effect, or if there's something else going on that I'm forgetting.
>>48320983
The imitators also took more to the 'hidden magical world' elements rather than the races and mechanics.
>>48322811
What imitators are you talking about?
>>48322129
Pretty much the mindset of Conan is that all non-humans do not belong and mean us harm in some way a-la Lovecraft.
>>48323086
Every YA fantasy novels for a while after HP got popular.
The future dystopia stuff is only recently breaking the trend.
>>48321082
I am stealing this.
>>48321117
>its just that childish adults latched onto them too
It's always important to remember that there are many, many childish adults.
>>48319961
Lord of the Rings influenced D&D, D&D was the progenitor of fantasy RPGs. People who get into fantasy often read/watch LotR early on in their experiences, people who get into RPGs often play D&D first.
>>48320384
I mean it's nice that you claimed it your title, but why link another post?
>>48322811
Urban fantasy has been a thing for longer than Harry Potter, although I think that was mostly with vampires and the like. Harry Potter definitely popularized the whole "secret magic school" thing that you can see all over the place, though, be it actually about wizards or about a secret demigod summer camp or whatever.
It's definitely repopularized the whole "muggle who is secretly awesome" wish fulfillment trope as well - you know how John Carter and Three Hearts and Lions have an IRL dude thrown into a fantastic world, but that later got depopularized in exchange for people native to the fantasy? Yeah.
>>48324766
I don't think that genre ever really left, DESU. It was always one of the most popular ones.
>>48320700
I vaguely remember reading something about Tolkien slagging off C.S. Lewis and Narnia because he used creatures from multiple mythologies.
That said I thought they were friends? Or at least part of the same social group
>>48325603
They were friends and frequently exchanged letters. This is why Tolkien, who was otherwise a very timid, polite person, allowed himself to act snarky with Lewis' writing. They both had a great deal of respect for each other.
>>48325642
I do love old-timey writer writing-circles, they sound like they were the best bants.
Like that time that Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft and some other people collaborated on a story (bear with me, this is all off the top of my head).
Lovecraft wrote the first chapter about a guy who gets kidnapped by aliens and turned into a shoggoth and "woe-is-me, the horror of it all".
Howard wrote the next chapter where the guy decided, "fuck it, if I'm a shoggoth I'm gonna be the best damn shoggoth who ever shoggoth'd" and started fighting people to become the king of the shoggoths, which the other two guys ran with.
Apparently Lovecraft thought it was fucking hilarious
>>48320762
Maybe the person answering shouldn't be a colossal retard then
>>48325603
C.S.Lewis and J.R.R.Tolkien were both in the same writing club and later both served in WWI and became the sole survivors of said writing club.
Also, Lewis was Protestant while Tolkien was Catholic.
From what I've heard Tolkien wasn't too fond of the whole thing with Aslan being literally Jesus, although I'm not too sure if that's true.
>>48325918
IIRC Hyboria is canonically the prehistory of Lovecraft's world. That's pretty rad.
>>48320525
>He invented the only part that anyone gives a shit about today
And the thread question was about WHY that is, you goddamn retard. It'd be like if someone asked "Why did Germany lose WW2" and you answered with "Because there is no Nazi Germany"
>>48326096
I reject your primitive notions of linear time!
>>48320343
>>48320384
Elves and dwarves have changed appearance and attitude throughout history. The two mythologies where you'll find elves are the closely related Nordic and Celtic mythologies. The dark elves seem closer to dwarves, as they live underground and were able to craft new hair for Sif after Loki cut it off, both of these are main themes in for Tolkien's dwarves.
But for elves and dwarves in celtic literature. In celtic myths, elves are seen as more mischievous if not out-right malevolent. Old medicine books like Balt's Leechbook and Wio Faerstice list elves as the cause for such maladies as elfshot, a pain caused my elves shooting you with arrows. Later we can see the myth of elves have stayed mostly the same in Romeo and Juliet, during Marcutio's speech about Queen Mab, how she may give women pleasure nightly pleasure or warts. Here we see fairies and elves used interchangeably. Even as late as 1884, when Princess Nobody was published and The Shoemaker was translated, elves were both described as, and drawn as little fairy people.
Scandinavian elves are much more similar to celtic elves than Tolkien's elves, though they would fall between the two. While some elves were small like celtic elves, as in The Elf of the Rose, but they could also be the size of a human when luring men into their elven dances.
>>48326795
Dwarves are much less interesting. Tolkien's dwarves are closer to the myths of gnomes, which Paracelsus used interchangably with pygmys, called them earth elementals who live underground and are only about a foot tall. Later, closer to Tolkien's life, gnomes were described as small people who live underground and protect riches in Among the Gnomes: An Occult Tale of Adventure in the Untersberg.
Tolkien elves, dwarves, and humans are a christian allegory. The Silmarillion is a bible of sorts. Dwarves as a sort of Ishmael - an interference with God's (Illuvatar's) providence brought about by impatience, who would throughout history be at variance with the Elves. Abraham and his sons compare with Fanwe. Faenor is not Joseph, but instead is cast from Eden. Earendil has something in common with Enoch and Elijah, in that he, as mortal, achieved passage to the blessed realm. The devil was imprisoned for 1000 years and allowed free again, exactly the same as Melkor. There are several differences that I wont go into, but the parallels are many.
Tolkien grabbed bits and pieces of several myths, kept some characteristics, and added heavy christian framing. While he didn't invent them entirely, he did put a new spin on elves and dwarves that has lasted into current pop culture.
So kindly fuck off you grognard. Stop being a Fantasy Hipster.
>>48326795
>>48326812
On the one hand, this is all so misinformed on so many levels you'd think it was deliberate trolling. On the other hand, it's too detailed to have been the efforts of a troll. Idiots work in mysterious ways.
>>48326795
>>48326812
>>48326848
I just stopped reading at "Celtic". If you don't know that Tolkien's intention was to emulate NORSE mythology, you can't really say anything right past that point. It's just far too central to the premise of the argument.
>>48326896
It's actually wrong in both cases, since both Norse and Celtic mythology presented elves (or, rather, elves and the "Celtic" equivalents, by which I'm going to assume he meant the Irish aos sidhe because he's evidently an ignorant moron and doesn't realize "Celtic" stretches all the way there from France) as a classification of earthbound deities or nature spirits, which Tolkien's work does very well. Especially in the Norse sagas, elves were depicted as somewhat akin to angels, being "humans, but better" in every way. Humans could even become elves after death. The trickster fairy myth our retard has read about in an RPG supplement purported to be written by someone who's probably never so much as read the wikipedia page on the subject only came into existence centuries later as a result of Christian demonization. While there were depictions of troublesome "elves" in some relevant mythologies (Wales' native stories of "tylwyth teg" come to mind) they are clearly not what Tolkien has intended and likely not from the same historical period.
>>48327026
Demonstrating that even the Norse were faggots who wrote Mary Sue mythology.
Tolkien's dwarves were just an anti-semitic depiction of jews. Gold obsession, expulsion from their homeland, diaspora and all that.
>>48327143
Again, showing blatant ignorance of the subject matter. Tolkien was not an antisemite and, in fact, highly critical of them. When asked by a Nazi sympathizer, in a letter, whether he was Jewish, his response was "I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people." His depiction of the dwarves as Jews was INTENDED, by him, to be POSITIVE. He saw their quest for a homeland as a noble endeavor and the dwarves themselves as a fundamentally noble, albeit flawed people who didn't deserve to live in the diaspora. That people chose to focus on the bits he added as their flaws was very far from what he wanted.
>>48327308
And in his case, it wasn't even like modern days where you have to say shit like that for PC purposes. Back in his time hating Jews was the accepted mainstream.
