We can all differentiate between ‘Lord of the Rings’ and ‘Dungeons & Dragons‘ without much trouble. The first is an epic trilogy by JRR Tolkien and the other expands over decades of player-dependent imagination and lore. Beyond being both fantasy, they’re nothing alike, are they? Well. Certainly not what Tolkien’s heirs thought at the time… And rightly so.
Dungeons & Hobbits
Although Gary Gygax, co-creator of D&D, has once said that he did not even like Tolkien’s work, the truth is that in his first edition he went beyond homage and inspiration, bordering directly on plagiarism. In fact, in the first editions of the role-playing game, the race of the halflings was called, simply… Hobbit. Of course, the matter ended up being resolved in a lawsuit.
Trial in which, by the way, Tolkien’s heirs also asked not to use words such as “dragon”, “dwarf” or “elf” because they appear in ‘The Lord of the Rings‘. As we now know, words that already belonged to the language could be used freely, while others inherent to the writer’s work, such as “ent” (which in D&D was, without giving it half a twist, a living tree), had to be eliminated in successive editions. The enemy remains, only now it is called “treant”. Three more letters, zero judgments.
They are not the only characters viciously plagiarized by Gary Gygax. The Balors were called “Balrogs” in their initial notes, even though in this case they have wings as a way to differentiate themselves from the original, and a very powerful metal species is called “mithril” or, as it later became known to avoid direct plagiarism, “mithral”. Like the Ricky Rouse mouse, wow.
There is much more where historians have been scratching the socarrat of D&D only to discover that there is much they owe to Tolkien, from the idea of the “community of heroes” itself to very specific things like the mines where the dwarves dwell and which resemble (little) surprisingly to Moria. Come on, all that was missing in D&D was the presence of a unique “ring” to throw into the volcano of the “Vespino”. Thank goodness it has been normalized over time and we can roll 20-sided dice and enjoy the novels at the same time without having to choose. And now, duck, watch out for that balr… balor!
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