The Books That Founded D&D

[James Maliszewski]

The Books That Founded D&D

Beyond Tolkien and "Lord of the Rings," there were plenty of other authors and series that inspired the D&D series.

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[oliveira8]

I don't know if it's very sad or very awesome but I own works from all those authors....

 

[Jaebird]

I'm now imagining John Carter brandishing a long sword, going at the Barsoomians berserker-style... Which I wouldn't put it past him, since I haven't finished reading A Princess of Mars.

 

[Vierran]

I have books from a lot of these authors especially H.P.Lovecraft and this just makes me want to go back and read them all or find a bunch of people to play D&D with, haven't done either in a long while.

 

[Shamus Young]

I am one of the people who has perpetuated the notion that Tolkien led directly to D&D, mostly because of the intro to my comic:

http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=612

I knew it wasn't a strictly true assertion when I wrote it, but it was the set-up for the joke and I never expected many people would read it anyway. Hundreds of thousands of readers later, I have perhaps earned my share of the blame for giving JRRT too much credit and other authors not enough.

 

[Therumancer]

You forgot Michael Moorcock, who is probably the biggest influance on D&D aside from Tolkien and Vance (Jack Vance that is, which is where the spell memorization system came from). Indeed the entire Lawful/Neutral/Chaotic - Good/Neutral/Evil system came from Moorcock's works and at least to begin with sort of required an understanding of them to fully grasp.

The prescence of the Melnibonean Mythos in "Dieties and Demigods" was a big deal, and it was omitted alongside the Cthulhu mythos from later printings. It being noted that Nehwon (Fritz Leiber) being pretty much the only published universe to retain any kind of consistant connecton to D&D, though in the end I think it was one of the smaller influances actually.

 

[Merrik Waters]

"Books that founded D&D" Pfff i think the real question is "Books founded BY D&D"

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

I don't know if it's very sad or very awesome but I own works from all those authors....

Same here. You can almost see the magic system growing from Jack Vance's work, and Fighters literally scream Robert E.Howard, as does most of Vallejo's artwork.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

You forgot Michael Moorcock, who is probably the biggest influance on D&D aside from Tolkien and Vance (Jack Vance that is, which is where the spell memorization system came from). Indeed the entire Lawful/Neutral/Chaotic - Good/Neutral/Evil system came from Moorcock's works and at least to begin with sort of required an understanding of them to fully grasp.

Think you missed this bit Rum,

Even more significantly, Anderson's conception of an eternal struggle between Law and Chaos inspired British author Michael Moorcock, whose own stories of Elric of Melniboné would in turn inspire the earliest versions of D&D's alignment system.

 

[Therumancer]

You forgot Michael Moorcock, who is probably the biggest influance on D&D aside from Tolkien and Vance (Jack Vance that is, which is where the spell memorization system came from). Indeed the entire Lawful/Neutral/Chaotic - Good/Neutral/Evil system came from Moorcock's works and at least to begin with sort of required an understanding of them to fully grasp.

Think you missed this bit Rum,

Even more significantly, Anderson's conception of an eternal struggle between Law and Chaos inspired British author Michael Moorcock, whose own stories of Elric of Melniboné would in turn inspire the earliest versions of D&D's alignment system.

I did, but still it occurs to me that not having his name in bold (when I scanned it) is a bit much. What's more Elric of Melnibone is only a small part of his entire "Champion Eternal" cycle which is what was inspirational. Elric was simply one part of a greater story which also encompassed and directly crossed over with characters like "Hawkmoon". Hawkmoon's stories (The Mad God's Amulet, etc..) arguably being where the concepts behind alignments like "Lawful Evil", "Lawful Neutral", and "Lawful Good" are explored, that universe being almost entirely governed by order/technology.

Whether Moorcock was inspired by anyone else on that list, he himself had a bigger direct influance on D&D than just about anyone except maybe Tolkien and Howard.

 

[Reneux]

Thanks for this article, I started playing D & D back in the origin days, and appreciate this kind of article. I used to come to the website for yatzee, and now I find that's just part of the draw for me. Keeps ups the good works!

Fondly,

 

[James Maliszewski]

Whether Moorcock was inspired by anyone else on that list, he himself had a bigger direct influance on D&D than just about anyone except maybe Tolkien and Howard.

There's no doubt that Moorcock's works were influential upon D&D (particularly the Elric and Hawkmoon series), but direct references to these stories in the game are few. As I quoted, when Gary Gygax took the opportunity to note the strongest literary influences on the game in his estimation, he didn't mention Moorcock, even though Moorcock is consistently included in D&D bibliographies. Like Tolkien, I think Moorcock's influence tends to get overstated because their contemporary popularity makes their influence easy to spot, whereas how many people nowadays have even read Abraham Merritt or Fletcher Pratt and could point out all the many things D&D borrows from their writings?

 

[Aedwynn]

I don't know if it's very sad or very awesome but I own works from all those authors....

Very awesome, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. I'm sure you found many happy hours of reading, there - and that's really all there is to it. ;-)

 

[ThaBenMan]

Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories are awesome, and definitely bring D&D to mind. I'll have to check out some of these other authors - Abraham Merritt sounds interesting in particular.

 

[Aedwynn]

I am one of the people who has perpetuated the notion that Tolkien led directly to D&D, mostly because of the intro to my comic:

http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=612

I knew it wasn't a strictly true assertion when I wrote it, but it was the set-up for the joke and I never expected many people would read it anyway. Hundreds of thousands of readers later, I have perhaps earned my share of the blame for giving JRRT too much credit and other authors not enough.

I actually thought that DM of the Rings was excellent in that it seemed (to me, anyway) to point out the fact that when played as straight as possible, the Lord of the Rings - the work that many, many people take to exemplify everything that is D&D - actually makes for some outstandingly BAD Dungeons & Dragons gaming - which (again, to me) seemed to be poking fun at the idea that LotR led directly to D&D in the eyes of many gamers.

The intro to the comic sort of reinforces that joke, for me.

 

[Artemis923]

You forgot Michael Moorcock, who is probably the biggest influance on D&D aside from Tolkien and Vance (Jack Vance that is, which is where the spell memorization system came from). Indeed the entire Lawful/Neutral/Chaotic - Good/Neutral/Evil system came from Moorcock's works and at least to begin with sort of required an understanding of them to fully grasp.

Think you missed this bit Rum,

Even more significantly, Anderson's conception of an eternal struggle between Law and Chaos inspired British author Michael Moorcock, whose own stories of Elric of Melniboné would in turn inspire the earliest versions of D&D's alignment system.

I did, but still it occurs to me that not having his name in bold (when I scanned it) is a bit much. What's more Elric of Melnibone is only a small part of his entire "Champion Eternal" cycle which is what was inspirational. Elric was simply one part of a greater story which also encompassed and directly crossed over with characters like "Hawkmoon". Hawkmoon's stories (The Mad God's Amulet, etc..) arguably being where the concepts behind alignments like "Lawful Evil", "Lawful Neutral", and "Lawful Good" are explored, that universe being almost entirely governed by order/technology.

Whether Moorcock was inspired by anyone else on that list, he himself had a bigger direct influance on D&D than just about anyone except maybe Tolkien and Howard.

Good to see somene else that's into Elric. You guys are hard to find.

Blood and souls for Arioch!

 

[Wildrow12]

Fascinating! It's not everyday that this place actually teaches me something.

Although now I have a terrible temptation to start another D&D group just to throw some of my stuffiest, by-the-book-fantasy, rule-lawyering friends against Martian horrors.

 

[rampantcreature]

Very interesting. You've just added to my list of books to read, thanks!

 

[dukethepcdr]

I've read some of the books by Poul Anderson, Jack Vance and Edgar Rice Burroughs but not all of the ones listed. I hadn't even heard of Abraham Merritt or Fritz Leiber before. Time to head to my local library and delve into some classic fantasy books! The ones about Fafhrd and The Gray Mouser sound interesting.

 

[dukethepcdr]

Fascinating! It's not everyday that this place actually teaches me something.

Although now I have a terrible temptation to start another D&D group just to throw some of my stuffiest, by-the-book-fantasy, rule-lawyering friends against Martian horrors.

Yeah, wouldn't that be something: to make a D&D quest in which a group of classic D&D heroes find themselves having to fight aliens on Mars. I'll have to read those Burroughs books too. Who knows, maybe we'll start a new "world" in D&D set on Barsoom (Mars) that will be as big if not bigger than Eberon or Forgotten Realms.

Now that I think of it, some of the D&D worlds do seem to have a bit of an alien world quality to them. Take for example the lands in the Dragonlance book series. As I remember, they see two moons in the sky and different constellations than Earth people see.

Maybe D&D has more in common with "Soft" Science Fiction (as opposed to "Hard" S.F. which tends to focus more on technology and imagined advances in the sciences) than most of us ever thought.