The Importance of Presuppositions

In my line of work, I have to be acutely aware of presuppositions (one of the demands of doing theology). Our culture does not do a very good job of exploring or even being aware that we make them all the time. So, a definition is in order: a presupposition is a thing tacitly assumed beforehand at the beginning of a line of argument or course of action.

Let’s explore an element of D&D that is near and dear to my heart, but is widely rejected by those who play: Race-as-Class. I think part of the reason that so many people balk at the idea of Race-as-Class is that they believe it fundamentaly prevents people from playing a particular race the way they want to. Personally, I have a metal figure in my collection that is a dwarven wizard. I love the personality that exudes from the sculpt. Race-as-Class seems to dictate that I can never use that character concept in my favorite versions of the game. 

What this perspective fails to see is the presupposition that must be made in gaming worlds that have no Race-as-Class: since the mechanics of dwarf and human characters are so similar, there isn’t much actual difference between humans and dwarves.

In contrast, Race-as-Class poses siginificant mechanical differences between the two races. The culture that arises from humans as clerics, fighters, magic-users, and thieves is necessarily very different from that of Dwarves. One is mechanically diverse, the other isn’t.

Thus, when I pull out that dwarven wizard figure the machanics of Race-as-Class put far more weight on my choice of class than the versions of D&D that don’t use it. In both cases, I will essentially be playing a human character; however, while the mechanics of a dwarven wizard don’t say a lot about my character, playing a dwarven magic-user that uses the mechanics of a human magic-user says a tremendous amount about the world, the history of my character, and dwarves themselves. In order to become a magic-user, my dwarf has had to reject his culture and his people to the point that mechanically he no longer functions as a dwarf. For all intents and purposed he is a human.

In both scenerios, I come to the same basic conclusion: mechanically a dwarven magic-user/wizard is essentially a re-skinned human; however, when one looks at the necessary presuppositions that Race-as-Class demands, I get a much more interesting re-skinned human — one that I don’t think I would have arrived at without Race-as-Class.

I say all this as a preamble, because I did something quite outside my comfort zone this week. Chris Gore of Film Threat is producing a new show on his YouTube channel which seeks to bring Star Wars fans together to discuss whether or not Disney has murdered the franchise. The format is that of a court with those who are on the side of the prosecution and those who are on the defense.

I was asked to be on the first show, because so few people in the sphere of YouTube Star Wars fandom were willing to argue the defense. It was all in good fun and I think the overwhelming consensus is that my side lost the argument (not surprising, since Chris Gore’s audience is largely unhappy with Disney Star Wars). I want to explain why I was willing to be on the Defense and that has to do with presuppositions.

While the language “Disney Murdered Star Wars” is hyberbolic, there is a necesssary presupposition behind that statement: Star Wars fans are beholden to Disney for all things Star Wars. I vehemently disagree. 

The presupposition that I make is one that I believe better reflects reality: Star Wars is part of our culture. It no longer belongs to Disney or George Lucas in any way other than the legal right to produce Star Wars products. We, as the fandom have far more power than Disney thinks we do (or we do, depressingly). The Audience is a vital part of any artistic endeavor, especially when it comes to beloved franchises like Star Wars.

Very few Tolkien fans, for example, would argue that Amazon’s Rings of Power has any real place in the lore of Middle-earth. Likewise, the fans have the ability to embrace or reject anything Star Wars. As an example, few Star Wars fans acknowledge that the Star Wars Christmas Special has any real standing in Star Wars lore. Yes, it is the first appearance of Boba Fett, but does anyone argue that the Mandolorian, or any other Disney product, isn’t following the lore established in the Christmas Special? No, because the fandom doesn’t care about the Christmas Special. It does about the EU and the many ways Disney has contradicted it. Despite the fact that Disney has de-canonized the EU, it still lives on because the fans have embraced it.

The only way that Disney can murder Star Wars, in other words, is if we aid and abett them by rejecting Star Wars as a whole. As long as the fandom exists, Star Wars lives. And, if the fandom wakes up and realizes its own power and importance, we may see a day when the owners of the legal right to produce Star Wars products will listen.

Why Star Wars, etc. Now S*cks

I was one of those kids who saw Star Wars (before it was dubbed A New Hope) in the theater. I was doomed to be a sci-fi/fantasy fan for the rest of my life. I began to buy comic books. I found Dr. Who on my local PBS. My mom brought home the Holmes Basic Box set. I tried reading the Lord of the Rings and found I could scratch my fantasy itch elsewhere. I even tolerated watching Star Trek with my Trekkie friends. Though for many years my entertainment dollar has rarely gone towards anything beyond RPGs and war games, I am still a fan at heart and hope that some day there is a franchise out there that I will find worthy of my time and my dollar.

Unfortunately, companies like WotC, Disney, WB, Paramount, etc. have all decided that I am toxic and whatever is the most recent flavor of -ist this week. I want Star Wars, Marvel, DC, and even Star Trek to be good; however, I don’t just think they won’t be anytime soon, I know they won’t be.

In the past, I have critiqued various movies and shows for abandoning the Divine in their story telling. God is the first storyteller. In the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament quoted by the writers of the New Testament and the oldest version of the OT we have today, the verb in the first sentence in Scripture (In the beginning God created) has the same root as poetry. This version of to create is only used when in association with God, and he creates (makes poetry) through speaking, “Let there be light.” Thus, just as all creation was doomed to decay and death by humanity turning its back on God, stories are doomed to meaningless drivel when the storyteller turns their back on the source of all stories.

While I still stand by this critique, there is another level of horrid storytelling that has been cropping up recently that I think needs to be addressed because it goes beyond turning its back on God and turns its back on the human person. Let me explain.

Reality can be broken up into two categories: the general and the particular. For example, I am using a computer in order to write this post. Some portion of those who are reading this post will also be using a computer to do so. While the term “computer” helpfully describes all of these devices, I am using a particular computer and the reader is using another particular computer. All computers = the general; my computer = the particular.

The crux of my critique depends on the fact the human beings always experience the particular and never experience the general. Whenever I encounter “computer” in my life, it is always a particular computer. The general “computer” is an immaterial concept that, although outside the particular experience of human beings, is nonetheless very real. The general allow us to make sense of the particular. Without the general, our empirical experience of the world would be a chaotic string of ever-changing data with no basis for interpretation or understanding.

From a Christian POV, this is how we experience and understand the Trinity. The general is God and the particular is the persons of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It is why Christ became a human being — so that we can intimately know God in the particular.

The reason story telling in the present is so awful is that the characters that occupy our stories are the general instead of the particular. Let me illustrate this my favorite literary inspiration for the Thief class — Bilbo Baggins. In JRR Tolkien’s works, Bilbo Baggins is important because he is a particular hobbit with individual quirks, strengths, weaknesses, and interests that qualify him to be the burglar that Gandalf chooses for the purpose of recovering what was lost to the dragon Smaug. If The Hobbit were written by today’s crop of storytellers, Gandalf would have chosen Bilbo because he is a hobbit and no other reason.

Characters today are largely just a collection of general categories based on immutable characteristics. While I acknowledge the reality of bigotry in the world — there is no question that bigotry exists and affects people on a regular basis — none of us have ever experienced “white,” “black,” or whatever category is fashionable in the present moment. We have, however, experienced particular human persons that have these immutable characteristics.

Herein is the insidious nature of the kind of storytelling we see in today’s popular culture, and why it is so awful. Characters are no longer human persons. They are no longer unique, irreplaceable, and valuable individuals. Characters are merely categories. As individual persons, they have no value because they can be replaced by another character from the same general category.

This type of storytelling can only produce uninteresting and valueless stories because the individual characters that occupy these stories have no intrinsic value in their particularity. As consumers, it becomes increasingly difficult to care about these stories because there is no particular to encounter — these stories deny us the very basic human experience of the particular that is our reality.

This also explains why it is so easy to label fans who demand the particular as toxic and -ists of various flavors. We are denying and criticizing the immutable characteristic — the general category — of the character. Since there is no particular and only the general, we must therefore be toxic and -ist.

All of this dehumanizes everybody. History has shown again and again that when we dehumanize the other, nothing good follows.

The Importance of Evil

I think I agree about the ‘creation by evil’. But you are more free with the word ‘creation’ than I am. Treebeard does not say that the Dark Lord ‘created’ Trolls and Orcs. He says he ‘made’ them in counterfeit of certain creatures pre-existing. There is, to me, a wide gulf between the two statements, so wide that Treebeard’s statement could (in my world) have possibly been true. It is not true actually of the Orcs – who are fundamentally a race of ‘rational incarnate’ creatures, though horribly corrupted, if no more so than many Men to be met today. — J.R.R. Tolkien Letter No. 153

Implied in this quote about orcs is a cultural critique of modern man divorced from God. The “rational incarnate” creature is one that has replaced God with reason, and having done so has rid the world of Good and Evil. Fundamentally, this is why I have a real problem with WotC and its new approach to orcs.

Evil, like cold, is an absence of something. In the case of cold, it is an absence of heat. In the case of evil, it is the absence of good. In a Biblical context, God is the source of all goodness, because Christ Himself tells us:

“Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone.” —Mark 10:18 

Thus, when humanity elevates rationality to the point that it thinks God is no longer necessary, a biblical critique would argue that the society built on that foundation is evil. From a practical point of view, good and evil cease to make any sense.

To go back to the heat/cold analogy, imagine that we have lived our entire lives near the arctic circle and have never seen a world without ice and snow. In such circumstances, it is impossible to describe what it might be like to live in the Sahara, because we have never experienced that kind of dry heat in our lives. In the same way, if we live a life without good, we have no reference with which to understand evil.

The consequence of such a world-view is catastrophic on many levels. The first half of the 20th century saw the rise of what Tolkien might call rational incarnate societies. They murdered others and their own in the tens of millions. Absence any concept of good, rationality justified mass murder. The level I am concerned with today, however, is in the realm of stories…specifically about how we construct them in context of an RPG.

The most universal and archetypal stories that have cultural significance and last through the ages are those that at some level pit good versus evil. In my lifetime, Star Wars played with these archetypes brilliantly. Homer, Beowulf, Gilgamesh, the Bhagavad Gita, King Arthur, Shakespeare, etc. all meditate on Good versus Evil. Good yarns have good characters who have complex and interesting motivations inspired by the classic conflict of good and evil.

In context of RPGs, especially classic versions of D&D, character motivation becomes a central feature of the game. Every player has to wrestle with why their character does what they do. Every player has to wrestle with what has the most value. This is particularly true when XP isn’t exclusively given for combat. In older versions of the game where 1xp=1gp, and a goblin was worth 5 xp, getting the 500gp treasure guarded by the goblins became an exercise in weighing values. In campaigns where 1xp=1gp spent, gaining a level became an exercise of literally putting your money where your mouth is, and then living with the consequences.

In this context, orcs are the personification of the absence of good. Whether physical manifestations of sin, spawn of the fallen world, or a humanity that has turned its back on God, orcs allow us to have a reference point for what is good. Without them, every character is an orc. They may look like a human, gnome, or elf, but without the reference point of evil, everyone may as well be an orc.

In a world where everything is an orc, good stories become impossible. Archetypes disappear, because the only character motivation left is selfishness. Without evil, why do anything? When selfishness is the motivation for everyone, everything become normative. Killing millions becomes rational.

Telling stories and playing RPGs become boring and pointless.

So, for me, having a world where orcs are evil is essential for not only understanding the game, but being able to actually play it.

Gamer ADD: Adventures in Middle-Earth 5e

I have long been tempted by the call of Adventures in Middle-Earth 5e. I have read good things, it uses D&D as a chassis, and I have been extremely curious as to how these guys mechanically expressed the breadth and depth of Tolkien's world. Unfortunately, I have never been a big fan of Tolkien's works. I slogged through the Lord of the Rings because I felt I needed to, but it took me years and several aborted attempts. Thus, the price tag was always too high for something that emulates books I was never in love with in the first place.

That all changed when Cubicle 7 offered up their Middle-Earth 5e library on Humble Bundle. I grabbed it and have been reading through the Players Guide. It is as good as advertised and I am very impressed. In order to explain why I love this so much (especially given my own dislike of Tolkien's books), I have to explain my relationship to baseball.

I do not like baseball. It is boring. The season is way too long and no one game seems to matter all that much, even in post season. I have tried to like it for both family and friends. Back in the day, I would try to watch Atlanta Braves games on TBS and Chicago Cubs games on WGN. I even went to a couple of live MLB games. I just couldn't bring myself to care.

Here's the thing though: I completely understand and appreciate why baseball fans love this game. I have always wished I could do the same because I love watching people who love baseball talk about baseball. Of all the 30 for 30 documentaries ESPN has produced over the years, my favorite is still the one about how the Boston Red Sox came back from three games down in the ALCS against the Yankees. It is one giant homage to Boston Red Sox fans and their love for their team. I love it because it is about everything I love about people who love baseball.

I have a similar relationship to Tolkien as I have to baseball. I don't like reading his books and I have no intention of reading them ever again, but I love to hear people talk about them and why they love them. This is why I actually slogged through the Lord of the Rings — I wanted to be part of that conversation. I wanted to love and talk about Tolkien that same way people who love the books do.

What I am trying to get at here is that what makes Adventures in Middle-Earth 5e so good isn't that it is Middle-Earth or Tolkien. What makes it great is that they get what people love about Tolkien: the themes, the ideas, the archetypes, the literary forms, the values, the world-view. Everything that I love hearing people who love Tolkien get excited about is in this game. It allows me to participate in that love in a way I could never have imagined myself doing.

Here is one of the highest praises I think I can give any game: I want to play this. Badly. Interestingly, I don't want to be the Loremaster/GM/DM/Referee whatever you want to call it like I do with most RPGs. I want to be a Player. I want to create a character and play.

To that end (and because I feel I have to whinge about something), I created this Character Sheet to replace the awful, boring, uninspired CS that comes with the game:

You can download it here.

One last thought. From a mechanical POV, I really appreciate what Adventures in Middle-Earth does with 5e. They push the concepts of Race, Class, and Background in the kind of experimental ways that I tried to with ba5ic. It has got me thinking of new ways to frame ba5ic — specifically in a Lovecraftian direction. Hopefully, these ideas will see the light of day prior to next New Years.

BTW I hope 2020 brings many blessings to us all.

Holmes & Cook: Elves & Dwarves

Those familiar with the works of Tolkien know that the origin of the orc is a deliberate breaking and twisting of elves by the evil guile of Melkor/Morgoth (the main antagonist of The Silmarillion). Given the influence Tolkien seems to have on Holmes, I think it is fair to assume a similar origin for orcs — they are a twisted version of elves (possibly as an attempt at a more malleable slave-version of elves by the humans of the suggested ancient civilization).

Using this as a point of departure, note the languages Holmes grants to the beginning Elf character:

Elves can speak the languages of orcs, hobgoblins and gnolls

Given that orcs are elves twisted beyond recognition suggests that the reason that elves know the language of the orcs is because it is a dialect of elvish. It follows that so, too, are the languages of the hobgoblin and gnoll. This suggests that hobgoblins and gnolls are either other twisted elves or a further twisting of orcs.

This vision is reinforced by the languages given the beginning Dwarf character:

Dwarves can all speak the languages of gnomes, kobolds and goblins.

Holmes essentially calls gnomes chaotic good hill dwarves:

Gnomes are similar to dwarves, whom they resemble. They are smaller, have longer noses and beards and inhabit low-land and hill burrows rather than mountains.

Kobolds are also described as a kind of dwarf:

These evil dwarf-like creatures behave much like goblins, but are less powerful.

The goblin behavior in question suggests that goblins, too, are a kind of dwarf:

They always attack dwarves on sight.

In other words, gnomes are chaotic dwarves, goblins are evil dwarves as are kobolds (possibly even a derivative of gnomes, due to their size). Therefore, the languages given the beginning dwarf character are likely all dialects of the original dwarven language.

This all suggests a very interesting definition of goblinoid, given how Holmes describes the hobgoblin:

Hobgoblins are big, powerful goblinoids

Since the suggested origin of hobgoblins is the elf and the suggested origin of the goblin is the dwarf, the term goblinoid seems to mean any race whose origin is the twisting of a progenitor race (such as elves or dwarves).

Given this statement by Holmes:

At the Dungeon Master's discretion a character can be anything his or her player wants him to be.

it follows that should one want to play a gnome, goblin or kobold that one could simply use the dwarf class as a template and, likewise, orcs, hobgoblins and gnolls could use the elf class as a template.

Holmes & Cook: Tolkien

For any one who has spent any amount of time reading blogs in the OSR corner of the internet, Appendix N is a very familiar term, because it is part of our shared experience of this hobby. In fact, if I understand correctly, when Goodman Games tosses their hat into the arena of FRPGs with Dungeon Crawl Classics, it is largely an exercise in tapping into source material like that found in Appendix N of the 1ed DMG.

In contrast, neither Homes or Cook provide much of a list of literary source material. I have yet to find anything at all in Cook (I am guessing he was quite comfortable with the list provided by Molday in his Basic Edition) and the only thing that resembles an Appendix N in Holmes reads as follows:

The imaginary universe of Dungeons & Dragons obviously lies not too far from the Middle Earth of J.R.R. Tolkien's great Lord of the Rings trilogy. The D & D universe also impinges on the fantasy worlds of Fritz Leiber, Robert E. Howard, Gardner F. Fox, classical mythology and any other source of inspiration the Dungeon Master wants to use.

I find this fascinating in both its brevity and its emphasis. Whereas other editions of D&D obviously invite payers to celebrate in a smorgasbord of pastiche of both fantasy and science fiction, Holmes seems to elevate Tolkien above every other entry in his abbreviated list of potential sources.

This emphasis is not limited to this list, either. He cites Tolkien twice in his monster section. He says of specters:

The "Nazgul" of Tolkien fall into this category.

And of wights:

Barrow wights (as per Tolkien) are nasty nearly immaterial creatures who drain away life energy levels when they score a hit in melee, one level per hit.

In addition, he uses the word hobbit on five different occasions for halfling. For example, in his explanation of the Cure Light Wounds spell:

During the course of one melee round this spell will heal damage done to a character, including elves, dwarves and hobbits.

He also mentions balrogs in a pair of explanations. For example:

Large or powerful creatures like demons, balrogs and dragons may be highly resistant to certain kinds of spells especially if thrown by a magic-user of lower level than their own level.

Having now spent the amount of time that I have with Holmes, I am not really all that surprised by how large a shadow Tolkien casts over this particular edition of the game. It explains the underlying culture implied by Holmes that moves from paganism to Christianity, because Tolkien's own devout Catholic faith heavily influenced the stories he told about Middle Earth. It also helps to understand the Dungeon as NPC that seems to ooze from the pages of Holmes. It can be understood as an expression of Tolkien's vision of the Long Defeat — where heroes descend into the depths to fight evil, knowing that even if they win today, ultimately they will fail.

There was a time in my life when I would have resented this overt homage to Tolkien and his creation. He was never, and may never be, one of my favorite fantasy authors. I do appreciate him, however, and I have come to realize that his influence over me has been more profound that I ever imagined. As such, I now appreciate the way that Holmes has allowed Tolkien to influence his edition of D&D. In many ways, this influence has resulted in a version of D&D that I have always wanted to play.

Mining Some Circa 1981 Gold

. . .many fantasy gamers see nothing wrong with a game-universe ruled by evil forces, or by a callous "Neutrality" barely distinguishable from evil, but let anyone suggest having an omnipotent good power, and they'll scream, "Blasphemy! That spoils GAME BALANCE!!!!

Is it my thesis that a D&D Campaign can assume the existence of an omnipotent God — in fact, the God of the Bible — without losing the quality of suspense, just as, in reality, the existence of that same God does not make life predictable or unchallenging on our "Prime Material Plane."

For those of you who follow this blog, you might mistake the above quote for something that I had written from one of my earlier posts; however, you would be mistaken. Rather, it is from an article that ze bulette of Dungeons and Digressions brought to my attention from the Oct/Nov 1981 issue of Judges Guild's Pegasus Magazine — Monotheism In Fantasy Games by Joseph R. Ravitts.

From my perspective, it is a fascinating piece of gaming history because it indicates that the seeds that eventually drove me away from playing D&D for many a year were already planted and bearing fruit in 1981. The fact that Ravitts is having to make many of the same arguments that I have in this blog (that monotheism is not only a legitimate choice in FRPGs, but is well supported by fantasy literature) demonstrates a trend within the hobby that may very well have contributed to that dark and ridiculous association of D&D with Satanism by the likes of Pulling, Schoebelen and Hickman. However, I think the most interesting aspect of this article (and what distinguishes it from my own writing) is that Ravitts feels the need to spend a lot of time arguing for a fantasy world where Jesus Christ is not one of many active deities.

Over the course of the last three decades, hobbyists have come to agree with Ravitts; however, the majority chose to rid their games of Christianity rather than pagan gods. Which, of course, is where I come in. I have endeavored to demonstrably find ways in which to go the other direction and play this game with a very strong Christian foundation. A foundation that was, at least in part, present in the early years of the hobby as evidenced by Ravitt's need to argue that Jesus Christ cannot coexist with the likes of Odin, Crom, Set, Cthulhu or Krishna as active deities that directly influence fantasy worlds through granting spells to clerics etc.

Here are (from my perspective) some of Ravitt's more instructive observations:

Jesus Christ had to warn His followers, "In this world you will have tribulation." Sam Gamgee, in The Return of the King had a vision of "light and high beauty forever beyond (Sauron's) reach," but this did not relieve him of the responsibility to fight against the immediate threat to his world.

Others will object that the stern moral authority of the Christian God puts too many limits on a character's freedom. But have you considered the restrictiveness of other cosmologies? The Eastern religions view man as the prisoner of Karma; in Greek mythology, gods and men were subject to Fate, and often brought on a predestined doom in the very act of trying to avoid it; and in Norse mythology, everything that a hero achieved or enjoyed was overshadowed by the inevitability of Ragnarok. The Judeo-Christian view, in contrast, dignifies mankind by asserting the our will is truly free, and our free choice is crucial to our eternal destiny (Genesis 4:7, Deuteronmy 30:11-14, Joshua 24:15, Matthew 23:37, James 1:13-14).

However, the true gem to be found in this article from the annuls of our hobby is Ravitt's description of his own campaign world. Citing the fact that C.S. Lewis had Aslan/Christ supply Narnia with human beings from earth rather than creating a whole separate human race, he imagines his own version of Middle-Earth where two or three hundred years after the fall of Sauron, God arranges for Christians from our world to be transplanted to Middle-Earth to preach the Gospel to the beings that inhabit it.

While I would not choose Middle-Earth myself, this approach has a tremendous amount of appeal. It plugs into a deep seeded trope within Pulp Sci Fi and offers a fabulous way to introduce all kinds of sci fi elements, as Ravitts himself points out:

Subsequent crossovers from our Earth brought in the English language — and whatever other elements of the real world I wanted to have appear in my game-world. (That's how you can get anachronistic items in your dungeon without spoiling the internal logic!)

This has caused me to have a very bad case of Gamer ADD because this has put an extremely cool twist on my proposed version of Greyhawk. Rather than use one of my Aslan-esque Christ analogues, I could actually use Christianity with the understanding that St. Cuthbert is one of those Christians brought from our world to preach the Gospel to the World of Greyhawk. Thus, whenever someone says, "That is St. Cuthbert's Church" it is understood that it is the place where you go to worship St. Cuthbert's God — Jesus Christ. It also gives me the freedom to introduce some of the more gonzo elements of the early hobby with impunity.

If you have access to Pegasus IV, I recommend reading Monotheism In Fantasy Games, if for nothing else than a fascinating look at the early years of the hobby.

Meditating on Tolkien

Recently, James posed one of his Friday Questions on envy. He was specifically interested in game systems and the communities that exist around them. Upon serious reflection, I am not that much envious of any group of gamers (indeed, via the blogosphere I get to be apart of a very special group of people). Rather, I grew up envious of those who had a love for J.R.R. Tolkien and his works.

Growing up, I was one of those slow readers who just didn't comprehend what I was reading until well into 3rd or 4th grade. By that time, I was already playing D&D. Since I wasn't able to understand what I was reading, I gave my Holmes edition to my best friend to read and he taught me. The main influence in his understanding of fantasy was Tolkien. By the time we started to play on a regular basis, he had read the whole of the Lord of the Rings three or four times. His efforts on world-building focused on a Middle-Earth-inspired continent he called Karafax (if I remember correctly) where the Dwarvish Oakenshield clan played a large role.

When reading finally became accessible to me, I found Tolkien beyond me. This frustrated me, exacerbated by disappointment. My grandfather died shortly before D&D entered into my life. The one thing that was bequeathed to me after his death was his boxed copy of Tolkien works. I was assured that my grandfather adored Middle Earth and everything about it. Unable to read it, and having parents who were uninterested in fantasy (at best) meant that I would be denied any kind of pleasure from Tolkien (and thus remembering my grandfather in one of the few things I knew about him) for decades.

Thus, I unconsciously rejected Tolkien as a source for my own world-building efforts and concentrated rather on obscure works of Sword & Sorcery in the hopes of finding something as special and as inspiring. As an aside, my own current group had an interesting conversation about demi-humans and our like/dislike for them. Elves are surprisingy despised and gnomes are very popular. I had to admit my own bias towards half-orcs, which stems from my affection for Garth the Overman from Lawrence Watt-Evans' The Seven Altars of Dûsarra. D&D has no overmen, but half-orcs have always proved to be a good substitute.

Recently, however, I have been re-examining my own relationship with Mr. Tolkien and his writing. Part of this has been doing something for my kids that I was denied when I was their age: everyday after school we sit together and I read aloud a little bit of The Hobbit. I have been pleasantly surprised how good it is, and am reminded by how large it looms in my own imagining of what D&D looks like.

I also recently ran across this series on modern fantasy and its relationship with Tolkien. I particularly found this quote of interest:

Tolkien himself was often moved by scenes he wrote displaying his characters’ “physical resistance to evil,” reverently calling their actions nothing less than “a major act of loyalty to God.” This loyalty, equal parts physical and spiritual, was in turn something that he believed “only becomes a virtue when one is under pressure to desert it.” The world of The Lord of the Rings is filled with great temptations of a sort that don’t lead directly to evil per se, but that lead to the abandonment of the physical resistance — the pain, the suffering — that Tolkien considered so central to his notions of true heroism.

Given James' recent hypothesis "You are What You Read or See" I have to admit that though I tried to abandon Tolkien all those decades ago, he has had a profound influence upon me and the way I play the game. Though I have played D&D since the 70s, I have only seen three of my characters get to 7th level or beyond. Personally, I love playing low-level (and low-life) characters. I love playing the role of that nobody (even reviled outsider — read half-orc) who is nonetheless willing to physically resist evil and make a difference, no matter how small. This has always had a far more powerful pull on me than the end-game of D&D with its high levels and castle-building ever did.