I was thinking about the "standard fantasy races" and a thought came to me:

>the popularity of catgirls and kitsune could be even higher

please no

>What would the standard fantasy races have been if D&D had not been inspired by Tolkien?
The popularity of Tolkien had a nontrivial hand in popularizing D&D, so it probably would have had to be made in a different time period IRL to have taken root.

That said, if the standard racial mix were to come from today, with what the younglings like to consume on their own time, I'm guessing we'd have playable vampires, werewolves, fairies, trolls, and catpeople by default.

It would all depend on what mythologies they were influenced by.

Here's my attempt at thinking of a few:

Celtic:

"Fair Folk"
"Little Folk"
Fomorians
Fir Bolg

Greek:

Satyr
Centaurs
Gorgons
Pygmies

Biblical:

Demons
Angels
Watchers
Nephelim

There wouldn't be. Gygax didn't like nonhuman PCs and only put them in after having his arm thoroughly twisted by Tolkien fans.

The correct question is "In an alternate universe in which D&D was created during a radically different fad, what would the races be?"

Idiots view the elf, dwarf, etc. as "classic," not realizing that the only reason they're "classic" is Tolkien fanboys. These are the equivalent sort of people who want to play Twilight vampires in WoD, etc.

>. The good guys in Sword and Sorcery stories are normally the guys with the swords, so magic systems inspired by them are likely to be much more sinister and personally costly to the user.

But think, this could have saved generations of bitching about how unbalanced a class archetype that is inherently OP is. Imagine.

Merlin is kind of anti-hero. He's both possibly a rapist and the descendant of a demon.

I remember an old video game I played that portrayed Merlin as this creepy old crank who may or may not turn you into a toad if you go into his tower and say the wrong thing. I think this is truer to is cultural aura and how magicians would be portrayed without Tolkien.

>Gygax didn't like nonhuman PCs and only put them in after having his arm thoroughly twisted by Tolkien fans.

Source?

It's a rule that you can make up anything about someone once they're dead.

Merlin was really treated as a manipulative creep until rather recently. Pretty sure that the Sword in the Stone animation was the first time he wasn't a half-step from blatantly evil.

>the only reason they're "classic" is Tolkien fanboys
>what is norse mythology

It was already said upthread above his post, we just chose to let him live his delusions.

Tolkien-fan's are big into alternate history.

And he included this so you could retcon their being elves, dwarves, halflings, etc.?

3.5 but all races are core

Core races would be Human, Eladrin, Dragonborn, and Tiefling.

All races as core is redundant.

Rules exist to make anything a starting race in 3.5

There would probably be a lot more hell in general if fantasy themed gaming would even be a thing. Which I kind of doubt.

Demons this. Witches that.

Thinking about it one of the most influential literary genres that is unambiguously per-tolkien would be gothic literature. Hope you like ghosts.

A modern fantasy dwarf has little in common with one from Norse mythology

100% irrelevant to the discussion? Unless you think there was some hidden contingent of diehard Asatru fans pestering Gygax to include demihumans against his will that history forgot and Gary never wrote about.

Remember, the idiots who think Tolkien races are classic would shit their intestinal lining out of pure rage of including other Norse races like, say, frost giants. Its always, 100% of the time, the Tolkien races (+gnomes) that are the 'classic' ones.

>There would probably be a lot more hell in general if fantasy themed gaming would even be a thing. Which I kind of doubt.

I think it's possible something inspired by pulp fantasy and classic mythology would still exist.

If it wasn't Tolkien, it might have been somebody who inspired Tolkien. Maybe Edward Plunkett?

>what is norse mythology
Not popular or well known. Or totally coherent. And Aesir and Vanir split is a much bigger deal in norse mythology than elves but how many people know about it? For that matter the most prominent mystical race is the giants - who don't resemble fantasy giants that much. Elves are just faggot spirit entities that have their own world not talked about much in the Yggdrasil multiverse, as I recall.

Merlin is definitely, what, chaotic good? By word of the guy who came up with the frikkin alignment, chaotic good. Likewise, good wizards are certainly important with regards to S&S of the time; though as far as I know borderline nonexistent in Moorcock's works (I could be mistaken, but usually his equivalent of good wizards are esoteric priests of Law and... one seductive technologist), goodly wizards are important in the works of HPL, Vance, Zelazny, Anderson, etc.

Hell, Anderson was the guy from which many of the D&D style conventions originated in the modern conception; dick ass skeezy wizard elves, paladins & holy swords, generic magic shops, etc.

"Chaotic Good" got radically reimagined as the editions went by, but Andersonian elves, Merlin, and Zeus all shared the same alignment for a reason.

You do know that Gygax took primary inspiration from authors that precede Tolkien, right?

Nordic dwarves are equidistant to D&D's drow and dwarves.

>BU BU THEY WEREN'T SPIDERY MISANDRISTS

They sure as hell weren't proud exemplars of melee combat

You'd probably have more worlds like those in Glen Cook's The Black Company or A Song of Fire and Ice where it's all human but there's a bunch of fantasy versions of real life cultures everywhere.

The best part is that Tolkien isn't even on the list of "most influential authors."

He didn't give DnD it's style, but he did give it his hobbits.

Hm? What is this list of "most influeintual authors" if not the DMG appendix?

The original appendix N has a long list of inspiration, but it segregates a few as the "most immediate influences."

A few being 6 different authors.

If you have read any of those authors, you really see their hard roots in DnD. Unlike Tolkien.

digital-eel.com/blog/ADnD_reading_list.htm

Ah yeah I forgot the short list at the bottom.

Not him, but I'm pretty sure that's true. Bear in mind that in the oldest versions of D&D, "Elf" was not a race but a class seperate from humans, racial level limits were a thing, and when halflings were originally introduced I'm pretty sure they were actually called "hobbits" until Christopher hit 'em with a lawsuit.

>Tolkien-fan's are big into alternate history.
You're a dumbass for attributing Tolkien's impact to "fanboys" or their preference for "alternate history." The fact is that LotR was very popular and had a massive impact on the fantasy genre, arguably inventing it as it's known today.

That's part of the reason why a lot of people call anything fantastic under the sun "Tolkien-esque": they understandably overestimate that impact, when in reality the work they're describing might actually owe more to more direct influences from authors like Howard and Leiber etc.

I can't give a full answer, but a line in an old fantasy wargame comes to mind:
> "Roll to see whose side the Elves take."

And an old fantasy novel I read referred to a female Elf as "Elfess". That's not one that's around any more.

Yeah, Elves might have remained morally ambiguous if it hadn't been for Tolkien.

They were pretty much morally ambiguous until about ... 2e? Hard to even say, as they were written as extremely flawed (in terms of character, not capabilities) even in the Complete Book of Elves and, of course, in Spelljammer.

>inb4 "they were chaotic good, just like Zeus, Thor, and Merlin, and those people would never do anything morally ambiguous"

So I'd say elves being not morally ambiguous was mostly just limited to FR and 3e.

No I don't know that. And I don't believe it either.

You can't easily separate the milk from the batter once it's already been poured. It's easy to say there were pre-Tolkien influences, but when you have built your imaginary world on a chassis of Tolkien fantasy it can be hard to say how much even the totally independent elements have not been influenced by the melding with the greater structure. That is, Tolkien bring aboard the concept of a living breathing alternative but complete fantasy world that you can walk around in, that has its own different but stable physics, history, and where various magical creatures have independent values and goals.

Classic mythology is pretty... misty. There's often more than one telling/lack of a canon and key concepts are often vague or ill defined. What is so "green" about the Green knight? It's also very metaphorical so the stories have a sense of mission or moral lesson to the audience. The fantasy is incomplete and only matters in relation to the central pillar such as King Arthur. What thoughts does the lady of the lake have? What is her original language, how does her magic work, what would she be doing if she wasn't throwing swords at people? This doesn't matter in proto fantasy. Also old fantasy is pretty much always our real world with mystical elements added in. A witch in the woods, not a witch in the woods of the realm of Dru'lil.

So you can have a vampire or whatever, but there is a big difference between a vampire in Greyhawk and a vampire from vampire myth. The difference is profound.

Centaurs, Minotaurs, Leprechauns, Trolls.

>built your imaginary world on a chassis of Tolkien fantasy
Your ignorance makes me doubt you have read any other authors, and even moreso, makes me doubt that you have even read Tolkien.

No wonder people were claiming belief in alternate history.

>Tolkien bring aboard the concept of a living breathing alternative but complete fantasy world that you can walk around in, that has its own different but stable physics, history, and where various magical creatures have independent values and goals.

Are you being an ironic shitposter or what? I don't get it.

Tolkien's contributions to D&D were:
1. His monsters (that had the serial numbers filed off; halflings, balors, treants, etc, plus orcs, giant eagles, and a few others; and the character of Gimli, who was made into Gimli: The Race, God knows nothing else about Tolkien dwarves made it in)
2. A few criminally underused magic items (crystal hypnosis balls, robes of scintillating colors)
3. Making elves so popular that Gygax decided to incorporate Poul Anderson elves.

What makes me wonder if you're just shitposting ironically is that you, like a confused person, seem to split the inspiration used in D&D into "Mythology" and "Tolkien," which is as grossly misleading as trying to say that the inspiration used in D&D were "HP Lovecraft" and "Hammer Horror films."

And for the record, while Tolkien elves do show up in a very vague fashion in The Hobbit, virtually nothing is known of them besides that they like to lives in the wood, party, and fight goblins. Anderson fleshed out elves slightly before Tolkien did. You're really not going to get a feel of D&D's wizardy elves from reading Tolkien.

If anything, Numenoreans will give you a better feel for D&D elves than Tolkien elves will, I would wager.

>What is so "green" about the Green knight?
I'm not certain what you're asking, here. He had green skin and green armor and green hair, and he rode a green mount. Are you asking about the SIGNIFICANCE of the color?

I definitely haven't read a lot and have a lot of knowledge blindspots on this subject. It is what it is. You got any actual objections are are you just gonna fake more outrage?

>No wonder people were claiming belief in alternate history.
You mean you? And I don't even know what you mean by that. I'm not a big Tolkien fan by the way. I appreciate the influence he's had on genre and am thankful for his contribution bot LoTR never clicked with me the way it did with some people.

There is a reason nearly every fantasy book is a Tolkien ripoff and it's only partly because the fantasy authors actually like the guy. The bigger reason, imo, is that it's just hard to reinvent the wheel. Try to do something independent of Tolkien and pretty soon you find out you just don't know what to do because either it's already a trope that you've internalized or it's something so off the wall you're not sure if it qualifies as fantasy and people will like it. People who do their own things and succeed a la Discworld end up with something broken in tone from what we consider baseline fantasy (it's too silly in this case). Tolkien was a romantic medievalist so that's why he didn't want to write about the early modern period. Now what's your excuse for obsessing over magic and including advanced plate armor but avoiding guns if you aren't copying Tolkien?

>Anderson fleshed out elves slightly before Tolkien did.
Haven't read the guys works for sure but again I don't believe it. You're telling me someone invented Tolkien elves before Tolkien in between his writing of the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. Come on. I have never heard of a human sized flesh and blood elf before Tolkien. And I was read a lot of mythology as a kid. Pre-tolkien elves are mostly indistinguishable for fairies. Hell Iceland today still holds to this style of belief.

Sounds to me you're stretching wildly because you got to be right on the Internet.

Would play.

You're attributing samefagging to several different people in all likelihood, user.

The reason that nearly "every fantasy book is a Tolkien ripoff" is because it isn't, but your brain is imperfect and tricks you into imagining it is and then finding the right confirmation bias.

To be fair, you ARE outright saying that you don't believe it because you personally lack enough knowledge, so it may be that you are trying to be obviously wrong to play around with us. I appreciate the Veeky Forums camaraderie.

>People who do their own things and succeed a la Discworld end up with something broken in tone from what we consider baseline fantasy (it's too silly in this case).
But Discworld WASN'T Pratchett "doing his own thing," it began as an outright parody of pulpish fantasy novels. Only later did he attempt to make it more of its own, consistent universe, but even then it still didn't flinch from venturing into parodies or political commentaries
>Pre-tolkien elves are mostly indistinguishable for fairies. Hell Iceland today still holds to this style of belief.
This is also untrue. Many Icelandic elf experts talk about elves sometimes being much larger or smaller than humans, but with a mostly analogous social structure to human beings -- including built dwellings, farms, mayors, community leaders, etc. I know this because I recently read an article about a planned road in Iceland that environmentalists and elf experts alike are protesting as unnecessary, and in the specific case of the latter, because it will necessitate the removal of an elf "church." Your awareness of modern folklore is clearly lacking, which only casts further doubt on the confidence of your claims to knowledge of older mythology.

I'm neither of the people you're responding to, but at this point -- after you've stated some confusing claims, admitted that you don't know very much about what you're talking about, and submitted some false or misinterpreted evidence -- you should probably just lurk more. Or read a book. I suggest re-reading Tolkien: a lot of people, myself included, wind up reading him too young, but on re-reading gain a new appreciation for his works.

>ctrl+f "narnia"
>No results
wot

>RPGs involve you creating a character sheet representing your own skills and talents rather than those of a fictional character
>you are then cast into a fantasy universe like the children who are sent to Narnia and have to respond the way you actually would in the same situation

mite have been cool

Fantasy would be the same as sci-fi. Every author would come up with his own original races as a matter of course. There would inevitably be some overlap, just like with starfish aliens, but this would be seen as a sign of uncreative thought.

This unparalleled utopia was stolen forever from us by Tolkien.

>I have never heard of a human sized flesh and blood elf before Tolkien
King of Elfland's Daughter much?

It's not his fault people kept trying to mimic him.

If hacks hadn't been imitating Tolkien, they'd probably have copied somebody else.

>There is a reason nearly every fantasy book is a Tolkien ripoff and it's only partly because the fantasy authors actually like the guy.

Cuz D&D popularized it. Trust me, we know.

>People who do their own things and succeed a la Discworld end up with something broken in tone from what we consider baseline fantasy

Yeah... no, this is pure nonsense. Its not particularly hard to do fantasy that is not remotely Tolkienian. Pratchett's genre is so-witty subversion and deconstruction; if he was reborn today, he'd be a TV Troper (and indeed reading his stuff I got the impression he was younger than I was).

>Now what's your excuse for obsessing over magic and including advanced plate armor but avoiding guns if you aren't copying Tolkien?

I don't know about plate armor (I thought Tolkien's stuff had more chainmail), but magic? Don't make me laugh. You already know where D&D magic comes from, Vancian in mechanics, and S&S in general in overall tone. Magic though? Come on,

Also

>avoiding guns

D&D's take on guns is PURE Anderson. Not slightly, but PURE Anderson. That is, guns may work in a given campaign setting; or they may not; or they may work, but require a specialized compound.

Basically, your problem is that you don't understand the source of D&D's ideas since you haven't at least vaguely familiarized yourself with the source material beyond Tolkien.

And D&D's magic has virtually nothing to do with Tolkien's fairly light magic setting. The Tolkienverse has very powerful magic, but its also incredibly obscure stuff.

>I have never heard of a human sized flesh and blood elf before Tolkien
>human sized

Guess what D&D elves WEREN'T until about ... fourth edition? Guess where the idea of chaotic elves comes from? Guess where the idea of plentitudes of elven wizards comes from?

>mythology

You keep having this mental problem where you think D&D is 50% Tolkien and 50% mythology. Its 5% Tolkien, 10% mythology, and 85% a whole lot of stuff.

Also, I find it VERY interesting that virtually everyone but this guy gets that there's two (at least) kinds of elves, the stronger and better than you kind that lives in tune with nature, and the amoral wizard with more mp than hp elf. The two get split up a lot, because Tolkien and Anderson's take on elves are fundamentally distinct, to the point that even people who have never read either still intuitively grasp it.

Maybe sci-fi or similar races would be brought into fantasy? We already have seen a lot of the reverse going on in settings like 40k.

I wouldn't be surprised if we had a Sword of Shannara scenario, conveniently turning humans into all sorts of other races.

Half-savage, citizen, barbarian, colonial, traveller.

was gonna post the various "races" of the conan stories, then felt it'd be better to genericise things

>was gonna post the various "races" of the conan stories, then felt it'd be better to genericise things
What's the difference between the half-savage and the barbarian? At what level of colonization does a colonial become a citizen? What's the difference between the traveler and a citizen on a trip to visit his kin in the next city over?

Yeah, that user is full of horseshit. Gygax more than anyone was a Tolkien fanboy and specifically included them for that reason. Fuck, Dave Arneson's campaign was set in Middle Earth before he subtly changed it into the Majestic Wilderlands. Only after Tolkiens threatened to sue TSR did Gygax begin distancing everything from Tolkien-esque depictions of those races. Nonetheless they were clearly drawn from that world.

Most sci-fi races are "like an animal but smart". Some fantasy authors have tried to do this, but nobody cares. Everyone wants to just reuse the same 'standard' content over and over again.

But that's because we have the standard content. If we didn't, I imagine sci-fi and fantasy would merge in the opposite direction they seem to be doing today.

Actually Gygax (oops, wrote Tolkien) wrote an article very strongly minimizing ME's impact on D&D long before he got into legal trouble with the Tolkien estate... so... nice try?

>The good guys in Sword and Sorcery stories are normally the guys with the swords, so magic systems inspired by them are likely to be much more sinister and personally costly to the user.

There's a tendency for there to be more protagonists with swords than sorcery because its generally easier to write a story about a guy who hit things and uses sharp wits than a guy who magics his way out of problems. Likewise, there's a tendency for sorcerers to be antagonists because of how that can let them justify, well, virtually anything happening. But I wouldn't say magical protags are too unusual in S&S.

D&D's magic is about as costly, or not, as in most S&S settings, too. A lot of the spells are copied as cleanly as possible and if the spell has negatives or can backfire, that's usually because it borrowed from a spell that can backfire in the original.

Haste, Shadow Travel, Polymorph, Contact Other Plane, Teleport, Wish, Cacodemon, etc. all come to mind.

Pre-tolkein fantasy often involved space ships, swords, lizard men, and green princesses.

So I'm going to say races would have been more like "amazonian space babe", "slitherak the local space lobster guide", and "RJ BEBOP, the ship robot"

Half-Savage was basically "my father was a pict" or a half-pict - so more of a combination of half-elves with an element of half-orcs, with the half-orc physicality, but the half-elves' lack of real connection to their culture, as they're outsiders to both pictish and all non-pictish societies. Make good "barbarians" in D&D terms; dumb, unskilled but big, tough and stubborn from a life of rejection.

Barbarians are people from the lands outside the "civilised" lands, but who aren't actively raiding and trying to destroy the civilised lands as a matter of principle like the pictish peoples are. So barbarians have a strong connection to their home culture, but seen as little better than picts by people from the civilised areas. Make good rangers in D&D terms, lots of nature and survival skills combined with barbarian folk wisdom.

Colonials are people who live on lands conquered by civilisation and who wish to emulate the ways of the citizens, while at the same time having to deal with pictish raids and surly local barbarians - strong connection to Civilised society and accepted more readily than half-savages or barbarians. At the same time, they often have learned abilities and are capable of deeds that even the barbarians can admire, but are still seen as conquerers rather than neighbours. good Paladins and Fighters, in D&D terms.

Citizens are your snooty cityfolk, often smart, often knowledgable, but not neccesarily tough, would rather talk than fight, and often would rather not talk to people who aren't other citizens, but feel an urge to better the other, lesser, peoples around them (and make coin doing so). make good wizards, priests.

Then there's Travellers, who are travellers in the "gypsy" sense, used to life moving from place to place, secretive, tricksy and insular, don't trust anyone except other travellers, but also knows travellers well enough to not entirely trust even them. thieves, bards etc...

It's relative to the setting the campaign is based in. Barbarians are people who live in an agriculturless society, half-savage would be people born in such a society but raised in the city (or vice-versa), citizens are born in the local culture, colonials are non-locals who live in the cities, travellers are people who are from civilized society but whose trade or lifestyle demands that they stay on the move.

So we've got Indians, Indians raised by Whites, Americans, Brits, and sailors. I only speak to the last group.

Huh nice, I can see it. Varying degrees of civilization.

>Gygax was a total Tolkien fanboy.
>That's why THIS OTHER GUY wrote a campaign in Middle Earth.

>But that's because we have the standard content.
And you're drawing this conclusion based on...?

Ah. I figured it was something like that for most of them, but I wanted to clear up the ambiguities. That's a cool way of distinguishing between populations.

For the record, though, I feel like "nomad" might be a preferable name to "traveller[sic]." By the way, are you spelling it like that intentionally?

Traveller is the British spelling of traveler. Sort of like colour or paedophile.

I assume that guy is British, but it's such a small change I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of Americans used it to, since it's spelled more like it sounds (travel - ler).

If not for Tolkein, then the standard fantasy setting would be based on Robert E. Howard. You wouldn't have Races, all characters would be human. Instead, we might have different cultures that give varying bonuses based on the culture your character grew up in.

The Standard Fantasy setting would have much more of a Classical feel than High Medieval. With lots of Not-Greeks, Not-Romans, Not-Egyptians and Not-Celts running around.

In fact, this was Gygax ORIGINAL concept for D&D, but he was pressured into adding more medieval stuff and Elves, Dwarves and Hobbits due to the popularity of Lord of the Rings in the late 70's.

Howard was big on standard pseudo-european armies of full plated knights, though! I mean, that's the sort of kingdom that Conan ruled over when he became king.

You are right, however, that it'd probably be a lot more man to man.

True, by the Hyborean Age is an extremely pastichy setting. You had full-armored knights from Aquilonia or Zingara going up against Phallax formations from Argos or Totally-not Bedouin tribesmen we swear.

Sounds EXACTLY like D&D.

Because it is, D&D has the Soul of a Hyborean Age RPG but with a Tolkein coat of paint.

The default campaign style of a group of wandering warriors looting ancient tombs, fighting monsters or brigands and spending their reward on ale and whores is pure Howard.

There was a lot of hell in early D&D though. Tanari and Baatezu got their names changed from Demons and Devils in AD&D 2nd ed. partly because of the moral panic of the 90s.

Well yeah D&D itself is super demon infested, fiends are quite possibly the premiere enemy.

To be fair, if you're taking from Howard then "dog" would be a valid PC race - the most heroic characters in a lot of Howard stories were the dogs, but Slasher from Beyond the Black River kinda stands out for having joined a military unit as part of his quest for revenge against the savages who murdered his original owner.

Veeky Forums should make an alternate universe D&D and present it in a retro style scanned pdf document.

First, D&D was not based as heavily on LotR as it could be.

There is some influence, no denying. The Chainmail Fantasy appendix was all LotR-based. (Gygax called it "an afterthought" for his Castle & Crusades Society medieval wargame... and now we know that's because Jeff Perren lifted them whole from Len Patt, some 18 year old, in his write-up of a con game he ran.) They also did a "battle of five armies" game. Tolkien was big then, and they were plenty willing to ride that wave.

And then they got a cease and desist from Tolkien's lawyers, as did many a fan project back then. Gygax wrote in later years that he then tried to get a lot farther away from LotR for OD&D. That meant the inspiration from any of the other items in the list that would become AD&D's Appendix N (which you'll note deliberately omits Tolkien).

Gygax loved Lovecraft. So did Holmes, who put out the first Basic D&D set. Gygax especially liked Burrough's John Carter of Mars series (and did an RPG of that too). Arneson loved Norman's Barsoom-inspired Gor a lot more than is probably healthy. [Any amount of Gor above zero is not healthy -- ed.] Anderson and Moorcock gave us the alignment system. The wizard's have a lot more in common with Vance's "Rhialto the Marvellous" or even de Camp and Pratt's Harold Shea in scope and limitations that Gandalf. Elves were used in a lot of the sci-fantasy of the 60s, adwarves were at least used in Anderson.

So in conclusion: you probably wouldn't have "halflings" or orcs. Elves would be closer to what we think of today as fantasy elves (who you notice are never as tiny and frail as Tolkien describes).

actually, to clarify the elves statement:
Elves in Tolkien are generally shorter, smaller, weaker, and lighter than men. They make up for it by being otherworldly, long-lived, highly skilled and dexterous. To sum up tolkien analogies:
A goblin is about as powerful as a hobbit.
An orc " " " " " an elf.
An uruk-hai " " " " " a human.
A troll " " " " " a Treant.

Modern fantasy in general kept some of that: pointy ears, long-lived, dexterous. But they also omit a lot, such as the smaller stature and the fact that they were no match for a human one-on-one.

Actually that pic is Jake from adventure time. He doesn't really have many hangups about failure could pretty much walk away from any challenge on a whim from what I remember

That first post had a lot of good and true points, but
>(who you notice are never as tiny and frail as Tolkien describes)
>Elves in Tolkien are generally shorter, smaller, weaker, and lighter than men.
is simply not accurate. Where does Tolkien describe the elves as either "tiny" OR "frail"? To my knowledge, his elves were commonly taller than men, and plenty of the legendary ones were famous for doing feats of great strength, such as crippling Morgoth. This is thoroughly consistent with established themes in LotR, namely the elves representing nobility and mysticism leaving the world over time.

Are you sure you don't have it backwards? As far as I can tell, it's D&D elves that are seemingly smaller than Tolkien elves; the 5e PHB describes them as having "slender builds." By contrast, Tolkien's elves were brawny and masculine. So where are you getting this stuff?

A guy named DH Boggs actually took his analysis of OD&D and First Fantasy Campaing -- a Judge's Guild book that collects a lot of Arneson's notes from an age after D&D became popular -- and tried to answer the question of what an "Arnesonian" RPG is with a version of D&D he published as "Dragons at Dawn".

He took it out of print temporarily due to some weird conflict of interest with a grant he got, but I think you can still find a PDF.

Blegh, the artist should copy more from Frazetta. The muscle might bulge, but there's nothing dynamic or straining about it.

>Gygax decided to incorporate Poul Anderson elves.

The Paladin is also via Poul Anderson, though it originates with the Song of Roland. The same Anderson book also gave D&D the Gnome, the Troll, and a few other reinterpretations of Classical things.
Poul Anderson's "Three Hearts and Three Lions" started as a novella in 1953.

Elves as somewhat approachable go back to Lord Dunsany, "The King of Elfland's Daughter" (1924).

It is worth noting that the first two editions of D&D also had a lot of ERB in them. Burroughs was very protective of his IP, but a D&D with Tharks would not have been out of the question. They were played by Thri-kreen in Dark Sun, after all.

>The reason that nearly "every fantasy book is a Tolkien ripoff" is because it isn't

The closer to correct statement would be "every fantasy book since Tolkien steals from Tolkien." It is still not completely accurate, but is closer.

>spilled brazier in the background
Accurate. If I had a damned nickel for every time my players knocked one of those over onto an unexpecting enemy I could buy ourselves a largish pizza with an extra order of breadsticks

Tolkien's elves were also light enough to tread on snow without falling in. They were described as slender at the very least. I would say the D&D elves are _still_ as slender Tolkien elves.

If you're going to go back to the Song of Roland,
you may as well go back to the _actual_ Paladins.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paladin

If you have one handy, crack open a 1e PHB to the Cleric's spell list. You can map 99% of the spells to the Bible, split between Jesus, various prophets, or the Big Guy Himself.

>Elves in Tolkien are generally shorter, smaller, weaker, and lighter than men.

You're deeply confused. You are thinking of Andersonian elves. Tolkien elves can drink a dwarf under a table and are great fighters, taller than humans, etc.

>But they also omit a lot, such as the smaller stature and the fact that they were no match for a human one-on-one.

No, you are confused as fuck. You are thinking of D&D/Andersonian elves, the former of which were somewhat more fragile, and definitely shorter than, humans until about 4eish.

A fucking CAT isn't light enough to walk on snow without its paws sinking in. That's some kind of Pass Without Trace ability, not them being hungry skeletons.

As a Catholic, I kind of wish there were more of the less famous miracles. For example "summon she-bear". (That'll show those kids for calling me bald-head... though what 50 kids are doing hanging out at the city gates, I don't know. Bad parenting.)

To be sure. iirc, clerics might get the walk on water thing and druids might not.

Lucky. I threw a lot of set pieces like that when I ran games in college. They were largely ignored.