How big was Tolkien before D&D? And before the movies?

I'd put money on him or Dave at least seeing one of the movies. Hobbits had to get into D&D somehow.

The animated film was 78 and CHAINMAIL was 71. I'd pin it on wargaming buddies at his club.

Probably.

>better writer friends
Tolkien was first and foremost a linguist. Even then he wrote better than most writers of his time. Stop trying to be a hipster.

>He was big when Hippies were big, but all his better writer friends hated his work forever.

His writer friends like C.S. Lewis, who also wrote fantasy? Stop talking out of your ass. Tolkien's writer friends were specifically a club of like minded nerds who loved mythology and fantasy. To say they hated him for his books and/or success is complete bull.

This.

>I'd put money on him or Dave at least seeing one of the movies.

The movies? You're profoundly stupid, aren't you?

THIS. It's the Readers' Digest version, but it's the most accurate answer in the thread so far.

Gygax used to write articles for a Tolkien fanzine, dude. It's where he came up with his initial ideas for dragons he'd use later. Not everything Gygax copied came from Tolkien like some claimed, but he was definitely a fan.

>even in the Soviets before the Berlin Wall fell.
That one was a little fishy - the book was allowed (tolerated is probably better word) to be in circulation by the regime. But it was also pointed out as example of capitalist corruption

I mean LotR kind of is about old-money bourgeois (that can't even leave house without his gardener) and a bunch of rebels, freeloaders and rabble-rousers, from "The West" opposing large industrious nation of hard working individuals on "The East" that are portrayed as ugly and evil.
Besides topping the successful and productive nation, this whole rebellion also puts (rightfully exiled) monarch back in charge of the country, restoring the "old order". Not to mention that "The Westerners" dabble in witchcraft to meet their ends.

You'd usually have this sort of a foreword at the publication to make sure reader doesn't get the wrong idea before you were allowed to print it (unless it was samisdat, but then you were putting yourself in risk of dealing with samisdat)

Great. Now we need to make sure Russia hasn't weaponized dead kings.

>But it was also pointed out as example of capitalist corruption

That's an important point. Russia, before, during, and after the USSR, has a long love/hate relationship with the so-called "West". All sorts of music, literature, film, and other arts were allowed in under the rubric that they were only being presented as examples of corruption.

A nice example of Russia's ambivalent attitude towards LotR is "The Last Ring Bearer"..

Wasn't their a russian book that was written as LOTR from the point of view of the Orcs, Aragorn was a puppet king of the elves and Arwen really controlled him according to orders received from her father.

That's it
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer

>Though translated into several languages, the book has not had a commercial release in English. Several English-language publishing houses have considered undertaking a translation, but each has abandoned its plans due to the potential of litigation from the Tolkien estate, which has a history of strictly objecting to any derivative works, especially in English
Holy hell, now that Tolkien's estate is for sale, we might actually see this!

It's a great read. I know some LotR fanboys absolutely foam at the mouth when it's mentioned, but I found it quite enjoyable and I've been reading Tolkien since the early 70s when a hippy cousin gave me her copies.

One of my favorite passages in the work talks about how the elves want to turn the world into a exquisitely beautiful pond full of exquisitely beautiful lily pads, an exquisitely beautiful STAGNANT pond full of exquisitely beautiful UNCHANGING lily pads.

I don't doubt you, but from what I know about the setting, you'd have to intentionally ignore Sauron's actions and faults, let alone the Orcs, to portray them non-villainously.

Ironically, Tolkien was not a fan of how the hippie movement took to his work.

Even Bored of the Rings is a better subversion than the Last Ringbearer

>Tolkien was first and foremost a linguist.
Tolkien was actually a philologist. It's a related field but focuses on written tradition rather than spoken language.

I don't think Tolkien really liked anybody.

Obviously. He was a death worshiper who believed that nature was supreme and man could only ruin it, so man should embrace their mortality so nature is unspoiled.

His wife, but that's about it.

He was a big guy.

My 3rd Grade Teacher read me the Hobbit.

Is that the one with Dildo Faggins?

Jesus.

Dude loved the Lamb.
He's even the guy who converted C. S. Lewis.

>you'd have to intentionally ignore Sauron's actions and faults, let alone the Orcs, to portray them non-villainously.

Or just simply cast LotR as the work of an unreliable narrator. LRB not only flips perceptions but explicitly presents the LotR as nothing but ancient propaganda. When arguing with Saruman, Gandalf actually says that he intends to win and the write the history of the period so that the history will be what he decides it will be.

In LRB, Sauron isn't some evil undying demigod bogeyman but the dynastic name used by a long line of Mordorian kings much like Ptolemy in Egypt and Gondor's blockade of Mordor's food trade routes up the Anduin and across Ithilien are the real cause of the war.

Another nice touch in LRB is that the protagonists are actually inventive. They mull over the known abilities of the palantir and invent a new way to use them to further their cause. That's a far more modern mindset than the one presented in LotR, one which we have more in common with if the constant "Why not fly?" and similar threads are any indication.

>>

The Harvard Lampoon's satire defines "Try Hard". If LotR hadn't been so popular at the time and if "Bored" hadn't been written by Harvard students, it never would have seen publication.

>One of my favorite passages in the work talks about how the elves want to turn the world into a exquisitely beautiful pond full of exquisitely beautiful lily pads, an exquisitely beautiful STAGNANT pond full of exquisitely beautiful UNCHANGING lily pads.

that's basically what tolkien himself said about the elves

Tolkien's stories were actually not all that popular in his club. Lewis appreciated them for how "real" they felt, but that was about all the praise Tolkien got on the subject from them. Hugo Dyson is, for example, said to have been "lying on the couch, and lolling and shouting and saying, 'Oh God, no more elves'" when Tolkien tried to read.

He liked Robert Howard's Conan.

The original Swedish translated renamed him Bimbo.

>that's basically what tolkien himself said about the elves

Very true, but LRB hits the reader over the head with it until even the dullest notice.

Bloody swedes

Imagine if someone wrote Illiad from point of Polyphemus who kills Odysseus and Zeus at end.

"Christ John not another elf!"

Funny enough, you read Tolkien's unabridged forward he throws some delicious shade at critics.

>"lying on the couch, and lolling and shouting and saying, 'Oh God, no more elves'" when Tolkien tried to read.

How little fatguys have changed.

>bored of the rings
>written by Harvard students
WTF WERE THEY THINKING?

>"As a guide I had only my own feelings for what is appealing or moving, and for many the guide was inevitably often at fault. Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible; and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer."

>Imagine if someone wrote Illiad from point of Polyphemus who kills Odysseus and Zeus at end.

While such a work would be fascinating, it's not a good example of what LRB actually is.

LRB is more of a secret history. It presents the same outcome and nearly all the same events as LotR being a result of very different actions witnessed from a very different POV.

The best analogy I can quickly think of is Fraser's "Flashman" series which presents many well know 19th Century events like the Charge of the Light Brigade, Harper's Ferry, and Little Big Horn while completely rewriting whys and hows behind those events.

You really don't realize point of Iliad and Odyssey don't you?

>WTF WERE THEY THINKING?

Perhaps "Let's make some money"?

Unlike most writers, however, they didn't have an agent shop their draft around various publishing houses in the hopes it would be picked up. Their contacts, the fact they worked for the Lampoon, and the old boys network ensured their manuscript was optioned immediately.

If you ever read any accounts of the later launch of "National Lampoon" magazine you'll begin to understand just how important the Harvard label and the old boy network of contacts can be.

>You really don't realize point of Iliad and Odyssey don't you?

I do actually. It's just that LRB has the same events and ending as LotR while a "Polyphemus Triumphant" work wouldn't have the same with Iliad and Odyssey.

Not as mainstream but hippies loved that shit

You sure there isn't a medieval manuscript about that somewhere? Fan fiction is far from something new and in fact, many of the ancient stories we have preserved today seem to have originally been essentially fan fiction where the author tried to ship two characters from related, or not so related sources, or wanted to write a story about these two great swordsmen going at each other, or a story about how his favorite character was actually the son of his other favorite character and so on.

Case in point: Þiðreks saga.

I get the feeling Gygax was more into Lieber, Howard, etc., and, fan or no, was kinda disappointed that LotR drove most of D&D's early popularity.

I've read it; it's available on the net somwhere.

I like the concept, my only real complaint was, towards the end, it started feeling like a spy novel with swords instead of pistols.

>I get the feeling Gygax was more into Lieber, Howard, etc., and, fan or no, was kinda disappointed that LotR drove most of D&D's early popularity.

I think it was a case of Gygax having read more books and more varied books than the "LotR And Nothing Else" crowd.

Gygax saw LotR as just one part of a wider whole while today's fanboys not only read very little but are more familiar with movies and video games based on books than the actual books themselves.

There is difference between Virgil, Dante and John Milton and contemporary postmodernists who try to switch sides of stories and subvert original intention. Even in Paradise Lost Satan is evil irredeemable maniac.

>Perhaps "Let's make some money"?

With a side of "Let's troll the shit out of litfag posers"?

>I like the concept, my only real complaint was, towards the end, it started feeling like a spy novel with swords instead of pistols.

That's because it has a modern sensibility rather than a dark ages/mythological one.

>Hugo Dyson
Fucker couldn't even write.

>With a side of "Let's troll the shit out of litfag posers"?

That too. Remember though, when the Harvard Lampoon trolls squares and tweaks the nose of the establishment, they doing it to themselves. Their satire is nothing but a pose.

>the last ringbearer
>not "Beyond the Dawn"

>my only real complaint was, towards the end, it started feeling like a spy novel
Probably because it is a spy novel.

I mean, there is record of criticism from Tolkien on the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, saying there should be elves....

You hit the nail on the head, IMO. Gygax liked Tolkien, but was a well-read guy when it came to fantasy and had a lot of other stuff he liked even more.
Only Meme Gygax hated Tolkien.

My grandma and her brother liked tolkien since back in the 40s and 50s when people thought you were an actual witch and they turned out fine so go figure. Got that ORIGINAL Silmarillion.

>40s and 50s
>when people thought you were an actual witch

Is this bait or Poe's law in full effect?

There are people who to this very day think stories like Krampus are satanic and evil, user. I wouldn't put it past the average ignoramus to think some kind of fantasy lexicon with elves and evil wizards was genuine witchcraft, especially not in hispanic parts of the world.

>Is this bait or Poe's law in full effect?

Perhaps, but it's most likely ignorance.

Check out the publication dates per country for LotR and then read again about how the poster's grandma liked Tolkien "back in the 40s and 50s".

During the Veitnam war the US army made at lest two copy's of his main works at all of the forwards operational bases. Why?

Because that was what the soldiers wanted as reading material at the time.

He explicitly stated in his autobiography how Tolkien's work bored him to tears, especially as he got older. The idea for D&D was a mix between the pulp fantasy magazines and books he read in his early years, as well as how he spent a lot of time just exploring this closed-down asylum in Lake Geneva.

>He explicitly stated in his autobiography how Tolkien's work bored him to tears, especially as he got older.
Seems to contrast hard the fact that he fucking wrote Tolkien fanfiction in his youth, user. If anything that's an old man being grouchy he keeps being compared to Tolkien, rather than something legitimate.

I don't know about no fanfiction, but that's definitely what he said.

So, an elfaboo?

>I don't know about no fanfiction
I mentioned it in my post. He used to write for a Tolkien fanzine.

user, writing fanfiction is definitely something to be ashamed of later.

It does mean his claim that it 'bored him to tears' was him covering his ass, though.

>If anything that's an old man being grouchy he keeps being compared to Tolkien

Pretty much this. Gygax wanted to talk about something other that Tolkien, but that's what everyone would bug him about, and I think "Grouchy Old Man" Gygax was fed up with it at that point.
Nobody held him at gunpoint and made him put Tolkien into the Appendix N recommendations in the AD&D DM's guide. Gygax was his own boss then, and that book was his baby.

It's also just how Gygax and Tolkien were very different men with different approaches to their work. Tolkien was this orphan academic with an immense fascination with language, whereas Gygax was a high school dropout who started to play war games in his spare time with his friends.

Not really relevant senpai, there was no 'class rivalry' shit there, just an old man hating his youth for defining him, like he thought his 'greatness' sprouted without roots.

1d4chan.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer
At the bottom of the page

>The movies? You're profoundly stupid, aren't you?
i feel like you're probably reacting this way because you think there weren't any lotr movies before the jackson ones and it's hilarious

>let's take some nobody from the losing side of the Illiad and make him our ancestor and a hero
ROMANS ARE SWAMP HICKS

Very big.
Even USSR translated and published his books. Also Soviet Union made a Hobbit film (awful) back in 80s

>ROMANS ARE SWAMP HICKS

I wonder how you write that in Greek.

Lord of the Rings should have been directed by Tchaikovsky. The first half of the film would've been solemn nature shots of the Shire.

It's really weird to me how authoritarian dictatorships seem to, almost universally, have a fascination with romanticized stories about overthrowing authoritarian dictatorships. Yes I know, Tolkien hated allegory, that's not what I'm saying. Or at the very least, I'm using the word in the sense that he meant it. Because, what Tolkien meant when he said that was that the books weren't about specific current political events. Sauron wasn't Hitler, Mordor wasn't the USSR, and so on. However, Tolkien admitted, and made absolutely no secret of, that the books still contained elements of his personal experiences and beliefs. The Ring is not just a tool made by the Dark Lord, it is in fact a manifestation of power and how it corrupts even the people with the best intentions, and there's at least one letter penned by him where he says that Sauron was a well intentioned reformer, but that like all people who believe that they know what's best for others, he got blinded by the power he amassed in his pursuit of realizing his reforms and was eventually fully corrupted by it. Tolkien also described himself as being anti-authoritarian and an anarchist.

And the USSR aren't alone in this either. North Korea made a Godzilla knock off where the monster helps the peasants overthrow their ruler in a bloody revolt, which admittedly has quite a bit of analogy to the revolution that started their whole communist shtick, but it certainly applies just as well to overthrowing their current communist dictator.

>Anarchist.
>Catholic.
What?

we got the Hobbit read to us in primary school: early 80's in central Scotland.

It's more common than you think. Tolstoy was a christian anarchist as well. You can reject worldly authority while accepting Jesus' divine authority just fine. Though admittedly that puts the pope into a weird inbewteen space.

>i feel like you're probably reacting this way because you think there weren't any lotr movies before the jackson ones and it's hilarious

Sorry, kiddo, but your wrong.

While I've never seen the USSR's 1980s version of The Hobbit, I did see Bakshi's animated LotR feature at the Showcase Cinemas in Seekonk, MA when is was released in 1978. It sucked by the way.

The moron who wrote actually believed that Gygax and Arneson had seen a LotR or Hobbit movie prior to writing Chainmail in 1971.

There weren't nearly as many special snowflake political plaques back then, same as with sexual orientations.

He'd self-describe as a minarchist nowadays probably. Minimum government that works based on popular consensus and mostly leaves the people the fuck alone.

OTOH he (begrudgingly) supported Francoist uprising after hearing what the Reds did to clergy.

>everything that isn't a liberal democracy is an authoritarian dictatorship

I didn't know Tolkien was a Pinko.

Specifically, anarchist christians believe that it's not men's place to pass judgement on other men. That is instead solely in God's domain. For a catholic, such as Tolkien, the pope would in this case take the place as the person through whom God communicates to us, but it would be up to each individually to listen to what he says and for God to judge us based on that.

That doesn't sound very Catholic to me.

Well, you have Virgil taking the badguys of Iliad as mentioned.

Then you have the Turks appropriating the bad guys of the Iranian epic Shahname, the Turanians and trying to heroize them as their ancestors in numerous fanfics. The Shahname itself was an attempt to humanize the purely evil and inhuman villains of the older Zoroastrian canon.

Mulan was originally a story about one of the steppe peoples of modern Mongolia, then the Chinese took it and remade it about them.

There's some evidence that Gilgamesh and Enkidu started out as villains of mythic cycles before being remade into protagonists.

There's plenty of examples of this sort of reimagining from the start of time.

Minarchists are just anarchists without the courage of their convictions. They want to be rid of all the milder parts of government (muh social programs!), while keeping the parts that historically have been the most abusive and dangerous to liberty.
And I also seriously doubt Tolkien would want to join their club. I doubt he would see any value in getting rid of the charitable social programs to save money. It's a miserly and unchristian attitude.

It's not very compatible with medieval Catholic thinking, but suits modern Catholicism pretty well.

Then you don't know much about Catholic doctrine aside from what Hollywood pop history made you think, or worse, what actual Catholics who don't know their own doctrine made you think.