{"id":245044,"date":"2023-08-20T03:27:04","date_gmt":"2023-08-20T07:27:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sftarticles.wpenginepowered.com\/es\/?p=303503"},"modified":"2025-07-01T18:26:30","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T01:26:30","slug":"when-dungeons-dragons-plagiarized-lord-of-the-rings-without-any-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/when-dungeons-dragons-plagiarized-lord-of-the-rings-without-any-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"From Tolkien to TTRPG: The Surprising Inspiration Behind Dungeons & Dragons"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We can all differentiate between ‘Lord of the Rings’ and ‘Dungeons & Dragons<\/a><\/strong>‘ without much trouble. The first is an epic trilogy by JRR Tolkien and the other expands over decades of player-dependent imagination and lore. Beyond being both fantasy, they’re nothing alike, are they<\/strong>? Well. Certainly not what Tolkien’s heirs thought at the time\u2026 And rightly so.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Dungeons & Hobbits<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Although Gary Gygax, co-creator of D&D<\/a><\/strong>, has once said that he did not even like Tolkien’s work, the truth is that in his first edition he went beyond homage and inspiration, bordering directly on plagiarism<\/strong>. In fact, in the first editions of the role-playing game, the race of the halflings was called, simply\u2026 Hobbit. Of course, the matter ended up being resolved in a lawsuit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trial in which, by the way, Tolkien’s heirs also asked not to use words such as “dragon”, “dwarf” or “elf” because they appear in ‘The Lord of the Rings<\/a><\/strong>‘. As we now know, words that already belonged to the language could be used<\/strong> freely, while others inherent to the writer’s work, such as “ent” (which in D&D was, without giving it half a twist, a living tree), had to be eliminated in successive editions. The enemy remains, only now it is called “treant”. Three more letters, zero judgments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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They are not the only characters viciously plagiarized by Gary Gygax<\/a><\/strong>. The Balors were called “Balrogs” in their initial notes, even though in this case they have wings as a way to differentiate themselves from the original, and a very powerful metal species is called “mithril” or, as it later became known to avoid direct plagiarism, “mithral”. Like the Ricky Rouse mouse, wow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is much more where historians have been scratching the socarrat of D&D only to discover that there is much they owe to Tolkien, from the idea of the “community of heroes”<\/strong> itself to very specific things like the mines where the dwarves dwell and which resemble (little) surprisingly to Moria. Come on, all that was missing in D&D was the presence of a unique “ring” to throw into the volcano of the “Vespino”. Thank goodness it has been normalized over time and we can roll 20-sided dice and enjoy the novels at the same time without having to choose. And now, duck, watch out for that balr\u2026 balor!<\/p>\n\n\n

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Although Gary Gygax, co-creator of D&D, has once said that he didn’t even like Tolkien work, the truth is that in its first edition it went from homage and inspiration bordering directly on plagiarism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9263,"featured_media":245047,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":1},"categories":[1015],"tags":[5050,1365,4380],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[],"class_list":["post-245044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-app-subdomain-redirectiond-and-d-beyond","tag-dungeons-and-dragons","tag-el-senor-de-los-anillos"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9263"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245044"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245044\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":318462,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245044\/revisions\/318462"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245044"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=245044"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=245044"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=245044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}