Talk:Dungeons & Dragons

At first a revision of a tabletop wargame simulation it in thirty years time grew to be the escape for all reality weary. Anything is possible in RGP! Eat your heart out. Be evil at will, without consequences in the real world.

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Oh no, not again. Who is spreading "Gamers are psychopaths" propaganda this time? -SoniC

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The reason I repointed the links to the various mythical beasties (listed on requested articles) to subpages of this D&D page is that the person who listed the beasties seemed to have gotten the ideas for the beasties from D&D. The list provided wouldn't be a list of mythical beasties that a folklorist would produce. Having played D&D doesn't even begin to give you an understanding of actual folklore. If you don't believe me, do this Google search (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q=folklore+elf+gnome+pooka). A folklore page would be very cool. :-) --LS

Actually, the first few - Elf, Dwarf, etc - were listed because Hobbits were, so it seems they were referring to Lord o' the Rings stuff. I'm planning to put some of that up when I have more time (and, despite your suggestion, I think maybe under Lord of the Rings since that's the name best associated with the world). In any case, I think that many of these span from Tolkien through D&D to pretty much the whole fantasy genre, and as such deserve treatment on the toplevel pages along with the folklore. Exempli gratia:

Elf - little forest fairies, blah blah blah ninety thousand pages of blah. In Tolkien elves became blah, which with some minor modifications (pointy ears, sometimes prolonged mortality) has become the standard in the fantasy genre.

Or something like that. --JG

OK. Notice, hobbits does exist (but should be named "hobbit"). In fact, Tolkien's elves bear very little resemblance to the elves of, e.g., Irish folklore. The similarity seems to be mainly in the name. In folklore, elves are typically very magical, very tiny, supernatural beings more like poltergeists than like human beings; they're often very mischievous. They aren't necessarily little forest fairies. See [[:http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/midwife this link|http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/midwife this link]] for an interesting data point; notice how these stories often use "elf," "dwarf," "hobgoblin," "fairy," etc., interchangeably. There is no neat mapping from LotR/D&D-type mythos to the actual folk myths you find in Europe and America. Not that this matters--it's all just about words. I think it's interesting! -- LS

Tolkien's elves are more closely related to the Sidhe of Celtic mythology, which are similar to humans in appearance but highly magical and skilled. (Don't remember offhand if the Sidhe were immortal or not.

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Some very naughty person simply cut and pasted a copyrighted article from the web here. DO NOT DO THIS. People who do this make us all very sad. Do not make us sad. We are nice people. :-)
OOOW, sorry, sorry, sorry.
Wasn't meant that way;
you might thank me for my enthousiasm! =:P
I won't ever do it again;
I'm nice too, don't be sad!

You are forgiven, and now no one is sad. I do thank you for your enthusiasm, but we really need to keep this thing clean. --JimboWales

Might the RPG-story be placed back? - the author of that is a friend of mine

Only if your friend posts it, or emails me to tell me that it is o.k. --JimboWales

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Explanation: A while ago, before realizing how to properly "move" page names, I got the bright idea of moving the "Dungeons and Dragons" page over to "Dungeons & Dragons" with an ampersand, because that is the actual "correct" name of the game. I simply created a new "Dungeons & Dragons" page and copied the text of "Dungeons and Dragons" over there, thus removing the history and previous contributions to the entry. I am now trying to correct my error. My apologies for the confusion.

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Recently added to the main article:

In 1985 Atari released an arcade game called Gauntlet, which was closely based upon the format of D&D. The game was a huge hit, and it spawned a series of fantasy role-playing arcade games.

I don't believe Atari was a licensee of TSR. So Gauntlet was not an official D&D game. Unless someone can come up with evidence that there was a license, I'm going to take it out.

I would also argue that it was not closely based on the format of D&D either. Well, no more so than AD&D: Dark Legacy. :-) -- Ansible