Fantasy games need to stop stealing from LOTR

[Trolldor]

The question is why? Why do dwarves all have to lust for gold and be unable to do magic and have heavy codes of honor? Why do any of us have to believe that when an actual Dwarf is just a very short human being? Why latch onto these genre conventions? Because they are safe? Safety is nice for a while but, if we do not attempt to look for innovation, then we cheat ourselves from truly enjoying what could easily be something amazing!

The problem is that you are looking for "innovation" here by arguing that we should change dwarfs to be different. Thats like arguing that we should create a fantasy setting where Angels and Heaven are evil entities just so it can be "different". Or a matrix-setting where traffic lights works so Red means "go" and green means "stop". That's not innovation, that's c*cking up peoples expectations of how the world works, and it only leads to confusion.

Instead of changing dwarfs, create an entirely new race and name it something else if you want actual innovation in that department. Don't reinvent something that has already been invented and then change it. That's just asking for people to dislike it.

You did it wrong.
If you keep pandering to expectations then innovation is impossible.

Edit: You change what something is, you change its history and background, how it interacts with the world, you can create entire histories and mythologies, all for some very simple changes.

 

[Wintermoot]

I think it,s the other way around! the setting of LOTR is pretty damn generic for a fantasy book!

 

[Triangulon]

This kind of argument irritates me so much. I can maybe understand people not enjoying Tolkien's work, but personally I love it. What I can't understand is people blaming him for others' poor-quality fantasy literature. Yes Tolkien borrowed from other sources, as all authors do. But he created a great world with a great story. The background, culture and languages he created were amazing. The issue is laziness. The laziness of people following the so-called fantasy cliches instead of creating their own ideas. Also the laziness of people refusing to explore the genre and read all of the amazing literature out there which is not 'generic'. Furthermore, there is nothing wrong with 'tolkienesque' fantasy. This just means that these authors are drawing from the same inspiration.

I do wish that game designers would look around a bit more. There are plenty of places to draw inspiration from which could add fresh ideas into the genre. There are authors such as Steven Erikson, Gene Wolfe, Michael Moorcock, Steph Swainston and Scott Lynch whose ideas could breath fresh life into the genre from a gaming perspective. It is almost as though the current style of fantasy RPG games is just too easy. Going in a new direction is too much of a risk maybe.

 

[Haydyn]

I thought the same thing until I learned that Tolkien based elves and dwarves off things such as Norse mythology. I felt like I had to like LotR because it created that genre, but in reality the movies bore me.

 

[Zay-el]

I like LotR, personally. I liked the original 3 books, along with The Hobbit and especially The Silmarils. There's a lot of epic stuff happening and the attention to detail is hard to rival with, even now. It's pretty much become a benchmark of fantasy and though I'd be extremely happy to see brand new innovations into the classic fantasy idea, I'm pretty appalled that people instead choose to turn around and boo LotR, just because it has become popularised and overused. It's not like Tolkien's sitting in his Elven Throne going "MWAHAHAHAAA, I FOREVER TAINTED FANTASY!!"

If you want to see innovation into classic fantasy stories and archetypes, go and look up Wakfu, IMMEDIATELY. I cannot speak for the game(supposedly it's somewhat like FF: Tactics), but the animated series pretty much speaks for itself and is GLORIOUS.

 

[OliverTwist72]

People borrow from it because it is immensely popular. Heck it isn't even limited to video games, look at the Wheel of Time books by Robert Jordan. Those are really popular when he himself has said that he drew influences from LOTR.

I think Yahtzee has ranted about this before, or at least why do fantasy games always have some sort of elves in them.

 

[Phalene]

Enough is enough. Why are most (if not all) fantasy games constantly borrowing inspiration from the Lord of the Rings? Hell, even Dungeons and Dragons is tainted by that book's ridiculous fame.

We need something new. Something fresh. Something of pure fantasy.

Uh... You realize that D&D started as a fan attempt at playing LotR? To the extent that "halfling" was supposed to be "hobbit". Tolkien INVENTED the fantasy genre as we know it. It's not a taint, per say, its deliberate design.

Complaining about Tolkien influence on fantasy is like complaining about all the French people in Paris. Not that Tolkien didn't basically do his stuff as fan fiction off all the pagan myths he was familiar with, but still...

Sorry, but no. I love Tolkien, but as I said in a previous post, he didn't invent Fantasy. He created an incredibly detailed mythology, and was the first to create it to the standards of world-building we now expect, but fantasy itself is as old as storytelling. Look at the Odyssey. Look at Gulliver's Travels. Look at the story of St George and the Dragon. These are all fantasy stories, told hundreds of years before LOTR.
.

No, actually. The religious myths, be they the Apples of Idun, the Garden of Eden (Christian, Jewish or Muslim version), or the tales of the Monkey King (or whatever) were written/created according to a world view that accepted the magic in the stories as plausible.

As mentioned by another person, Tolkien-the-Linguist took the structure of myths he was familiar with and borrowed/stole to fit in with his made up language. Elves were not his exclusive creation, they are the people of Frey and Freya (of Teutonic/Norse myths). So what was novel in Tolkien was basically the fact that he wrote as one writing fan fiction- he didn't think it was cannon to his universe, the way that people recounting how St. George fought a dragon had originally been speaking about a literal dragon. Now every period has its atheists and obviously even before we got around to writing these myths down and they were still part of the culture's oral tradition, people were saying "Dragons? Horse pucky!", but recall it's only recently that St. George's miraculous back-story was deemed implausible enough to get it removed from the accepted Christian tradition.

Tolkien did not draw everything in his books from thin air and a fertile imagination. What he did was take his experiences, digest them and produce something -sorta- new. That's the copy-cat aspect its hard to get away from, not the plethora of fantasy races, but the act of making a (new) story out of a narrative stolen from ancient myths. So yes, he was the forefather of fantasy as we know it.

Of course you can reinvent the genre, set it in modern day, leave the pointy ears out, abandon the concept of a wizard, whatever... But you're still going to be hard pressed not to have some Tolkien-esque borrowing, at least via method.

 

[Liudeius]

No one is "Stealing" from LOTR, someone has done most if not all of the LOTR concepts before. Anyone who accuses all or a large number of _____ of stealing from ____ has no idea what they are talking about. "Ripping-off" to an unacceptable (or even mentionable) extent is VERY rare (aided by the fact that whatever you are saying was ripped off has already been done many times before).

Ending my rant about those who constantly whine about ripping games/books/movies off (Zelda fans are the WORST),
If I understand your point, I do agree. It would be nice if games would stop falling into the Elf/Dwarf/Human stereotypes.
Unfortunately, many people would be repulsed by their familiarity being taken away and having to fully realign their views of a "fantasy" world. Would you even like a change? You say you glossed over all of the description in the books. If you don't care about the specifics then would you really appreciate having to relearn all of the nuances of a fantasy realm?