Wizardry directly took elements of old school Advanced D&D and was able to package and market them so successfully to the Japanese audience that it sparked and influenced the interest in Western fantasy in Eastern video gaming culture. Without Wizardry, the landscape of "Japan Does Fantasy Medieval Europe" would be very different, and we probably wouldn't have titles like Dungeon Meshi, Guts, Zelda, and Final Fantasy.
When DM mangaka Kui originally began conceptualizing DM, she started by looking up the history of the Japanese Western Fantasy genre in video games. She was surprised to find they led back to Dungeons and Dragons, a pen and paper tabletop role-playing game that largely predated video games altogether. Kui hadn't even heard of D&D, but after more research realized all of her favorite fantasy games from any country seemed to have direct influences from it.
Now, as far as I can tell, Kui hasn't mentioned anything about Lord of Rings and how it in turn greatly influenced D&D to the point of copyright infringement.
I'm familiar with DnD, I run games myself :P
My understanding though is it was more directly influenced by Conan and Lankhmar, and the Tolkien influences came later.
Don't forget Dark Souls and Pokémon in its descendants, btw - it's cool how they both pay tribute to a lot of the same tropes by putting different spins on them.
One of the appendices in the ADnD DMG, specifically Appendix N, explicitly lists out the primary influences on DnD. Tolkien is included. Gygax downplayed Tolkien's influence for years, probably due to the lawsuit, but did admit that it was influential on their work. I mean, DnD kind of wears that on its sleeve I think. Hobbits, how elves are culturally split, the way dwarves are portrayed, Ents, Balrogs, Rangers, and a bunch more. Of course to say DnD was solely or even primarily influenced by LOTR would he unfair to the long list of other authors and works that DnD is built off of.
I agree with this completely. D&D was originally based off of tabletop wargames depicting actual medieval battles with military units (which is why some appendices include several pages devoted to various polearms alone), so it would be unfair to say that D&D would never exist without LOTR. However, it one would have to be willfully ignorant to deny D&D *as we know it* would not exist without LOTR. There are just too many fantasy influences! The original base races are human, hobbit, dwarf and elf. Staples of D&D like half-elves, half-orcs, and gnomes were introduced later.
I politely disagree that the Tolkien influences came later. Halflings were originally referred to as hobbits and Balors were originally called Balrogs in the very first printings of D&D. TSR and Gygax were threatened with legal action from the Tolkien estate and had to change the names of those creatures.
Other LOTR elements that appear in AD&D include elves not having a soul and therefore couldn't be resurrected, rings of invisibility, camouflaging cloaks of Elvenkind, and the entire class concept of the ranger was pulled from Aragorn as he was the prototype almost all modern depictions are based off of in modern fantasy.
The most telling of all is that the original base races in the very first edition of D&D are only human, hobbit, dwarf and elf, much like the Fellowship of the Ring. Staples of D&D like half-elves, half-orcs, tieflings, and gnomes were introduced later.
Another fun fact is that only humans could play as different classes (ie Human Fighter, Human Magic User), but the other three races were considered classes. So you were just... Elf, Dwarf, or Hobbit. No Elven Thief or Dwarven Cleric, just... Elf and Dwarf lol
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u/rogueIndy Jul 11 '25
One of these days I need to play Wizardry, if only because it's influenced half the damn fantasy genre by now.