The Distant Suns of Gene Wolfe

Adam Thornton · 05 Jun 2007, 16:42 · from 2007-June.txt.gz

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From: adam at io.com (Adam Thornton)
Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2007 11:42:31 -0500
Subject: (urth) The Distant Suns of Gene Wolfe
In-Reply-To: <f5d95ac0706050734o2ffb1a1at532d21833f8e8289 at mail.gmail.com>
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Message-ID: <D7021F44-A124-4188-AE75-EFBFE2F5159D at io.com>


On Jun 5, 2007, at 9:34 AM, Joel Sieh wrote:
> One observation....  I've heard that Tolkien's work was a large  
> inspiration for the Dungeon and Dragons tabletop games.  Just after  
> reading about 100 pages of Tales of the Dying Earth, I'd say that  
> it looks like the D&D creators took a LOT of inspiration for their  
> magic systems from it, much more than anything they would have  
> gotten from Tolkien.  Gandalf's magic was much more organic,  
> subtle, and undefined than the mechanisms and descriptions  
> (including spell names) I've seen in the book I'm currently reading.

Gary Gygax says in the appendices to the AD&D v1 DMG (IIRC) that  
Dying Earth Magic was the immediate inspiration for the D&D magic  
system.  I think it's there that he says that DE and Lieber's Nehwon  
stories are the biggest influences.

There's also an article by Gygax talking about Vance's influence on  
D&D in _The Excellent Prismatic Spray_ issue II.  http:// 
www.dyingearth.com/mag.htm

I have not read it.

Adam

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