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[Alpha Dwarf]

http://ae-lib.org.ua/texts-c/tolkien__the_hobbit__en.htm#17

From this chapter alone many more things would be great to implement.

I'm wondering why Elves are so wimpy in this game.

[Putnam]

Elves aren't really that wimpy, they just use wooden armor and weapons. If they didn't, they'd probably be the best fighters (outside of martial trances) of any civilized creature due to their high agility.

[weenog]

I think the work of Tolkien, while certainly important to fantasy and worth checking out, has too much influence on certain types of fantasy.  I wouldn't encourage more of it, especially not the incredibly overused Elves Are The Master Race stuff which is okay because the narrator is in love with them and thinks that's as it should be.

[Yoink]

Buff goblins.

Seriously, Tolkien gives his orcs/goblins the short end of the stick in the big way, and that has to be my least favourite thing about his work. Not sure why, but even as a kid watching the films for the first time I was cheering for the bad guys. That scene with the three 'heroes' arriving on the cliched plot device ghost ship helped twist my soul into the bitter and blackened thing it is today.

I prefer DF's elves, though. They don't have any delusions of classiness, they eat people and hit things with sticks. I am also fairly certain there was a point to this post when I started typing, but I've forgotten it now. Oh well.

[orius]

I think the work of Tolkien, while certainly important to fantasy and worth checking out, has too much influence on certain types of fantasy.  I wouldn't encourage more of it, especially not the incredibly overused Elves Are The Master Race stuff which is okay because the narrator is in love with them and thinks that's as it should be.

Except that Tolkien's elves aren't exactly the pointy-eared Mary Sues their rip-offs are.  In the First Age, their pride eventually causes their downfall, and their desire for stagnation to preserve things in the Second Age gives Sauron the means to enslave all of Middle-earth.  By the end of the Third Age, they're a bunch of has-beens who've been in long decline, and they have little power to stop Sauron when he returns to power.  So they're just as capable of screwing up as the other races, except that when they do, they really manage to fuck things up.

[smirk]

Buff goblins.

Seriously, Tolkien gives his orcs/goblins the short end of the stick in the big way, and that has to be my least favourite thing about his work.

Nah; for my money, Tolkien didn't give orcs the short end of the stick, the movies did that. The books tended to put 'em on more equal terms with all the 'good' races; they had their own evil civilization(s) and could go more than toe-to-toe with dwarves and men and grey-elves (the Eldar had that light-of-Valinor thing going on). And then the movies came along and said "nope, faceless uncountable millions of pod-grown generic baddies." Was one of the biggest disappointments for me, along with what they did to Gimli.

[Headhanger]

The concept of dwarves embarking to reclaim a mountain hall, full of treasure, that was previously lost, is probably one that made it through.

And let's not forget digging too greedily and too deep, although that's not really featured in The Hobbit.

Huh... thinking about it, those dwarves have similar luck to the dwarves in DF. Always tempting the wrath of some monstrous entity that breaks the mountainhome.

But Tolkien's work has influenced fantasy so much that it's going to be difficult to see where the string begins and ends.

[Cruxador]

I think most of the really cool stuff from the Hobbit is already in. The goblin-stuffed pass tunnels which lead to Gollum's hollow in the Underground (and characters like Gollum and Caliban in general) would be nice addition. But every fantasy has little things to add like that. And fort reclamation is basically the plot of the Hobbit made into a game mechanic.

Honestly, if Toady wants to take inspiration from a Tolkein novel, I reckon the biggest to check out would be Children of Hurin. There's a lot that would be great for adventure mode in there.

[i2amroy]

I think the work of Tolkien, while certainly important to fantasy and worth checking out, has too much influence on certain types of fantasy.

i guess that's what happens when you are really the first ever "popular" figure of a given genre. It's like what Elvis and The Beatles did with music; pick any piece of recent music in America (other then rap, that was inspired through a combination of poetry and a removal of music from public schools, but I digress) and you can pick out pieces that lead back to Elvis or The Beatles. They may be hard to find, but they are there. It's the same how if you pull out just about any fantasy novel off of the shelf (especially high fantasy) and you can probably find a minuscule bit of Tolkien hiding in there somewhere.

[Nyan Thousand]

The thing is, all modern high fantasy is based on Tolkien. Tolkien basically wrote, named and codified the whole trope. Here's the great thing about DF though. DF mythos doesn't end in taking a page from Tolkien, but instead, is alive and changes with the times. This is because it's open ended to a point, and the community provides this impetus that allows the canon to change. I mean, if we disregard the community's views on elves, they turn out to be pretty reasonable people (save for the cannibalism). Instead, we get tree-hugging face eating self-important pricks. Dwarves went from masters of industry to pretty dumb guys. I think the only sane race in DF are the Humans.

Wait, no, scratch that. Human towns get their shit taken over by tables. There are no sane races in DF, as far as the community is concerned. And this is what makes it so beautiful. We've taken a base concept and bastardized it so much that it's beautiful.

[BigD145]

I'm not seeing the overlap between Tolkien and Snow White.

[Nyan Thousand]

I'm not seeing the overlap between Tolkien and Snow White.

Ok, fine, most.

[Draco18s]

I'm not seeing the overlap between Tolkien and Snow White.

Wait.  Snow White is high fantasy?

[BigD145]

I'm not seeing the overlap between Tolkien and Snow White.

Wait.  Snow White is high fantasy?

I'm just pointing out that Tolkein didn't have 7 dwarfs. Snow White is also an older story and pre high fantasy.

[Draco18s]

I'm just pointing out that Tolkein didn't have 7 dwarfs. Snow White is also an older story and pre high fantasy.

Snow White is "fantasy."  "High fantasy" requires a whole world.  Snow White takes place in a fantastical version of the real world, not a fantasy realm.
(compare to Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe)