B2MeM Day 26: DM of the Rings

[lady_branwyn]

Gary Gygax, the creator of the "Dungeons and Dragons" roleplaying game, claimed that Tolkien was only a minor influence on its development, despite the fact that the original game included rangers, wizards, ents, orcs, dwarves, elves, half-elves, and hobbits. At the insistence of the Tolkien Estate, the hobbits were renamed "halflings" and the ents became "treants."

DM of the Rings is a webcomic that follows the adventures of a group of gamers who are loot-crazed and clueless about Tolkien as they play through the plot of the LOTR. The artist, Shamus Young, uses stills from the movies to illustrate the epic campaign. My favorite line is when Eomer says, "I would cut off your head, Master Dwarf, but it would require me to look up the mounted combat rules." :D

(But I never had the patience to play D & D. I was the person who would look up and say "What?," having totally lost track of the game, when it was finally my turn to roll.)

Comments

[silverwerecat.livejournal.com]

OMG, that was amazing!

...and there goes my Sunday morning...

[lady-branwyn.livejournal.com]

LOL! By some strange coincidence that is almost exactly what I said to Lord Branwyn last night--"Well, reading this just wasted my evening." :D
That is the cutest icon ever.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

What fun. There was some discussion on my journal about whether, in a world where Tolkien had not invented Middle Earth but it was, instead, a different, parallel, dimension, D&D could have existed. In the comments on this chapter.

I loved playing D&D - but then we had an excellent DM and the players were not teenagers, but in their twenties and thirties most of the time I played, so the dice rolling was important but so was the story - and we loved to out imagine the DM if we could.

[lady-branwyn.livejournal.com]

Several years ago, an old acquaintance ran a campaign for a group that included many people who had played together back in the 70s. It was truly surreal to be playing again after so many years, but the DM was still railroading the party so that hadn't changed. Food was better though.