Quote from: Haffrung;1033565The funny thing is that D&D isn't all that Tolkienesque. In Tolkien's Middle Earth, a typical human would go his entire life without ever seeing a dwarf, elf, or halfling. This notion of melting pot communities with PCs of all races hanging out together in inns is a D&Dism, not something from Tolkien.

My point exactly.

So the OP wants a D&D setting that is less Tolkien and less Forgotten Realms/Golarion.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;1033562But no one reads anymore.  Seriously, with advent of smartphones no one really wants to.

I don't have a smartphone, and since I received a Kindle for my birthday a few years ago, I read more than I ever have before. As just one data point.

Quote from: Kiero;1033614I don't have a smartphone, and since I received a Kindle for my birthday a few years ago, I read more than I ever have before. As just one data point.

Sadly, local statistics (Yes, I know correlation not causation) state otherwise.  The point is, most of people's current knowledge of Fantasy and Science Fiction is now mostly from their PC in the form of various streaming sites, or disk purchases for shows and/or movies.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1033542Simple. You and your players read some books other than Tolkien.

This was exactly the point I wanted to make. Back in the 1970's, when my high school buddies and I first encountered D&D, we all read certain books. Howard's Conan (well, the Ace paperback version that we THOUGHT was the real thing), Leiber's Lankhmar, Burroughs' Barsoom, Moorcock's Elric, and Tolkien's Middle-earth. This formed the basis for our inspiration for adventures, since we'd never heard of buying a module. We had lots of "evil wizard" adventures, many "save the princess" sessions, quite a few "adventures in the big city" games, and so on. Magic swords were awesome. We did this because of the literature we had read.

Many younger gamers today haven't read the Appendix N stuff, and often have never even heard of Howard or Leiber or Moorcock. Their exposure to Tolkien is through the movies. Much of their fantasy comes through anime. Their list of books that form their concept of fantasy is very different from my core reading, so it's hard to come up with a common frame of reference.

Michael's point is spot on. The rules aren't designed to be Tolkien or be not-Tolkien. The rules are simply a set of guidelines to run the adventure. The DM can plan a campaign in any style he or she likes, then the players can create characters using the options provided. The problem is that half of the game is played in your head, and while the DM supplies some of the images the player fills in the gaps with prior experience images. The best way to be on the "same page" with this is to read common fiction. Want to run Lankhmar? Have your players read even one Fafhrd & Gray Mouser story first.

Quote from: Haffrung;1033565The funny thing is that D&D isn't all that Tolkienesque. In Tolkien's Middle Earth, a typical human would go his entire life without ever seeing a dwarf, elf, or halfling. This notion of melting pot communities with PCs of all races hanging out together in inns is a D&Dism, not something from Tolkien.

ME does have places like Bree, where you can find Men, Hobbits and apparently Half-Orcs in one large village or small town. It's depicted as unusual, but not hugely so. Pre-3e D&D was not vastly different I think.

Well, with 1E at the end of its line, and beginning with 2E especially, D&D adapted the Tolkien-inspired fantasy tropes of its era. There's no denying that. Krynn and Faerun may not be the same as Tolkien, but they do kinda exist on the same shelf as the stuff Terry Brooks was writing at that time. And for many gamers, even today, the Lord of the Rings and its imitators are the blueprint for what constitutes an "epic campaign". For good or bad.

I actually want more Tolkien in my D&D. What was once included (except for the elves and dwarves, of course) was ruthlessly stripped out after the Tolkien Foundation complained. Note that none of the Tolkien Family own, or are a part of the Tolkien Foundation anymore, so they are not seeing any juicy profits from the franchise and are no longer the beneficiaries of their own creative work (other than direct royalties from new creations).

For the rest of you all, Planescape anyone?

You can have elves, dwarves and goblins without it being MiddleEarth-esque. Even halfling-esque races. All these existed long before those books came out.

Dragon actually had a few good articles on this over the years.

But one way would be to just run D&D Conan. No demihuman PC races, no clerics, even wizards are rare.

Or Masque of the Red Death. No demi human races. Magic rarer, and is orders harder and much more risky.

Depending on the time period dwarf travellers are common enough on the roads, vagabonds and refugees from The Lonely Mountain.  Tolkien also notes that vagabond hobbits who will just dig a hole and move in anywhere are a thing though not one seen in Rohan apparently, which is interesting, because Gollum's people started out around Fangorn and the great river but seem to have migrated north.  In the southlands, ill favoured strangers that look half goblin are probably pretty common as spies for Saruman.  Elves are less often seen, The Shire lies on the road west from Rivendale so Hobbits occasionally see them if the elves want them to.  I've always wondered about Gildor Inglorian's choice to send Frodo and Sam along on their own rather than taking charge of them and making for Rivendale with his company immediately, he clearly knows that the nine riders are ring wraiths.  My best guess is that he figured two hobbits would draw less attention than a couple dozen elves but I can't help but wonder if he's just a coward.

Quote from: S'mon;1033646ME does have places like Bree, where you can find Men, Hobbits and apparently Half-Orcs in one large village or small town. It's depicted as unusual, but not hugely so. Pre-3e D&D was not vastly different I think.

Gondor had no elves or dwarves. Nobody even knew halflings existed. Same with Rohan. Elven communities were strictly elvish. Dwarves and elves had a deep distrust bordering on hatred. Running a D&D campaign in an authentic Middle-Earth would be a shock to most D&D players.

Quote from: S'mon;1033646Pre-3e D&D was not vastly different I think.

Greyhawk says otherwise. Virtually every city has large populations of humans, elves, dwarves, and halflings. The first city supplement for D&D, the City State of the Invincible Overlord, presents humans, elves, dwarves, half-elves, and halflings all living together, cheek to jowl in inns, bakeries, and public baths. Wilderlands settlements are presented in a format of 70% human, 15% half-elf, 10% dwarf, 5% halfling. Mystara and the Known World are the same. And all those worlds are far, far more populated than the haunted emptiness of Middle-Earth.

Right from the outset, D&D as a game setting was its own thing, with more new tropes different from any existing fantasy settings than it was like any one. Tolkien was an influence insofar as many D&D campaigns play out as a multi-race fellowship of the ring. But D&D game worlds don't have much resemblance to Middle-Earth, or any other fantasy setting.

Quote from: Haffrung;1033666Right from the outset, D&D as a game setting was its own thing, with more new tropes different from any existing fantasy settings than it was like any one. Tolkien was an influence insofar as many D&D campaigns play out as a multi-race fellowship of the ring. But D&D game worlds don't have much resemblance to Middle-Earth, or any other fantasy setting.

  And when you start delving deeper into cosmology or thematics, they start looking even more like Howard or Moorcock than Tolkien, IMO.

Quote from: David Johansen;1033664Depending on the time period dwarf travellers are common enough on the roads, vagabonds and refugees from The Lonely Mountain.  Tolkien also notes that vagabond hobbits who will just dig a hole and move in anywhere are a thing though not one seen in Rohan apparently, which is interesting, because Gollum's people started out around Fangorn and the great river but seem to have migrated north.  In the southlands, ill favoured strangers that look half goblin are probably pretty common as spies for Saruman.  Elves are less often seen, The Shire lies on the road west from Rivendale so Hobbits occasionally see them if the elves want them to.  I've always wondered about Gildor Inglorian's choice to send Frodo and Sam along on their own rather than taking charge of them and making for Rivendale with his company immediately, he clearly knows that the nine riders are ring wraiths.  My best guess is that he figured two hobbits would draw less attention than a couple dozen elves but I can't help but wonder if he's just a coward.

I don't think Gildor was an elf lord like Glorfindel, and probably couldn't have done much to stop the nine ringwraiths, even with his elf buddies along. And if he tried, like you say, it would draw attention to the hobbits.

Quote from: finarvyn;1033638Much of their fantasy comes through anime.

There are loads of D&D-based anime (well, mostly based on video games based on D&D, but D&D is the source of all their conventions). It is actually fairly unique from other fantasy, since it takes the premise from Order of the Shtick that the world runs on RPG rules and plays that completely serious. Almost all "trapped in another world" (isekai) anime take place in someone's D&D campaign or MMO. Things like living dungeons and martial arts are the norm: a fighter or rogue is capable of going toe to toe with a magic-user of equal level, while seemingly every dungeon is full of RTS bases and MMO raid bosses at the command of a dungeon lord.

The problem is that most of these anime are terrible and they keep getting worse every season. About the only one worth watching is Overlord, since it deliberately mocks the conventions of the genre.

Quote from: Haffrung;1033666Wilderlands settlements are presented in a format of 70% human, 15% half-elf, 10% dwarf, 5% halfling.

You're mixing up the 3e version of Wilderlands with the original. Although CSIO was always cosmopolitan. 3e Wilderlands used the 3e official rules for demographics hence those %s.