At 9/21/09 02:19 PM, byteslinger wrote:
Out of curiousity, who do you use as your source on dragons besides "Dragonlance"? Oddly enough, the concept of dragons as monsters dates back to ancient Mesapotamian times - but the term "dragon" was loosely translated as any large creature the natives had no other name to give it. The ancient Greek, Romans and Chinese all have dragons in their mythos as well.
The History Channel had a special on dragons a few years back, and one of its hypotheses was that dragons were a combination of some of the most common (and thus feared) predators of humanity's not-quite-human ancestors. Snakes, for example, and different birds of prey. Of course, that's just a guess from the TV.
Oh, and I'll let this little nugget out of the time capsule of my mis-spent youth: In my early teens, I not only played D&D, I was also a DM.
Odd, I was just thinking of D&D myself today. Would someone remind me when the EGB became a nerd hivemind, talking D&D while I was at school reading about a fictional D&D game railroaded to follow the LotR plot and some list of hilarious things that shouldn't be done during a tabletop RPG?
It was quite unusual for a "girl" to play back then, but I was a tomboy until high-school, and a geek to boot. Plus, that's where all the smart guys got together - and they were the only ones I really chose to hang out with on a regular basis.
As for that, you're now working with computers, networking, scripts, whatever; a lot of my college classmates (read:"ghetto people/dumb jocks") might say you're still a bit of a nerd. But who am I to talk, I browse TV Tropes from school.
I do have many of the original D&D manuals; but I'm not sure who G. Gary Gygax used as a reference for his version of dragons back then. Can't ask him now - he's dead. Guess we'll never know.
It's pretty well-known (at least from any sources I read) that he adapted a lot of concepts from Tolkien, maybe that included his dragons. Not having played D&D, I really don't know. Though the thought came to me just hours ago that I should try D&D.
At 9/21/09 02:36 PM, EagleRock wrote:
Sounds quite Tolkien for me. :-P Not that I hate J.R.R. Tolkien's work, mind you...
I'm something of a Tolkien fan, to the point of having an unused Quenya (one of the languages of the Elves) course on my computer. I was going to learn the language eventually, but "eventually" came and went. Interestingly enough, according to my local paper today is the 72nd anniversary of the first publishing of The Hobbit. Quite a coincidence that the EGB mentions Tolkien and other facets of geekdom today.