(no subject)

[seekingferret]

So my D&D group is converting our characters from 4E D&D to Pathfinder (D&D 3.5 OGL clone), mostly because we're transitioning to a more NPC interaction-heavy style of gameplay now that we're down to two reliable players and a couple of occasional stragglers and my DM wanted a system that actually had a reasonable skill system.

And in converting my dwarf character, I saw that I now had a +2 to Appraise checks that involve gold. And I was like, "Oh, joy. Hi, Wagner, I'd almost forgotten you were hiding there."

My understanding is that the intellectual history goes Wagner's Ring Cycle --> Tolkien's Lord of the Rings --> Gygax's D&D original. At each step, the linkage between Jews and Dwarves became less overt. But it doesn't go away. And jumping back from 4E to 3.5E was a reminder that D&D has actually gotten better at making Dwarves their own thing over the years. It's an unpleasant reversion.

I created this character partially because I did want to engage with that intellectual history. Kelin's worship of Moradin is a vital part of his identity in a strangely similar way to the way that my worship of Hashem is a vital part of mine. Kelin's interactions with non-dwarves, his understanding of his dwarven heritage and his desire to preserve it, share it, and amplify it, these are all built on my understanding that Dwarf ~= Jew in many ways. Which I suppose means having to accept the consequences of playing a Jewish character in a medieval setting. A major plot right now involves him going into majority human areas and attempting to make a coin or two playing music that hides parts of his heritage. And the struggle has become weirdly personal. I'm not sure if, when in next week's session he'll have his first concert in town, I'm going to be able to bring him to cave that much.

Comments

[bookherd]

I'd never seen the dwarf//Jew parallels until you brought it up in a recent post, but now that you mention it, I can see that evolution through Wagner -> Tolkien -> D&D. Makes me wanna go re-read stuff to pick up on parts that flew over my radar.

[seekingferret]

With D&D, there have been so many cooks in the kitchen over the years, and I have to figure most of them weren't aware of the historical connections, so many of them have been buried. But the parallels lurk, and they bite you when you least expect it. Or at least, I find that they do.

Of course, the stuff with orcs is a lot closer to the surface in D&D and a lot bigger of an often ignored problem.

[q10.livejournal.com]

the intellectual history is a bit more complicated - both Wagner and Tolkien had access to (roughly the same) older sources, and although Tolkien was aware of Wagner's work, he probably spent more time with said earlier sources (they were, after all, more closely connected with his professional interests as a philologist). so it seems like it would take some nontrivial extra work to sort out whether the Jewish stereotyping of Tolkien's dwarves was inherited from Wagner, or independently concocted by Tolkien, or derived by both from some prior source.

in any case Tolkien was, at least as of 1971, conscious of the Jewishness of his dwarves (http://www.reocities.com/Area51/Shire/5014/interview.html), and suggested that this had influenced some of his dwarf-related linguistic decisions.

(bounced over here when i noticed a link in a comment left in my lj a couple of years ago - was rereading said comment for something else.)

[seekingferret]

Fine, I'll concede that the intellectual history is more complicated than what I presented. I didn't go into any more detail partially because it's outside my field and partially because as you suggest, it's complicated and non-trivial to analyze the exact relationship.

Certainly Gygax also had other inspirations on Northern European folklore besides Tolkien, but Tolkien was at the top of his list. (And unlike Tolkien and Wagner, I do believe that some of the cooks in the kitchen on various D&D editions were unaware of the parallels) And really more to my point, at every stage along the way there is a dilution of the nastiness of the stereotypes. I find Gygax's dwarves a lot less offensive than Wagner's. I can't really sit through Das Rheingold. I can attempt to rehabilitate Gygax's dwarves.