FoxTrot Classics by Bill Amend for January 21, 2014

10,000 BALROGS?! C’mon! One is bad enough!

He din’t play itHe invented it

He must’ve hit their exhaust vent…

Certainly Tolkien would never have played “Monty Haul” D&D, which is what these guys are playing. He would have preferred something that offered a challenge.

If he were alive today, he might play something like World of Warcraft until he got bored with it. But he would be frustrated at the lack of depth in the languages spoken by the various races.

If Tolkien played RP fantasy games today, players would have to speak in the native language of their race.

Gygax always swore up and down and left and right that D&D wasn’t based primarily on Tolkien. Trouble is, I can’t find anything that comes close to hobbits/halflings in any pre-1970s literature.

But obviously Robert Jordan did…

Nope—I grew up devouring Norse alongside Greek and Roman, and there’s nothing like a hobbit in it.