Our Appendix N Archeology and Adventures in Fiction series are meant to take a look at the writers and creators behind the genre(s) that helped to forge not only our favorite hobby but our lives. We invite you to explore the entirety of the series on our Adventures In Fiction home page. Adventures in Fiction: J.R.R. Tolkien by Chris Doyle John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was born on January 3, 1892, in what is now South Africa. His parents, both English, had re-located so his father could accept a promotion with his current employer, a bank. He returned to England at the age of three, but his father succumbed to fever and never made the journey. Tolkien was a soldier (in the First World War, eventually reaching the rank of Lieutenant), a poet, a linguist, a professor, and most notably a writer. He is best known for authoring The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, literary classics that helped define the genre. Prior to penning these classics, Tolkien became the youngest professor at the University of Leeds. There he pursued translation, medieval studies, and private tutoring. He was also an acclaimed lecturer. In the 1920s, he spent six years translating Beowulf from Old English to modern English, which included adding hundreds of pages of his own commentary. This work would heavily inspire his later writing epics, yet he never published it. In 2014, his son, Christopher, edited and published the translation nearly 90 years following its completion. As a child, he is said to have been bitten by a large baboon spider, which could have been an influence of his later writings of Shelob in The Lord of the Rings. As the Second World War raged on, Tolkien was tapped by the British government to become a codebreaker. He agreed, and received formal training from the cryptographic department and even took classes at the London headquarters of the Government Code and Cypher School. Later that year he was informed his services would not be required. The popularity of The Hobbit and his epic, The Lord of the Rings, reinvigorated the fantasy genre in the 1960’s and earned him the moniker “The Father of High Fantasy.”  Recent polls reveal to this day that he is a beloved author all over the world. Without question, he has soft spot in many role-players as a heavy inspiration to their beloved fantasy RPGs,...