Why do the caste names on The Library of Knowledge seem to mirror the game Dungeons and Dragons?
Back in 1974 a man named Gary Gygax created the game Dungeons and Dragons. It was a role-playing game that utilized many different types of mythological characters of different backgrounds (whose strengths and weaknesses (within limits) are randomly generated by the roll of a die or dice). Gygax created these types of players and similar characters based on his love of fantasy and science fiction literature. Though Gygax took the artistic liberty of distorting what he found in his novels to fit a game scenario, as any true entertainment artist does, the fact remains that his source was fantasy literature with a twist of imagination. Now we look to fantasy literature and see where that came from. Fantasy literature, as a genre, draws mostly upon legend. Though “gremlins” appear in some fantasy literature, it has roots in devil-tales of England. Other terms, such as “elf”, though often considered a relatively modern invention, can be found in literature as early as the works of Geoffrey
