Lord of the Rings inspired?

@ kwarnold - Thats not entirely true... Tolkien did not invent fantasy - the credit there must fall to cro magnon man sitting around the fire grunting stories to one another... Tolkien did however put a nice shine on it that everyone has been emulating since and in-so-far as that goes... the influences of Gary Gygax also can not be understated, while not everyone plays D&D, the human mind seeks structure in things and the construct of the D&D game further refined and (more importantly) proportioned the realms of faeries, dragons and magic.