The Hobbit influenced DnD, D&D

Gygax spent years downplaying Tolkien's importance to the game, and the paperwork disagrees with him. The 1974 rules use hobbits, ents and balrogs by name; the Tolkien Estate objected, and TSR renamed them halflings, treants and the balor. All three words are still in the game, and each one is a scar left by a legal letter. Beyond the names, the debt is the premise the whole hobby rests on: a mixed party of races travelling together on a long expedition to a dungeon, which is The Hobbit's plot and was not a standard fantasy shape before it. Pointed at The Hobbit rather than at The Lord of the Rings, which the graph already holds separately. The Hobbit is the one with a burglar hired by a party, an underground expedition, and a dragon on a hoard.