But how is it an accurate depiction of the setting, Arda, if it doesn't take place in Arda itself, and has a bunch of random guys from Warcraft/Warhammer/Wheel of Time/Star Wars/D&D/Harry Potter/Zelda/Conan/DBZ thrown in? Personally I love Arda only as a whole, including the entire setting with all of its history, cosmology, and philosophy. I can't get excited at all about the individual bits and pieces in isolation, divorced from their entire context that made them who and what they are. Even if you have some story explaining it, like "transdimensional portals that abducted people and dumped them into XYZ universe," I still wouldn't enjoy it in the least. It wouldn't be Arda. And Tolkien did write enough detail about his dwarves to distinguish them from generic fantasy/D&D dwarves.