Brainstorming: Lord of the...WTF?!?!

Vaslov · Mar 20, 2019

Some random thought on this....

The one ring .... is the Ozone Hole. 80's is when this was news. So the mission is to remove the hole. Takes care of the "just fly over there to solve" it issue as well. Who are the orcs? Well all of the big hair girls with CFC filled Aqua Net hairdos who look something like the Bring Eyes video from that Bonnie Tyler song. Sauron is David Bowie of course in his outfit from Labyrinth. If only Bruce Lee were still here to save us from his legions of lawyers, groupies, and secret cult following from behind the iron curtain. Riders of Rohan would be the punk scene. Frodo and Sam are just trying to go to the UN to get that resolution passed to stop/slow CFC manufacturing.

Might be too far out there for what you are looking for. Regardless even if you toss all of that aside the rpg Feng Shui 2 was made for that video you posted.

Hope that gives you some ideas to have fun with.

Dannyalcatraz · Mar 20, 2019

I like the punk riders of Rohan.

And why didn’t I think of this 1986 classic sooner?
[video=youtube;592EiTD2Hgo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=592EiTD2Hgo[/video]

Dannyalcatraz · Mar 21, 2019

OK, strongly leaning towards the eco-activist hedge wizards calling themselves: The Esoteric Naturistic Thaumaturgic Society[/QUOTE]

This quasi-Druidic organization could have been operational through a goodly chunk of recorded human history, echoing the longevity of JRRT’s Ents. Using the core of this:

Bedrockgames said:
If these people were insane enough they could create actual Ents to protect the trees from Humanity (and maybe when the Ents are awakened it is discovered they are truly ancient, that the trees were aware and intelligent all along).

The ENTS use modern biochemistry mixed with their form of magic to create some new plant life that is unusually mobile and at least as sentient as animals, trained to do the ENTS’ business. Lots of models to steal from- Saprolings, Krynoids, Triffids, Swamp Thing, Man-Thing and all those myths, legends, fantasy & horror stories of animate vines, trees, etc.

Hmmm...maybe the leader of the ENTS has himself become plantlinke due to accident or deliberately exposing himself to the organization’s experimental procedures.

Dannyalcatraz · Mar 22, 2019

And given the general theme of af a group being pursued by relentless enemies, this could be mined for a sequence or two, as well...
[video=youtube;MV4cgs-bPic]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV4cgs-bPic[/video]

Riley37 · Apr 17, 2019

One difficulty in the transition is high technology and the relationship with the past. In JRRT's LotR, people generally don't increase in power by innovation. The Three Rings were powerful, Sauron learns from them and creates the One Ring, and then no one, in centuries, improves on the Three or on the One.

It would be thematic for the BBEG to have made the One Thing for WWII, then it was captured by the Third Reich, then moved to the USA during Project Paperclip... but that's kinda incompatible with the One Thing as cutting edge technology in the 1970s or 1980s. It can't even have transistors (invented in 1947).

See "Cryptonomicon" for WWII coding serving as a McGuffin in modern times.

Perhaps the One Thing has a core built in the 1940s, a one-time pad or cipher wheel, and the BBEG used the same control code when he built the Orbital Mind Control Satellites, decades later. Then someone replaces the One Thing's vacuum tube radio with a modern transmitter-receiver, kicking off the plot.

Who are the elves (makers of the Three) and dwarves (recipients of the Seven)? or do they get cut from the story, leaving only the One and the Nine?

Is there a Gandalf-analogue?

Riley37 · Apr 17, 2019

The Tunguska Event could have a role. If it involved aliens, and/or awakened some Siberian trees, perhaps that's your Bombadil: older than the BBEG, and unimpressed with the BBEG's power, and also not going to solve the problem for the heroes.

Dannyalcatraz · Apr 17, 2019

Riley37 said:
The Tunguska Event could have a role. If it involved aliens, and/or awakened some Siberian trees, perhaps that's your Bombadil: older than the BBEG, and unimpressed with the BBEG's power, and also not going to solve the problem for the heroes.

I wish I could XP you more than once for that! That is really good. I don’t know the exact shape or form, but that fits- consider it yoinked!

Dannyalcatraz · Apr 17, 2019

Riley37 said:
One difficulty in the transition is high technology and the relationship with the past. In JRRT's LotR, people generally don't increase in power by innovation. The Three Rings were powerful, Sauron learns from them and creates the One Ring, and then no one, in centuries, improves on the Three or on the One.

It would be thematic for the BBEG to have made the One Thing for WWII, then it was captured by the Third Reich, then moved to the USA during Project Paperclip... but that's kinda incompatible with the One Thing as cutting edge technology in the 1970s or 1980s. It can't even have transistors (invented in 1947).

See "Cryptonomicon" for WWII coding serving as a McGuffin in modern times.

Perhaps the One Thing has a core built in the 1940s, a one-time pad or cipher wheel, and the BBEG used the same control code when he built the Orbital Mind Control Satellites, decades later. Then someone replaces the One Thing's vacuum tube radio with a modern transmitter-receiver, kicking off the plot.

Who are the elves (makers of the Three) and dwarves (recipients of the Seven)? or do they get cut from the story, leaving only the One and the Nine?

Is there a Gandalf-analogue?

For the most part, I see this as human centric, like most stuff from that period. Even in Kolshack, the truly supernatural beings were exceptionally rare if not unique.

But there’s nothing to prevent me from quasi-retro engineering JRRT’s elves & dwarves into the French and UK, respectively.

I don’t have a Gandalf yet, beyond the aforementioned discussion of Ainur being a bit on the wushu side. IOW, truly supernatural, but- for purposes of this setting- skilled in technology enough to fuse the two together.

Riley37 · Apr 18, 2019

I guess the question here, if elves and dwarves aren't literal "people who aren't humans, who use fire and language, and have co-existed openly with humans for centuries", is the role of dwarves and elves. They're populations which send representatives to the Council of Elrond, and that can be analogous to any alliance of people who have clashed but it's time to unite or die.

They're also populations with different relationships with the Rings. The elves made their own rings. So whoever in your history made their own tech, and traded notes with the BBEG, are elf-equivalents.

Humans (nine of them) received rings and were enslaved. They're cyborgs now. Were they literal kings, or sports superstars, or elite soldiers, before the BBEG put a ring on them?

Dwarves (seven of them) received rings, and gained wealth, but sooner or later they (or their heirs) destroyed themselves and/or each other and/or were devoured by dragons. Sauron eventually ambushed Thrain II, father of Thror II (the one who hired Frodo as burglar), to recover that ring. Perhaps the barons of industry in 1930s Germany, who enabled Hitler's rise to power and became wealthy, shortly before their nation got bombed to rubble, are one example? Alas, wrong decade for Bitcoin miners who delved too deep and woke the nameless fear.

Riley37 · Apr 18, 2019

Darren Watts ran a Golden Age Champions game, in which the Tunguska Event also involved Baba Yaga. I think it knocked her for a loop, then she revived in 1939, but I forget the details.

Several players in that group also had roles in his acquisition of Hero System in order to publish 5E. I was, briefly, vice-president of the corporation, and co-signed one of the key contracts. Optimus was my PC, largely inspired by Ozymandias but with a rather different moral compass.