Case against continuity

[nevin]

I've got the thing for you: Eamon-remastered.com. Make your character, pick your quest, play it through, take home loot. Want more? Play it again. Try that idea you didn't try the last time. See what happens. Or make a different character, put it through the same quest.

I've been working on the DRPG version of it, but . . .


. . . it also doesn't self-implement. So it's moving along at the One Amateur's Production Speed. But I really like the concept, because sometimes you don't want a campaign, and don't care if the Quest-Giver gets his farm back, or the Rogue's long-lost brother is rescued. But that last quest sure was a blast, and it might be a whole new experience if a different party tried it.

problem is most people don't like replaying the same thing over and over to see all angles of what could have been. There are some who do. My middle son played skyrim til he had done everything in the game multiple ways with multiple characters. Each of those characters spent more time in game than my one did.

but that kind of play is an outlyer. Most people want to be surprised and aren't going to play the same game multiple times to see what all the options could have done.

 

[MGibster]

I mean you crapped on a thing I love and left it at that, so I’ve little sympathy.

Lot's of people aren't going to like the same things you like. You shouldn't take it personally.

 

[MGibster]

problem is most people don't like replaying the same thing over and over to see all angles of what could have been. There are some who do. My middle son played skyrim til he had done everything in the game multiple ways with multiple characters. Each of those characters spent more time in game than my one did.

I don't know about that. Skyrim has been remastered and re-released how many times? Some people have multiple copies of they game they've purchased over the years.

 

[nevin]

Well, he certainly didn't explain where in the canonical Middle Earth cosmology Tom sits, but Tom DOES explain himself, IMHO. He's unfettered free will. Good of his own nature, without attachment to any creed or desire to control anything but his own life and his little place in the world. This is why the Ring has no hold over him, he cannot be dominated or influenced because he's free, almost like a Bodhisattva. Elrond explains that, in the end, Sauron would crush him, physically, but not in spirit. And if you go all the way back to the Ainulindali, you see that the primary theme is will. Tom is the axis of the story, he literally embodies the concept of free will, the essence of self which the power of Morgoth, and thus Sauron his servant, opposes.

Sure, it can be excised from the PLOT, but Tolkien left it in for a reason, IMHO, even if he sometimes second guessed himself.

Wrong. If you read the Silmarillion and all the other books you'll know that when one of the "gods" lesser or greater spend too much time in middle earth they eventually become bound to what attracts them the most. Once they are "bound" to that they eventually fade away after the magic, the elves and all the other powers of divine and magic go away. Tom Bombadil is one of the Valor who came to middle earth fell in love and refused to leave at the end of the 1st age. When the magic faded he faded because he was unable to leave his chosen home. Since the wizards were afraid of the corrupting power of the ring and he wasn't most likely he was one of the full blown gods who fought Melkor in the first age and just didn't go home. No one knows about him because he's been stuck in that plot of land since he didn't go home at the end of the first age. Kind've like Prometheus chained to the rock but willingly he lived there with his lady till the end. Basically it was a very similar story Luthien and Turen. Tolken love the idea of Love that refused to bow to reality.

 

[Mallus]

Anyway, I love story, but canon is an abyss.

I've not heard that put better.

 

[loverdrive]

problem is most people don't like replaying the same thing over and over to see all angles of what could have been

Even if that's the case (it probably isn't), so what? I don't see what the most people want has to do with deliberately going against "folk wisdom" to attain new experiences.

 

[nevin]

My theory is that he is Aule the Smith the third most powerful of the Aratar who created the dwarves because he was impatient for life to begin. I think perhaps the original ideas was that the deal between him and the creator to grant life to the dwarves was he had to stay in middle earth with them. But that's just a theory. But he was the Aratar who was most in tune with the earth and his wife was the Aratar known as the giver of fruits. those two titles seem very close to those two aratar. Tom who could sing the land and all in it to submission and GoldBerry his wife? But even if not the only other beings they could have been with that kind of power would have been at least very powerful Maiar the spirits that the aratar created to help shape the earth. Most of them weren't named but some were.

 

[loverdrive]

But I really like the concept, because sometimes you don't want a campaign, and don't care if the Quest-Giver gets his farm back, or the Rogue's long-lost brother is rescued. But that last quest sure was a blast, and it might be a whole new experience if a different party tried it.

It doesn't even have to be a different party! Like, people always come up with the perfect words twenty minutes after the conversation is over, and it surely does apply to RPGs. Writers have multiple drafts, actors get to do recitals, why can't we?

During the initial playtesting of Swords under the Sun I've ran like fifteen sessions that all started with the same opening scene. Eventually I more or less perfected the premise itself, the delivery, the musical cues, all that and had a goddamn blast running it every time.

 

[nevin]

Even if that's the case (it probably isn't), so what? I don't see what the most people want has to do with deliberately going against "folk wisdom" to attain new experiences.

going against "folk wisdom" lost whatever that thought was completly. I was simply replying to the idea of replaying stuff with no big story attached over and over as replayable content. never been a big seller.

 

[nevin]

It doesn't even have to be a different party! Like, people always come up with the perfect words twenty minutes after the conversation is over, and it surely does apply to RPGs. Writers have multiple drafts, actors get to do recitals, why can't we?

During the initial playtesting of Swords under the Sun I've ran like fifteen sessions that all started with the same opening scene. Eventually I more or less perfected the premise itself, the delivery, the musical cues, all that and had a goddamn blast running it every time

sounds like misery to me. Once and i'm done time to move on.