Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 8087858" data-attributes="member: 6801228">I apologize for a long post talking to many different people. But I was grabbing posts in 10 minute chunks of time over the last 8 hours trying to catch up, while dealing with other things. I didn't really feel like making a separate post for each.It was never meant to be published as a trilogy... but it is always published as a trilogy. You buy it most often as a trilogy, even the movies were made as a trilogy. It is nearly a thousand pages long. The three books I compared it to are closer to 750. And every character has a history, sure, but not every character is important. You say Nine Ring Wraiths, but to my knowledge only one of them gets named, and they all share the same backstory. You want to count all of the hobbits in the Shire, characters who barely get any screentime and can be completely cut without changing the story at all?In fact, since it is "the farmer with the mushrooms" or "The hobbits stealing Bilbo's home (which happens in the Hobbit, not the Lord of the Rings) Sure, maybe I missed a character or two, but that isn't the point. The point isn't that there are exactly X named characters in the single story that has been broken into a trilogy. The Point is the number of characters in a story does not determine the genre. Genre is not defined that way. And I don't understand why you want to accuse me with not being familiar enough with the texts to know that it is 34 named characters instead of 20, when that is never the point of the discussion.Sure, but that is still the case in any story. Just because Conan doesn't get smited by the gods doesn't mean there isn't a morality at play. Heck, most "strong savage man" stories are about how society is corrupted an immoral compared to the simpler and therefore more moral framework presented by the character who challenges society.JRRT having a vision does not equate to anything as far as I can remember. If my few decades old memory is right, Aragorn doesn't want to be king because he feels he isn't worthy of the title. Aragorn has a vision of the divinity of kings and he knows that he doesn't match that image, so he doesn't take up the crown. This is his own morality. The world doesn't force it upon him, he comes to accept that he is the best man for the job (and it isn't like the mad and weak kings he finds in power are doing much better than he would anyways) This is what I don't get about the argument. It isn't that Aragorn gets a divine light from Heaven telling him when he is worthy to be King. There is no object of destiny that he frees like Excalibur (in fact, he has no power or way to fix his sword, and doesn't get it back for a while if memory serves). The decision to become the King of Gondor is entirely Aragorn's. Which is what people do when they travel? Like, he doesn't conform to the morals of societies that are not his own, but he does conform to the morals he was given from his father right? That's what that whole thing in the trailer about the sword is right? I don't get the argument here that his Moral Code as a Cimmerian doesn't count because he isn't in his home country. I don't suddenly lose my moral code I grew up with if I cross an international border, that isn't how things work.I agree with scaleI disagree that character's are how you measure that scale. Jim Butcher wrote the Dresden Files to take place in Chicago, and he references Chicagoan history quite often. That is a scale too, it brings with it the entire weight of American history. But that doesn't count.Every character in the setting tends to fit into it, every character tends to have a history hinted at or even mentioned,, especially if they are important. This is just a function of writing in a fantasy world. "This story has a lot of important characters, and those characters have a backstory" does not feel like it is enough to earn the genre of Epic Fantasy. There is more to it than that. Or maybe there is a lot more Epic Fantasy than I've ever given credit for, because that covers a lot of Fantasy.Thus my entire point. A large character cast alone with no other aspect considered does not equal Epic Fantasy. You need more than a large cast of named characters. I don't know why simple points that everyone seems to agree on keep getting my raked over the coals.I suppose the issue is how you go about defining things. The idea that "Epic Fantasy" doesn't exist before Tolkien is something I find laughably absurd. How do we define The Journey to the West, The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Odessey, The Illiad, The Epic of Beowulf, Dante's Divine Comedy? All of these are works of Fiction, all of them are epic in scope, and feature fantastical elements. In fact, Tolkien was trying to create a mythology. If we assume he mostly succeeded, then Mythology is very similiar to Epic Fantasy. And, since S&S seems to have developed and run it's course in a mere decade or two, and it is mostly known today by what it inspired, being a transition of one thing to another seems completely logical. Writing changes all the time, aspects of genres shift and transition all the time. I don't see that as a bad thing, but it certainly helps explain the short life-cycle and oddly contradictory stuff you keep claiming about S&SAh, okay, that is a much more clear way to phrase what you mean. I understand what you are saying now. And I find myself agreeing. Thank you for the clarification.This is something we've addressed once or twice actually. In many of the other settings, the powers that be are incredibly entrenched. In Eberron, there is no real way to challenge the Dragonmarked houses, or even a lot of land to try and build your own kingdom on. Q'Barra is about it on the main continent. In FR, most of the major city-states have immense power, especially if you take the results of them logically. You can't realistically challenge the rule of people wealthy enough to buy dragons. In Greyhawk though, there are not a lot of major powers who are well known on the political scale. The majority of the nations are actually on the brink anyways, and an upstart kingdom has a chance to thrive and turn into an Empire. Making Greyhawk uniquely suited as a backdrop for the rule set, which yes, could be applied to other settings, but would require quite a bit more work to actually be effective in nation-building (unless you build with handwavium or go to one of the less focused on areas.)</blockquote>

Verification