Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5679395" data-attributes="member: 54877">Middle Earth is not a world in stasis, but a world in decline. And since part of its intent is to show the nature of will of human (or hobbit or elven) conduct, that part really has nothing to do with technology or lack thereof. Gonder fails to field technology capable of knocking Sauron out because they lack the will. (And also late, the means and the energy--but that lack is due to a long lack of will.) See Elrond's statements to Gandalf about who the elves can trust to fight. Moreover, this decline is not arrested by the defeat of Sauron but simply eased into a transition into something a lot more pleasant that what Sauron would have done with it, while Gondor has a brief resurgence and the elves leave. This is often a common theme in magic as plot device--at least when not abused as such. The hero may use magic as a plot device to accomplish something, but the real story is that the hero had the will, guts, moxie, smarts, cleverness, nerve, luck, smooth tongue, etc. to see what the magic could do, to acquire it, and then to risk its use. In my gaming, I prefer this style of magic, generally. I've gradually weaned myself off of the mistaken belief that I preferred magic as technology--no doubt an early preference reinforced by an appreciation of form, structure, logic. However, I've found in gaming that when I get too far along the technology line, magic simply becomes "color". That is, it stops being plot device readily enough, moves into some interesting gaming space as a tool, and then rapidly loses my interest as "magic missile wand" becomes simply another name for "my character owns a laser rifle." Thoughtful and careful effort into the structure of magic as technology can resist this tendency somewhat, of course, but I find it more pursued than achieved. Not that there is anything wrong with magic as mere color. If you like that sort of thing, your interests are likely on other parts of the game, and I can see the appeal of that. I simply don't share it. I want the fantastical to be fantastical. For that to happen, it can't be move very far into the technological realm. My problem, then, is that I have to reconcile this preference with my other preference that magic be generally pervasive. The common way of making magic as plot without blowing up the system is to make it rare. So this is a tension that I struggle with constantly. I think part of my attraction to narrative and metagaming mechanics is that such offer a way out of this dilemma.</blockquote>

Verification