Let's Talk About Metacurrency

[TwoSix]

What is there to fight about? As you’ve said, you’ve run multiple fantasy and sci-fi games of your own creation with modern rulesets. That sounds like you’ve won.

"Nothing is over! Nothing! You just don't turn it off!"

 

[Umbran]

I chose Middle-earth as a low magic setting, that it has an Aragorn stomping around is irrelevant to this. Pick a low magic setting of your choice then.

Discussing whether Boromir is not just another human is a tangent. I am not aware of anything other than his title setting him apart, in which case that is even less of a difference than between Conan and the baker.

When you are talking about equality, that both Boromir and Aragorn (and Gimli, and Legolas, and Gandalf) come from lineages that the author quite explicitly states have standing out far and above the capabilities of normal humans is not irrelevant or a tangent.

Aragorn and Boromir both carry Numenorean blood (Aragorn rather moreso, but still), and that is important to Tolkien. Tolkien's world is one in which nobility, and the real right of rulership, isn't just a legal arrangement. Aragorn and Boromir are from better types of humans than most - physically, intellectually, and spiritually stronger, due to their lines of descent.

Indeed, even all the hobbits are of superior lines of hobbit-families, not "run of the mill" for their people. Not a single member of the Fellowship of the Ring is an "average" dude. They are all exceptional.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

When you are talking about equality, that both Boromir and Aragorn (and Gimli, and Legolas, and Gandalf) come from lineages that the author quite explicitly states have standing out far and above the capabilities of normal humans is not irrelevant or a tangent.

Aragorn and Boromir both carry Numenorean blood (Aragorn rather moreso, but still), and that is important to Tolkien. Tolkien's world is one in which nobility, and the real right of rulership, isn't just a legal arrangement. Aragorn and Boromir are from better types of humans than most - physically, intellectually, and spiritually stronger, due to their lines of descent.

Indeed, even all the hobbits are of superior lines of hobbit-families, not "run of the mill" for their people. Not a single member of the Fellowship of the Ring is an "average" dude. They are all exceptional.

Except of course the best of them, Sam, who was just a gardener.

 

[Artamo]

"Nothing is over! Nothing! You just don't turn it off!"

What’s funny is i immediately got that reference

 

[Umbran]

Except of course the best of them, Sam, who was just a gardener.

Sam, actually, is also exceptional. He's not of royal bloodline, but he's also not one of those dirty urban people. Tolkien has a definite bent toward bucolicism.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Sam, actually, is also exceptional. He's not of royal bloodline, but he's also not one of those dirty urban people. Tolkien has a definite bent toward bucolicism.

That is stretching the definition of "exceptional" well beyond the breaking point. Though it is pretty strained for most of the others as well. I don't think "distantly related to some nobility" is particularly exceptional. For example most exceptional thing about Frodo is being related to Bilbo, and Gimli isn't particularly special either. And Merry and Pippin being some backwater nobility does not really make them special either, mostly it makes them just unaccustomed to hardship. And yes, Aragorn has magic blood, and Boromir in theory a bit, but Boromir really is not exceptional because of it; he is specifically contrasted to Aragorn who is. Boromir is one of those "lesser men" to whom the governance of Gondor was given to, so not special.

The only exceptional memebers of the Fellowship are Aragorn, Gandalf and Legolas, and the last one only barely. He is an elven prince, and all Tolkien's elves are pretty special, but he is certainly pretty low tier as the elves go. Elrond and Galadriel are the actual exceptional ones.

 

[mamba]

When you are talking about equality, that both Boromir and Aragorn (and Gimli, and Legolas, and Gandalf) come from lineages that the author quite explicitly states have standing out far and above the capabilities of normal humans is not irrelevant or a tangent.

as I said, pick a different low magic setting then. That Boromir and Aragorn are from some older lineages does not give them abilities beyond that of other humans. It gives them standing in the setting, but as far as abilities go he is not special and comfortably fits into the equality we were discussing

 

[Reynard]

Except of course the best of them, Sam, who was just a gardener.

Just a gardener that saves the world.

 

[TwoSix]

Just a gardener that saves the world.

I mean, I ran that simulation a thousand times, and hobbits never saved the world.

I think the author was using metacurrency.

 

[Maxperson]

That is stretching the definition of "exceptional" well beyond the breaking point. Though it is pretty strained for most of the others as well. I don't think "distantly related to some nobility" is particularly exceptional. For example most exceptional thing about Frodo is being related to Bilbo, and Gimli isn't particularly special either. And Merry and Pippin being some backwater nobility does not really make them special either, mostly it makes them just unaccustomed to hardship. And yes, Aragorn has magic blood, and Boromir in theory a bit, but Boromir really is not exceptional because of it; he is specifically contrasted to Aragorn who is. Boromir is one of those "lesser men" to whom the governance of Gondor was given to, so not special.

The only exceptional memebers of the Fellowship are Aragorn, Gandalf and Legolas, and the last one only barely. He is an elven prince, and all Tolkien's elves are pretty special, but he is certainly pretty low tier as the elves go. Elrond and Galadriel are the actual exceptional ones.

Gimli is high nobility. The son of Gloin, one of the dwarves that freed the Lonely Mountain from Smaug, and also descended from Durin the Deathless of the first house of dwarves.