Middle Earth - LotR

[Storm Raven]

Fair enough; I've heard mail used periodically as chain mail. I've also seen examples of a few other forging techniques that are occasionally called ring mail, though. Although rare, I think they were at least common enough that chain was added as a clarifier.

Some people persist in calling mail by the term chain mail, that doesn't mean it is correct, it just means numerous people have become sloppy, and others have copied them.

What is usually called "ring mail" is accurately simply called "ringed armor" (and was generally produced in a manner similar to studded or bezainted armor), although there were numerous forgin techniques for mail, mostly to prevent it from being easily penetrated by piercing weapons: barred mail, augmented mail, and so on (mostly adding things like bars or solid rounds in the pattern of the mail).

 

[Desdichado]

Feel free to provide counter-evidence or debate, then.

Well, before I dive even further off-topic, let me also call for making the material available again, even if it's just a zip archive, or text only, or what-have-you.

In fact, especially if it's text only.

As for debating your correspondances, I can't yet, because you haven't provided any evidence that I can debate against. You simply state things like the knights of Dol Amroth had a French-like chivalric order, but offer nothing to support that, or that Laketown was a late medieval guild-like organization, or whatever (for what it's worth, I barely consider The Hobbit canon, because it was clearly written before Tolkien started taking that story-arc seriously, and he made a number of changes, mostly subtle, yet still powerful to change the tone of them) so I can't really say anything except what I did; that those are debatable assignments; and that I don't agree.

The hobbits themselves, though, maybe merit some more discussion, as they constitute a special case, IMO. Not only are they a deliberate "anachronism" as a literary device, as I stated earlier, they were also an unavoidable one, because hobbits were the stars of The Hobbit, which was not written with any mind towards being taken seriously, having follow-ups build on it, or linkages to the mythology of Middle-earth that he was already creating. He literally couldn't write Lord of the Rings without hobbits, since that was what people wanted to see in the sequel to The Hobbit. So, he did what he could to change the tone and eliminate some of the more fanciful, whimsical and inconsistent elements of The Hobbit even going so far as to release a new edited version with the whole Gollum chapter changed, but a number of other Hobbitisms were significantly downplayed. He also alluded several times to the idea that Bilbo was pretty naïve, and that anything he put in his book shouldn't be taken too seriously as a kind of back-door approach to any problems that The Hobbit might later cause him.

 

[warlord]

Amen!

 

[Ranger REG]

A part of me would have enjoyed seeing the elves in quasi-Roman lorica segmentata, to make the parallels even more explicit.

It reminded me of the pacific islander's influence, of weaving ti leaves into something wearable or useful. It is like a signature motif of elves being close to nature.

 

[mmadsen]

To get back on topic, in an old (long dead) thread, nsruf had this to say:

Ah, Middle-Earth!
The original fantasy setting, but is it also a typical one?
I have run ME adventures in the past (not recently and mostly on MERP
and GURPS) and tried to stay true to Tolkien's original "vision".
Reading the Silmarillion and related works, I have found some
interesting differences with your "run-off-the-mill RPG setting",
which makes it hard to adapt e.g. DnD to ME (IMO even MERP failed in
major points), which I assume you are working at.


Gods and Religion
-----------------
Faramir above gave a good summary of the gods, but what about
religion? There seems to have been no formalized religion, no church
or priests, at any time during the first three ages of the world
(except maybe with the primitive people of the far south and east).
Instead, people relied on informal and personal relationship to the
gods. And this can be "personal" in the "meet and shake hands sense",
mind you! Many of the oldest elves (e.g. Galadriel) spent their youth
(i.e. countless centuries) in Valinor, the land of the gods, after the
Valar invited them there. And most major characters in the LOTR know
some of the Istari (Gandalf, Saruman, Radagast) or Elrond (whose
father Earendil became the morning star and who is also related to the
Maiar spirit Melian). Thus, there was probably no need for formalized
religion.

In DnD terms: There are no clerics, druids or paladins. Rangers
probably have no divine spells (Aragorn's healing abilities seem to be
"royal heritage").


Magic
-----
ME is actually a low-magic setting, at least if you consider
spellcasting. Truly powerful magic is only found as being "inherent"
to items (e.g. the various Rings of Power) or creatures (e.g.
dragons). The "classical" wizard of ME is Gandalf, who is an angelic
being or demigod of sorts. And you have to admit that his spellcasting
abilities are pretty poor for that Also, his magic seems to stem
partially from his wand and probably from the Ring of Power he carries
(as revealed in the last chapter of the LOTR).
There are some mentions of minor spells and curses throughout
Tolkien's work (not by name or effect), but none of them seem to be
particularly powerful or reliable. However, the names of certain elven
lords (e.g. Gil-Galad) seem to frighten evil creatures.

In DnD terms: there are no bards, sorcerers and wizards. A truly
devoted craftsman could enter a prestige class capable of forging
magical items.


Elves
-----
The high elves (Noldor, Sindarin) seem to be on par with the lesser
gods or angels. They have been around for centuries or millenia and
should be treated more like the Celtic Sidhe (which probably inspired
Tolkien) then just another demihuman race.

In DnD terms: High elves are all into epic levels. Only the lesser
elves, whose ancestors never lived in Valinor (e.g. woodelves), seem
to be suitable as PCs.


Population
----------
At least at the time of the LOTR, the northwest of ME is very sparsely
populated. Apart from the places described in the books, almost
everything else is uninhabited wasteland (except for Gondor). This
makes it hard to place your campaign in a "historically accurate"
fashion, without recycling all stations of the LOTR ("Oh no, not
Rivendell again!").


Consequences
------------
I love Tolkien's work (don't we all) and would be very interested in a
"true" conversion to an RPG setting. However, looking at what I just
said, this would impose a lot of ugly restrictions on most available
fantasy RPGs (in DnD: PC classes limited to fighter, rogue and a
ranger variant without spells). So one of the worlds actually created
for use with DnD or any other system may be the better choice.

Still, if you want to give it a try (and nobody says you have to be as
restrictive as I proposed), you should get a copy of the Silmarillion
and "derivative material" [listen to me, I must've read to much of the
OGL discussion ] I like the "Atlas of Middle-Earth" by Karen Wynn
Fonstad, for example.​

 

[Desdichado]

Thanks, mmadsen! That's a pretty good summary. Of course, being me, I've got a few minor nits to pick...

Faramir above gave a good summary of the gods, but what about
religion? There seems to have been no formalized religion, no church
or priests, at any time during the first three ages of the world
(except maybe with the primitive people of the far south and east

That doesn't seem to address the fact that it would actually be contrary to the will of the Valar to be worshipped anyway. They weren't "gods" in any sense, and they deferred to the authority of an actual One True God, Eru, and it was only he that should be worshipped. Although we know very little about organized religion, UT does discuss a few details of semi-organized religious services to Eru in Numenor.

The "classical" wizard of ME is Gandalf, who is an angelic
being or demigod of sorts. And you have to admit that his spellcasting
abilities are pretty poor for that Also, his magic seems to stem
partially from his wand and probably from the Ring of Power he carries
(as revealed in the last chapter of the LOTR).

His demonstrated spellcasting abilities are poor, but that doesn't mean that they actually were. In fact, if anything, the disconnect with D&D comes more from the idea of flashy spells being the definition of magic, which is not very often what Tolkien apparently thought of. Clearly other folks were also powerful wizards or whatnot, including all of the Istari and most of the elvish leaders. Some rather oblique references are made (as stated earlier in this thread, I think) to other sorcerers and whatnot, though, so it's certainly kosher to accept them, although they should be very rare. The big problem is, as nsruf says, Gandalf isn't really representative of those types of sorcerers, and we don't actually have anyone that is representative that we can turn to and say, "yeah, this is what magic in M-E is like."

The high elves (Noldor, Sindarin) seem to be on par with the lesser
gods or angels. They have been around for centuries or millenia and
should be treated more like the Celtic Sidhe (which probably inspired
Tolkien) then just another demihuman race.

In DnD terms: High elves are all into epic levels. Only the lesser
elves, whose ancestors never lived in Valinor (e.g. woodelves), seem
to be suitable as PCs.

That seems a reasonable suggestion. In my game, elves simply weren't PCs at all; they were plot devices. Which is pretty consistent with the way they are in the book, for the most part, as well. Legolas being a pseudo-exception -- he acts more like a PC, but then doesn't actually do very much. My nitpick is that I don't know why we need to point to the Celtic Sidhe as Tolkien's inspiration, when the elves are already quite like the Germanic elves/alfs/alps/etc. Sure, we don't know quite as much about them, but then again, that was part of Tolkien's specific area of study. But practically speaking, I don't think there's much difference anyway.

Still, if you want to give it a try (and nobody says you have to be as
restrictive as I proposed), you should get a copy of the Silmarillion
and "derivative material" [listen to me, I must've read to much of the
OGL discussion ] I like the "Atlas of Middle-Earth" by Karen Wynn
Fonstad, for example.

Well, that's not necessarily true depending on when you set the game. My older game was prior to the Great Plague, so the population issue wouldn't have really come up in my game. If I were to run another LotR game, I'd probably do an "alt.history" version of it, taking Tolkien's own description in the Foreward of what the plot would have looked like if it were allegorical of WWII, and running with that. In an alt.version, naturally, I can change little details that bother me.

Even in a non-alt.version, you can do that. And there are hints that maybe there were a few more folks kicking around M-E than Tolkien says; especially in the Hobbit which refers to all kinds of little settlements of folks here and there. But the Hobbit is difficult to take too seriously anyway; I'm quite sure it was never meant to be and that Tolkien tried to back-pedal as much as he could in LotR away from some of the details (and certainly the tone) of the Hobbit anyway, once he decided to take this seriously and really place this firmly in M-E after all instead of essentially just borrowing names and whatnot from his 1st age material, which is what he did in the Hobbit.

 

[Storm Raven]

A part of me would have enjoyed seeing the elves in quasi-Roman lorica segmentata, to make the parallels even more explicit.

Just remember that the lorica segmentata found widespread use mostly as a cheap replacement for the lorica hamata (mail armor) when the Roman army had to quickly replenish its ranks following the disasterous defeat in the Teutoburg Forest.

 

[Ranger REG]

D20 is way too active magic rich, and twitchy. Tolkien's backstory plays out in hundreds and hundreds of years with most of the magic much more subtle than magic missle and fireball. D20, perhaps by virtue of its popularity, can be everything to everybody but seldom reserved.

I dunno. I mean if we go by D&D convention, it kinda suck that a low-level wizard can only cast 4 spells (on average) a day, and can't pretty much do anything else. Not to belittle Gandalf and Saruman who are pretty high level and come from a stock that magic are more natural to them than an average book-learning wizard.

Granted, D&D not only derived from Tolkien's works but other fantasy works as well, including folklore, mythologies, legends, and superstitious tales. All we need to do is narrow it down to be Tolkien-specific. Of course, I prefer to deviate from D&D (as most posters here agree) and use a different model for magic. It has to be subtle but powerful (like when Gandalf managed to weaken a portion of the bridge so the tremendous weight of the Balrog would give and collapse underfoot ... yet Gandalf remain on the intact portion of the bridge).

That's the beauty of d20: it gives flexibility.

 

[qstor]

IIRC, a good part of the old conversion work was Colonel Hardisson's. Maybe he has some of he material available and could point us in the right direction. It still would be good to have it on the web somewhere if the old site files could be moved to a free server or something.

Mike

 

[Swiftbrook]

Restoring LotR Files

So, who do we need to ask to have the various files/directories mentioned in this thread restored?

____________________ please restore the Lord of the Rings files/directories, at least for a while, so that we can access them and hopefully add to them.

-Swiftbrook