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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5326825" data-attributes="member: 4937">But we don't really know the 'physics' of that world.  We know a few things, but most of what we know wouldn't help us design a magic system.  We know for example that investing in control over the physical world gives you less control over yourself.  So, for example, we know that Gandalf's physical form as an Istari made it easier for him to influence Middle Earth, but easier for him to be influenced by it (and so share in Morgoth's curse), and we know that his decision to invest in a body that seemed weak and humble, and to remain a wanderer rather than settle down, was representative of his wise decision to not invest too heavily in the things of the middle world but instead keep his mission clearly in mind.  We know that his possession of the Ring Vilya gave him a Noldorian influence over fire and shadow (because it was investment of the Elves native power as it concerned fire into the physical form of the ring) that inhanced his native power in some fahion, but not the mechanics of that.  We know that natively he was a 'Wisdom' spirit, but not really what that means.  We know that in some fashion Gandalf's staff was the symbol of the authority invested in him by the Valar, and as such most of his 'magic' was tied to it, but not really in details about what that magic was or how it worked.   We know that Gandalf could do more magic than what he chose to do, but we don't know the limits of what he could do other than the fact that there were limits.In short, virtually any system we could come up with could be a 'reasonable approximation of same'.  From the text, we would have to be agnostic on the question of whether or not ME 'magic' worked like a quasi-Vancian system with spell slots and spells known and castable per day.  We likewise have to remain agnostic over whether it worked like a HERO flexible power pool.   We just don't know.  All we can say is does the story produced by the system seem to work as a Tolkien style story.You are completely missing the point.  Sure, we can tell the story of bandits in the Middle-Earth rather than a fellowship knock-off.   For one thing, we can be reasonably certain that Fellowships between the free peoples like that almost never happened and that the friendship between Gimli and Legolas was singular and historically significant for both of their races, so if Fellowship knock-offs occurred at any time other than mythic instances then we aren't being true to the setting.   But even if we are telling the story of bandits in the Middle Earth, we still have the same problem.  How do we know them to be Middle Earth bandits by some other means than name dropping place names?   The answer is that it must be the sort of story we can imagine happening to bandits in Middle Earth.   So, perhaps we would look for inspiration to the story of Turin Turambar as Middle Earth's probably most famous bandit, and we'd try to tease out what elements of the story tell us about bandits in Middle Earth.  Or perhaps we'd look at the culture revealed by the story of Trolls and Orcs not allied with Sauron and tease out what this would tell us about their story.  But we wouldn't be able to tease from the story how the combat system would work, or the magic system, or whether or not we should rely on a crunchy social system or just RP.  Those choices aren't things that the story tells us, and how those choices are made reveal more about the designers preferences than they do about Tolkien's stories.   Personally, I think the thinking about 'Gandalf was a 6th level wizard' better understands Tolkien's stories than licensed versions like MERPS do and better emulates the Tolkien story than MERPs would despite being designed to be a Middle Earth emulator. Sure I can.  We know why Gandalf didn't fling fireballs all the time - it's because he choses not to.   We don't know what would happen if Gandalf had chosen something else.  We don't know how many fireballs Gandalf could sling per day had he chosen to just go all out all the time.   So we don't know how many Sauron could sling (if any).Sure, your suggestions in the abstract are just as valid as Vancian magic.  But unlike Vancian magic, we don't know that your suggestions will help constrain players to produce stories in the style of Tolkien.  We can certainly say that not only Vancian magic is likely to do so, and that there might be many other rules systems that can do so and that some of these might concievably do Tolkien even better than D&D.  But that isn't what's at stake in this thread.  We weren't trying to find the absolute best possible system to do a particular genera.  The question is, "Can D&D do this well"?  And I think the fair assessment is, "Yes.  Yes, it can."  In fact, it probably does it better than most systems where people have set out to do Tolkien explicitly.Straw man.  No one has said anything about simulating the Fellowship journey, which is probably the most boring thing I could imagine doing with a Middle Earth RPG.   You say that a 'proper Middle-Earth simulator' could answer the question: "What would happen if Gandalf decided he didn't care about veiling his power and majesty any more?"  But we get no firm ideas as to exactly what would happen from the text.  We are back to opinion.  We know that from time to time he did unveil his power and majesty and suffered no ill-effects for it.  We know something about what he would have been like had he become completely corrupted because Tolkien wrote about it (he would have become the nanny-state from Hell).  But there doesn't seem to be any direct connection between the act of using magic and corruption.  The connection is between pride (and other vices) and corruption.   Failing to veil his authority is a symptom.  But none of this tells us whether we need a system to keep track of player character virtue and corruption, or whether we should leave that up to 'soft' RP decisions by the players.   Which way you decide to go with that tells us more about your preferences as a designer than it tells us about the story.   It's not like we can say from that decision alone whether the system can handle the story well, and its quite possible that either system design choice could result in a system capable of handling the story well.  Which you prefer and which would work better for you is a matter of game mastery and player inclination.</blockquote>

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