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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6567169" data-attributes="member: 82106">Well, just as an interesting aside, this is why I thought that ME actually makes a pretty terrible place to set an RPG. Its a world that is not really fleshed out, it exists only in very exaggerated broad brush strokes. When you actually start to zoom in on it in any detail you have two choices. You can either break it, that is it simply makes no sense as it is described and you literally cannot play in it because there's nothing there to interact with. Alternatively you can fill in all the blanks and bend things a bit here and there to fit (IE the halflings in LotR are ignorant of even the existence of Bree, and dwarves are practically a myth to them, so plainly they aren't engaged in any trade with either one if you take everything in the books literally, instead you have to imagine that somewhere there actually are hobbits who travel or at least meet foreigners). The problem with the later course of action is it tends to destroy the tone of the setting. Middle Earth is about big picture, world shaking events, terrible foes, indomitable (though humble) heroes, the great sweep of history, etc. When you ask where the toilet is located it just spoils the effect. I never could stomach games like MERP for that reason. If I'm going to play in a necessarily mundanified ME then I'll just play in WoG instead, it is infinitely better suited. You could make a plausible game where you assumed the roles of the great heroes of ME history, or perhaps their top cohorts, and maybe walk the line, just focus on big picture events and gloss everything else, much like the novels do at times. Its not the same as a generalized RPG though. Much more like that TSR Indiana Jones game where you just played one of the characters from the movie and there weren't any other choices.</blockquote>

Verification