What's an "Aragorn Style" ranger?

Tolkien's writing style is... not appealing to me, and I know the story. So I'm not interested.

OK. I've avoided Dickens until recently for the same reasons - and it turns out that was I wrong, btw.

But-

War and Peace: The enemy advances; the enemy retreats.
There's more to literature than the plot?
 

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Tolkien's writing style is... not appealing to me, and I know the story. So I'm not interested.

Same for my first dungeon master in the 1980s. He knew nothing of the middle ages or classic literature. We were good friends and I enjoyed his game, but his ideas about knights, clerics, rangers, elves and dwarves were quite bizarre. Of course nowadays I am equally ignorant of all the new fantasy tropes like anime, double-wielding, double-weapons, fantasy axes, steam-powered robots, sparkly vampires and necromancer heroes.
 

Didn't dual-wield...

From whence did Salvatore get that ridiculous idea anyways? Did he roll up an ambidextrous character when he was 12 and want moar fighting power? The only dual-wielding I was aware of beforehand was the rapier and dagger combination, wherein the dagger parried in place of having a shield. In the 80s, even the fantasy games did not allow dual-wielding two large weapons to attack. Maybe it is from wuxia?
 

Of course nowadays I am equally ignorant of all the new fantasy tropes like anime, double-wielding, double-weapons, fantasy axes, steam-powered robots, sparkly vampires and necromancer heroes.

Quite. When I ran /4e for my 8 year-old I realised that his view of combat came more from Power Rangers than Robin Hood or King Arthur ...
 

From whence did Salvatore get that ridiculous idea anyways? Did he roll up an ambidextrous character when he was 12 and want moar fighting power? The only dual-wielding I was aware of beforehand was the rapier and dagger combination, wherein the dagger parried in place of having a shield. In the 80s, even the fantasy games did not allow dual-wielding two large weapons to attack. Maybe it is from wuxia?

IIRC, In medieval sword play, the 'Florentine' style of fighting was using 2 swords. Likewise in Japan, Musashi used two swords in at least some of his fights.
 

From whence did Salvatore get that ridiculous idea anyways? Did he roll up an ambidextrous character when he was 12 and want moar fighting power? The only dual-wielding I was aware of beforehand was the rapier and dagger combination, wherein the dagger parried in place of having a shield. In the 80s, even the fantasy games did not allow dual-wielding two large weapons to attack. Maybe it is from wuxia?
Dude. The answer is right here, in this very thread.
 

A Fighting-Man who patrols a wilderness area. Trained well, Aragorn is also good at hunting, scavenging, scouting, stalking, tracking, and surviving adversity. The rest made good plot devices.
 



From whence did Salvatore get that ridiculous idea anyways? Did he roll up an ambidextrous character when he was 12 and want moar fighting power? The only dual-wielding I was aware of beforehand was the rapier and dagger combination, wherein the dagger parried in place of having a shield. In the 80s, even the fantasy games did not allow dual-wielding two large weapons to attack. Maybe it is from wuxia?

The first character in fiction that wielded two scimitars was, IIRC, Prince Rann from the War of the Powers. Rann was a major villain.

There were six books published around 1980 and I vaguely recall that they were first serialised in Playboy in the 1970s or 80s.

They're high fantasy... but with a few X-rated touches which are easy enough to skip over and get to the meat of flying cities, elementals etc....
 

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