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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 9043866" data-attributes="member: 82106">Obviously I have no more claim to insight into Dr Tolkien's meaning, but I interpret the words you quoted in a completely different way, to be a commentary about the inevitability, or desirability/obviousness, of certain dramatic elements in LotR given its antecedents. He speaks of the ring as "...the inevitable choice of the link." There's no 'simulation' here, this is an observation about the forms of myths and legends! For example he might well be thinking of the Nibelungenlied, with its ring theme. More straightforwardly, what else was really significant in the story told of Bilbo. The next most significant elements would be the Arkenstone and then perhaps the implications of the death of Smaug itself, along with the destruction of Lake Town and the events which followed. However, the Dark Lord seems to factor heavily here, and any supreme epic of the Third Age must surely grapple with his fate and thus the entwined fates of the remaining ring bearers and the free peoples generally.Yes, he feels he is discovering A STORY, not some sort of inevitable world come to life through the enactment of some sort of (never defined) laws! I find it hard to even credit that people would advance such a notion, but people hold a lot of views I find strange in this world. He is recounting the various places and events which the laws of dramatic storytelling inexorably drew out of him. This isn't a discovery about Middle Earth, its a discovery about HIMSELF! And perhaps a discovery or deep study of those laws of storytelling. As for GNS sim, I've also seen, time and again, simulationists decry its very existence or the notion that the category means anything at all. I'd also note that Edwards' account of simulationism NEVER really touches on realism at all. It is simply founded on the idea that character is subservient to other considerations, which are approached in a mechanistic or rule/ruling based (but not necessarily gamist) fashion. However, significant elements of sim are pretty much always based on agreement, particularly in cases of things like simulation of a particular genre. At no point have I personally ever heard of Edwards or other 'Forgites' talking about models and using model/sim/reasoning as terms in anything like the way they are being used here and now. But I will certainly yield to certain posters whom I know are MUCH better versed in GNS/Forge/etc. than I am.</blockquote>

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