Lord of the Rings

Yes, and that is much more realistic. Bret points out that the queen's personal guard would have been bigger than that, let alone her court travelling with her (because no ruler travelled all on their own back then). And they also teleport so fast over the map that even a mechanized land force would have trouble keeping up.

Oh yes, and there was also that volcano everyone survived, somehow.

Edited by Redmess on Dec 4th 2023 at 5:43:47 PM

Optimism is a duty.

Of course, the Rings of Power has it's own discussion thread. I'm still not sure if I like the series or not. Not true to Tolkien lore in many aspects, and obviously not very realistic, but that doesn't necessarily make it a bad show.

Bret thinks it's a bad show, because he feels it does too little to build its world, explain what's going on, or be internally consistent, making it hard to get invested. It is a show more interested in the next cool scene than in the actual story.

Optimism is a duty.

Without going too deeply into it—as has been pointed out, this is not the thread for that show—let me register that I feel quite differently to Bret.

Simply put, I thoroughly enjoyed the show, narrative and spectacle alike.

I won't call it perfect—I don't think that I've ever seen a perfect show—but I will call it very good indeed.

My Games & Writing

Glad to hear you enjoyed it.

Optimism is a duty.

I’m doing a Prime trial for the sake of Christmas shopping, so I’m trying to watch it this month. I’m only one episode in, but it’s interesting so far.

I am reminded of a certain Star Trek the Next Generation two-part episode where the Romulans were going to invade Vulcan, a whole planet with a population in the billions, with a mere three ships carrying all of 2,000 troops. Writers Have No Sense of Scale

maybe the ships were bigger on the inside

New theme music also a box

If you're steeped in Tolkien's history of Arda, then the show will certainly have a "Julius Caesar discovers America" degree of inauthenticity. You simply have to decide whether or not you can roll with that (and it's okay to decide you can't!). I decided to roll with it, for my part, and had a thoroughly enjoyable time watching it.

2,000 troopers is well enough to utterly fuck up the defenses for a proper invasion.

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

You also have to consider that the Silmarilion was not finished at the time they made that series, so they had to make up some stuff anyway.

Optimism is a duty.

I'm confused what you mean by that. Either you're suggesting it wasn't published yet - obviously that's not true - or you mean in the literal sense the Silmarillion wasn't finished, which is true but technically will always be true so "at the time" is confusing verbage.

Oh, maybe I was just confused by what Bret said in the article, then.

Optimism is a duty.

From what I understand, the series was not allowed to use The Silmarillian. They were restricted to what was in the appendices of The Lord of the Rings about the Second Age.

They still snuck in the idea that Orcs are descended from corrupted elves, which is in the movies but not, I believe, in the book of The Lord of the Rings or the appendices.

It may not have technically broken the rules by mentioning anything they didn't have access to, but I would argue in spirit they were definitely invoking The Silmarillion when they dipped into that. Modern day, no one thinks of the appendices first when they hear about Silmarillion stuff, they think about the published Silmarillion. But the show creators have that plausible deniability.

Also, I really gotta check out Return of the King from the library some time, I never gave any attention to the appendices as a teen, but the last few years, I've learned how much interesting stuff is actually in there. Plus back then I didn't care about world building as much, and now I'm a nerd who eats that shit up.

There's also a fascinating bit of "Sony vs. Marvel" with the Lord of the Rings movie rights. JRR Tolkien sold them to a company a long time ago and New Line Cinema eventually got them but the Tolkien estate had almost no authority to regulate them or merchandise from them.

Which led to the fact that RP Gs were made from the "movie" rights far before any movie was ever made.

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

If you're into world building you definitely need to check the appendices out. Genealogical tables, calendars, language notes, alphabets, chronologies, lists of kings, and summaries of thousands of years of history.

Not to mention the story of Aragorn and Arwen's romance, which was left almost completely out of the narrative.

Really, I just need to re-read the books in their entirety, paying more attention. I had already seen the movies when I first read them, so I had a bad habit of kind of glossing over anything the movies just skipped entirely, wanting to "get to the good parts" (My stupid teen self's thoughts, not my thoughts)

I read the appendices, but the amount of information was a little overwhelming, to be honest. It's basically a huge info-dump, after all.

Optimism is a duty.

As far as I know, the first licensed Lord of the Rings RPG was Middle Earth Role-Playing, and it came out in 1984. That would have been well after the Bakshi animated adaptation (1978).

TSR did a Battle of the Five Armies wargame in 1975, and included things like hobbits, ents, rangers, wraiths, and balrogs in the original D&D (1974), but they got in legal trouble for doing it without a license. They had to withdraw Battle of the Five Armies and rename a few things in AD&D 1st edition (1977). Hobbits=halflings, ents=treants, balrogs=balors, etc.

My most recent rereads were via the audiobooks, both versions of which include the more narrative appendices (the stories of the heirs of Númenor and Aragorn's romance, etc.) while leaving out the more technical stuff. That's a handy way to get the gist of what's there.

Doesn't Treebeard say that trolls are lesser versions of ents the same way orcs are lesser versions of elves?

That would be strange, since trolls are clearly creatures of the mountain, rather than the forest.

Optimism is a duty.

Treebeard doesn't exactly say that Orcs are descended from corrupted Elves, only that they were made "in mockery" of Elves.

Edited by Bense on Dec 5th 2023 at 10:34:07 AM

Since no one but Eru can create new life but just modify an existing one, the implication that Orcs are corrupted Elves is clear even without the Silmarillion.

..............

Aulë did create the Dwarves, but they would have stayed just like moving dolls or automatons, if Eru had not granted them souls with his sacred flame.

Edited by jawal on Dec 5th 2023 at 10:35:22 AM

Every Hero has his own way of eating yogurt