Middle Earth conversion

[whitelaughter]

Mechanically, RQ's fumbles are going to turn up in an elf's history. Using Passions regularly for thousands of years: sooner or later, you'll get a run of fumbles, and completely obliterate the Passion.

Loss of Loyalty or Love could also mean the complete destruction of what inspired Love or Loyalty; an elf may have lost *all* relatives millennia ago. Loss of Devotion means being cut off from the undying lands. Loss of all Fear will kill them sooner or later. Loss of Honor: you are the elf who has been selling secrets to Sauron!

Perhaps the 'age' of an elf should not be measured in years, but in how many types of Passions have been obliterated?

[Ali the Helering]

8 hours ago, whitelaughter said:

Mechanically, RQ's fumbles are going to turn up in an elf's history. Using Passions regularly for thousands of years: sooner or later, you'll get a run of fumbles, and completely obliterate the Passion.

Loss of Loyalty or Love could also mean the complete destruction of what inspired Love or Loyalty; an elf may have lost *all* relatives millennia ago. Loss of Devotion means being cut off from the undying lands. Loss of all Fear will kill them sooner or later. Loss of Honor: you are the elf who has been selling secrets to Sauron!

Perhaps the 'age' of an elf should not be measured in years, but in how many types of Passions have been obliterated?

Which simply goes to indicate an implicit problem with the mechanistic approach to fumbles.

[Barak Shathur]

I just remembered that there’s a pdf file for converting Harnmaster for Middle Earth. It’s rather brief, mostly it’s stats for the various races, plus discussions of differences between Kethira and Arda in terms of cultures, religion etc. I’ve been wanting to test it myself. 

[Mugen]

On 11/15/2022 at 12:13 PM, Joerg said:

Funny there are no half-halflings in Bree, or are there?

But there aren't half-dwarves either.

AFAIK, there are only half-elves, half-orcs and half-trolls (which I hope none were born from human mothers...).

[whitelaughter]

On 11/27/2022 at 3:50 AM, Mugen said:

But there aren't half-dwarves either.

AFAIK, there are only half-elves, half-orcs and half-trolls (which I hope none were born from human mothers...).

Where are half-trolls from? Those wretched movies? Or were they something Tolkien was considering when working through how he wanted the stone giants be?

Given Tolkien references multi-headed trolls in The Hobbit, the simplest way to have trolls reproduce is by budding.

[Barak Shathur]

3 hours ago, whitelaughter said:

Where are half-trolls from? Those wretched movies? Or were they something Tolkien was considering when working through how he wanted the stone giants be?

Given Tolkien references multi-headed trolls in The Hobbit, the simplest way to have trolls reproduce is by budding.

I’ve heard (maybe just speculation) that MERP came up with half-trolls based on the ‘men with jet black skin and long red tongues’ (as I recall the description in ROTK, been a while), Tolkien’s words, not mine, fighting for Sauron in the Battle of the Pelennor fields. And Umli, the half-dwarves, based on the ‘stocky men, bearded like dwarves, wielding great axes’ doing the same (they are the ones who slay Forlong). 
 

As an aside, this seems like an illustrative example of the implied racism in Tolkien’s works, in that the ‘good races’ are always fair, and usually tall (the taller and fairer the better) while the ‘evil races’ tend to be short and swarthy. Not to mention orcs, which he in a letter claims to have modeled on ‘the mongol face’, which he considered ‘the least lovely to europeans’. This, more than the differentiation of various Elvish tribes, is what always rubs me the wrong way in these books that I in other ways love so much. 

[Mugen]

13 hours ago, whitelaughter said:

Where are half-trolls from? Those wretched movies? Or were they something Tolkien was considering when working through how he wanted the stone giants be?

I actually made a very poor attempt at verifying my sources...

I remembered Half-Trolls from MERP, and wanted to verify they existed in Tolkien's work.

But I read too quickly some fan pages and came to the (wrong) conclusion HT were a thing...

[Shiningbrow]

12 hours ago, Barak Shathur said:

As an aside, this seems like an illustrative example of the implied racism in Tolkien’s works, in that the ‘good races’ are always fair, and usually tall (the taller and fairer the better) while the ‘evil races’ tend to be short and swarthy.

Except... Hobbits and Dwarves are most definitely short and fair, and somewhat swarthy...

[Barak Shathur]

6 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

Except... Hobbits and Dwarves are most definitely short and fair, and somewhat swarthy...

Yes, though among Hobbits, Fallohides (I think Frodo is Fallohide, IIRC) who have more contact with Elves, are taller and fairer than the other subgroups. Tallness itself is associated with closeness to the Valar, those who dwelled in Aman grew taller than their brethren, as did the Númenóreans. And anyway, Frodo and Gimli are shown as exceptional, while most Hobbits and Dwarves, like the ‘Middle men’ tend to be morally neutral and mostly interested in minding their own business. 

Yes, the Númenóreans at one point got corrupted by Sauron. But those who didn’t then went on to become his most formidable foes. Tolkien is not a one dimensional author, and he can handle moral complexity and contradiction. But there are certain strong patterns that seem indicative of cultural prejudices that conflict with our current norms and beliefs (or mine at least, and I’m not alone in this) and to be able to enjoy the good parts I, at least, have to grapple with the bad ones. 

Edited December 1, 2022 by Barak Shathur

[Ali the Helering]

Unfortunately British society in those days wouldn't generally understand the concept of 'racism'.  My parents were in the forefront of liberalisation amongst the tail-end of colonialism in the old Raj, but I had massive difficulty explaining that certain words were not acceptable, since they had been raised in the 1920s and experienced the implicit racism of the Empire as the norm.  Tolkien would never have thought of himself as racist, but his unconscious assumptions make LotR difficult to read in the here and now.

Don't get me started on the fact that he wasn't misogynist - he simply couldn't write females well.☹️

 

[whitelaughter]

Re read the Histories last month, and yes, there were references to half-trolls/half-orcs.

 

On the problem of invincible elves, note that immortal characters cannot use longbows, as they deform you. A man can train with a longbow, and that's fine,because he'll die before the crippling effect of constant use kicks in - an elf cannot.

https://kriii.com/english-bowmen/

[Akhôrahil]

On 11/30/2022 at 12:46 PM, whitelaughter said:

Where are half-trolls from? Those wretched movies? Or were they something Tolkien was considering when working through how he wanted the stone giants be?

Given Tolkien references multi-headed trolls in The Hobbit, the simplest way to have trolls reproduce is by budding.

"Gothmog the lieutenant of Morgul had flung them into the fray; Easterlings with axes, and Variags of Khand, Southrons in scarlet, and out of Far Harad black men like half-trolls with white eyes and red tongues."

It’s unclear whether they existed or were just a simile.

Edited March 25, 2023 by Akhôrahil

[svensson]

Half-trolls [Pertereg] show up quite a bit in MERP sources and a lot of follow-on creators and interpreters kind of ran with that.

MERP described them as smart as Uruk orcs [which were a different species of ork, not a tribal name] but larger, stronger, and not susceptible to sunlight like the Cave and Stone trolls were. Like the Uruks, these were wholly the invention of Sauron and not Morgoth.

[whitelaughter]

discussed here: https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Half-trolls

though I am sure I crossed them in the histories, will have to re read the books. [shame that!]

[Akhôrahil]

On 3/24/2023 at 12:09 PM, whitelaughter said:

On the problem of invincible elves, note that immortal characters cannot use longbows, as they deform you. A man can train with a longbow, and that's fine,because he'll die before the crippling effect of constant use kicks in - an elf cannot.

You can't extrapolate from wimpy Middle Men to Dúnedain or elves. They're just better than us. There's just no way elves accumulate minor aches and niggling injuries as the years go on until they're completely crippled.

Edited March 28, 2023 by Akhôrahil