[Child of the 7th Age]

Ealasaide,

Firstly, I would like to clarify that I am NOT trying in any way, shape or form to define anything in the absolute - not ships, weddings, weapons, or anything else - for RPG purposes or other readers or what have you. Somehow that seems to be everyone's interpretation of what I am going for here, when really it is the farthest thing from my mind. I believe absolutely in the writer's freedom to express his or her own individual vision within the context of his her own writing.

Oh, yes. Sorry if I was unclear on this point. I never felt you were trying to lay down standards for anyone else. But what I thought you were saying was that there might be an "ideal" representation of a particular object --- say, for example, a Corsair ship-- and that you would personally feel more comfortable if you would somehow ferret out a sense of what that was and apply it in your own writing. However, given the statement you made about wanting to gather impressions and there being no one right way of depicting a Corsair ship, I may be slightly askew there!

This will be long so please bear with me, as I am just sorting out my own thoughts on this...

Let me add one thing about your desire to gather "impressions"..... Outside of those factors that Tolkien explicitly stated as being this way or that, I have few ironclad "impressions". For example, I would not have a "pure blooded" Elf with red hair and green eyes because Tolkien has given us enough information through the Legendarium for me to know this is not realistic. For similar reasons, I would not have an Elf with a light sabre aka Star Wars. But, as far as what the Elf is wearing or what the general tenor of Elven society is, that is an entirely different matter: I do not have enough information to develop a guiding impression merely from reading the books. Elements of history creep in, but so too does my imagination. Because of this, my images and reactions will vary from one game to the next.

One reason for this is that RPGs are written collaboratively. I will try to pick up on those hints set down in the story line by the founder and, more importantly, the tone established by the other writers. There are some RPGs on Elves which are written almost as straightforward history, while others may have an underlying hint of "faerie". Based on my understanding of what others are striving to do, I will modify the clothing my character wears, the way Rivendell looks, how solemn or jolly Elven society is, etc. I don't have one Rivendell in my head: I have many. Whichever Rivendell I care to use in a story will shift and change according to the situation I find myself in.

( A side note: I would be extremely curious to hear from other writers. When you write in other RPGS, is your writing different than when you write 'alone', with no one else to influence you, other than a stray author or two, or a real life situation that may have crept inside your mind? )

Is this a "betrayal" of Middle-earth, simply an admission of failure that I don't possess enough information to understand fully what the author intended? I prefer to look at it in another way. Reality to me is constantly shifting. It depends on who you are, what point you are at in time, what world you personally inhabit. There may be an overarching, unshifting "reality" in some Platonic sense, but, even if that is correct, my vision of it can be only partial. Hence, within any given story, I will be trying to capture different pieces of that reality: almost like the interplay of shadows and sunshine that can never be precisely duplicated. Hence, I will portray an istar in various ways in different stories, yet I view all of these pictures as equally valid (which is something pertinent to one RPG which you and I currently share )


My image of an istar , for example, may grow and change, not only based on what others are doing in a story, but also upon my own knowledge and understanding of Tolkien. When I first read LotR, I thought of wizards in one particular way. Later readings of Silm and UT greatly modified that image. Even in my own writings, I can see ways that my depicition of certain peoples and places have changed from exposure to more ideas, primarily those of Tolkien but even those stemming from other sources. For example, my own understanding of Elves has been heavily influence by legends of the Tuatha Dé Danaan. Before I came to this board, I had no idea of these Irish legends. Now there is a tiny bit of the Sidhe in my own depiction of Elves.

What's intriguing to me is that JRRT also seems to have been very flexible in how he dealt with things: his impressions were not static, but shifted from story to story. As Kilby put it, this was a man who consistently put forward inconsistent views on things, and absolutely seemed to delight in being challenging and even contrary!

Take a look at the Hobbit, then compare it to LotR, Silm, and the vast material reflected in HoMe. It seems as if JRRT was always willing to revisit his previous writings, pulling and tweaking things as ideas evolved in his head. This, as much as anything, is the reason why the Silm could never be set down in final form. And Tolkien wasn't even dealing with the vagaries of collaborative work! Some of the differences JRRT depicted could be put down to the challenge of writing for a different audience, particularly in terms of the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. The Rivendell of the Hobbit is certainly different than the Rivendell where Frodo comes. But even laying aside the question of different audiences, there were times when JRRT shifted his impressions and edited his writing just because he wanted to! I guess I claim the same prerogrative for myself.

So my inclination would be to say that I have relatively few ironclad "impressions". It is my response to the other writers, my evolving knowledge of Tolkien's text and my shifting understanding of the world about me that shapes the characters I write and the places I describe. And that may drastically change from one story to the next!

What I was also interested in on a purely intellectual level, was why it felt anachronistic to write about a ranger with a pocket watch or Denethor carrying an umbrella, when such things do exist in Middle Earth. If you think back to the movie, The Gods Must Be Crazy, we are not talking about bushmen here. The rulers of Gondor repesent the ruling class - eventually - of all of Middle Earth. It doesn't matter in the vast scheme of things or even in the vast scheme of gamng, but it is a question that interests me as a question.

Denethor with an umbrella! That is funny, but you have brought up an important point about the fact that each people in Middle-earth were very unique and technologies were generally confined to a particular locale. Let me pose another question. Aren't we really talking about the "advanced technologies" here? To me, that would be these three:

• the Elvish arts that were expressed in crafted items like jewels and Seeing Stones as much as through poetry and song
• the anachronisms of the Shire, in which I would include Ganadalf's importation of fireworks, and,
• most critically, the inventions of bad guys like Saruman which were dedicated to death and destruction, or to unlimited "production" (such as with the Scouring) with little heed to human or economic consequences.

There was little free interchange of technologies in Middle-earth, except for the toys coming out of Dale to the Shire. Stories seemed to have passed between the varying free peoples much easier than their technologies did. Even at the end of the book, we still have what I would term "gated communities": there is interchange between the differing peoples but this will only go so far. Clear boundaries still exist.

Tolkien cited rare instances where technical items were acquired unexpectedly by someone of a different race. For example, objects of Elvish art were gifted to both Humans and Hobbits---the Stones to the Edain and later to Elessar or the seeds to Sam-- or the Dwarvish mithril shirt and the Elvish Sting with its ability to warn of nearby Orcs. But these gifts were regarded as very rare, and came about only because the people in question had great need. If everything had been peaceful, most of this sharing of technology would not have occurred.

For the most part, only bad seems to come from shifting technologies from one realm to another. One clear example of this is the situation in the Shire at the end of the book where technology is forced on the Hobbits. Sharing technology is simply not done in the story and, because it's not done, I would probably not do it either in my writing, unless I wanted to give an example of something that went very wrong. For example, a Fourth Age baddie finds a hidden remnent of Saruman's technology and tries to reintroduce it.

Tolkien had such negative feelings about the "machine", and took such delight in portraying each of the free peoples as very distinct, that technological sharing was unlikely. ( I am sure he could have hated the current tendency to export American culture haphazardly throughout the world, replacing existing local customs and ways of life!) The author was willing to use technology in his story but only sparingly. And even he had ambivalent feelings about much of what the Noldor had created. So even I would never include Denethor with an umbrella in an RPG unless I was writing in Entish bow.

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Tar- ancalime - Sorry I cross posted with you because this crazy post is so lengthy.