Ok, after several aborted attempts at rereading LotR, I decided to get the books on CD and have them read to me on my long long long drives over the holiday. I successfully finished FotR and realize once again why I've never actually enjoyed reading these books. J.R.R. has no sense of pacing. Like zero. He couldn't make up his mind whether he was writing a story or an encyclopedia and it shows. He skims over the climactic moments so he can rush into the next lull where he can present 14 more pages of history lesson, exposition, and bad poetry. Jackson's ability to take that morass and turn it into something actually exciting to watch is true genius. As far as I'm concerned Jackson’s version is now the definitive one for me and ‘ole J.R.R. can be relegated to the dust bin.

But I digress. It suddenly hit me on one of those long stretches between rest stops that FotR is the source of much of the bad role-playing I'd experienced in my childhood and have since come to loath.

The first book reads...not like a book at all...but like a transcript of a year's worth of RPG sessions. Like J.R.R. was role-playing once a week with 'ole C.S. and his other cronies and the book was a record of their gaming sessions. In reality, of course, this is not what happened, rather it was just the opposite. An entire generation of role-players in the 70s and 80s had modeled their role-playing so perfectly on Tolkien's model that reading Tolkien now seems like a role-playing session itself.

So much of the winding pointless nonsense that went on in FotR reads just like an RPG campaign...and by this I mean old school D&D and games of similar ilk. How many campaigns have you played in where there was ostensibly some overall plot (to retrieve the macguffin or what have you) that was interrupted several times by tangential adventures and side plots? The actual story of FotR could have been told in 100 pages or less if you edit out all of the side plots and the like. Its like J.R.R was a GM who, having come up with an excuse to make his party travel from the Shire to Rivendell, was bound and determined to not actually ever let them get there without a new "adventure" to delay them each week. Or to put things in the proper order, its as if every GM for a generation took the journey to Rivendell (and the extended trip beyond) as the model for all future campaigns.

Several specific incidents in the book brought immediately to mind some of the worst RPG experiences I'd ever had.

Consider for a moment the hobbits' encounter with Old Man Willow in the Old Forest.

1) first the "GM" comes up with a limited set of choices...the party can only choose between the road and the Old Forest.

2) second the "GM" makes clear that the road is a Bad Idea in that way all railroading GMs have that suggests dire consequences for defiance...hmmm...a choice that is no choice at all...check...FotR is full of those.

3) No matter where the party goes in the Old Forest they must wind up by the river where the GM's "kewl encounter" is. The GM can't possibly conceive of scrapping the encounter or even moving it to somewhere else. Instead the only option is to use every means possible to force the party to the river. Tolkien goes so far as to have the trees and very geography conspire against the hobbits, forcing them ever eastward despite their attempts to go north. One can almost picture J.R.R. the GM writing notes about the forest to the nature of “make 1 tracking check every 10 minutes. Each check is at a progressive -1. 10 successful checks are required to reach the road to the north. After 3 failed checks the party will wind up at the river…goto page 7” In other words, calling for rolls in a manner that makes it seem like it’s the characters’ own abilities resulting in their fate, but which are statistically so stacked against them that’s they don’t really have any real chance of success. After J.R.R. goes to such absurd lengths to herd the party where he wants, how can any GM not feel the right to do likewise.

4) The hobbits simply fall asleep. Here even the language of the book is awkward and jarring. Go back and reread the scene. The line where J.R.R takes great pains to point out that Merry and Pippin fell asleep with their backs to the tree is almost painful in its heavy handed obviousness. Yup, more GM using the dice to railroad the players. How many Saving Throws vs. Magic, or Petrification Polymorph did the GM call for to ensure that somebody would fall into the trap. Heck, we’ve all seen modules that call for such rolls and keep calling for them “until someone fails”…in other words “until a victim is randomly chosen”. There’s no real possibility that there won’t be a victim…because then the Kewl Encounter would be missed.

5) Now look at how the encounter is handled…oh my. I nearly banged my head against the steering wheel as I listened to this. In the back of my head I could hear the GM continually asking “ok, what do you do now” and the players frantically trying to come up with a solution to the GM’s latest puzzle.
“Can we pull them out?”
“make a roll…you fail”
“Can I work myself free?”
“make a roll…you fail”.
“Hey…what about getting an axe and chopping the opening wider…”
“Do you have an axe listed as part of your equipment?”
“No…but I’m sure my character would have remembered to bring one”
“If its not listed you don’t have one”
“Hey…I have a hatchet…”
(oh shit, the GM now thinks…this could spoil everything…I can’t let this work, it’s not the solution I planned and will spoil my whole encounter)
“Sorry, a hatchet won’t help”
“What!!!”
“Its too small to effect this tree. The tree is really old and the wood is too tough for a hatchet to have much effect” (yeah, yeah, that’s the ticket)

<insert 30 minutes of arguing over whether a hatchet could chop a willow tree complete with examples from experiences at camp and offers to demonstrate…all of which are futile…the hatchet can’t be allowed to work>

“Wait a minute…what about fire…we could start a fire, and threaten to burn the tree unless it lets our friends go…”
(oh shit…well…I could say that the ground is too swampy and wet for them to start a fire…but they’re already pissed at me over that hatchet business…ok, I’ll let them start the fire, but instead of setting them free I’ll have the tree threaten to just kill them outright…they’ll have to put the fire out and then keep guessing what my perfect puzzle solution is…the solution that I’ve already decided on…I can’t let anything else work because the players need to see how clever I am in the solution I came up with myself…)

6) The super-cool-way-more-better-than-you pet NPC. We’ve all seen these. The NPC that is kewler, more powerful, and more effective than the PCs. The pet NPC who is basically the GM’s own personal character that, since he’s the GM, he gets to do whatever he wants with. How did the hobbits manage to escape from Old Man Willow after all?…oh that’s right…enter the GM’s pet NPC Tom Bombadil. an aside: I hereby nominate Peter Jackson for sainthood for eliminating all traces of that monstrosity from the movie. If you ever thought reading the Tom Bombadil sequence was annoying with all of his bizarre habits and silly rhymes…its 1000 times worse on book on tape where you’re forced to listen to them all…in detail…and can’t just skim ahead

7) And what comes after the Willow…the Barrow Wights…yet another Kewl Unavoidable Encounter. Gee, after seeing how stupid J.R.R. makes the hobbits look, can you really blame GMs for feeling free to make their players’ characters look equally stupid? I mean how many rolls did Frodo have to fail (starting once again with the ‘ole “you all fall asleep” gag…hey it worked once right…) before the GM railroaded him into the barrow despite every attempt by the player to not to be diverted from his goal of the road. And hell Merry and Pippin didn’t even get to roll did they?…they just wound up captured and helpless in the barrow. Yet another bad GM trick compliments of Tolkien. Oh…and how did they escape from the barrow (which could have actually been a pretty cool encounter)?…yeah that’s right…pet NPC Bombadil to the rescue to show-up the PCs yet again. Oh the Humanity.


I could go on…and on…and on. Pretty much the ENTIRE FotR is exactly like this. The whole book is a template for every bad GM habit you can think of. Enter Pet NPCs Aragorn and Gandalf who do everything cool there is to do while the PCs cower in fear. No matter what the PCs attempt, its futile and often used by the GM to trigger yet another encounter demonstrating how foolish and helpless the PCs are and how cool and amazing the NPCs are. Jackson at least (if memory serves) allowed Frodo to solve the riddle at the door to Moria…in the book, pet NPC Gandalf gets to do that too. I’ve been in campaigns loaded with such pet NPCs. In fact, I remember getting told by the GM that I was supposed to look like a goob at first level. The coolness of the NPCs was there to show me how cool I *could* be if I survived to higher level. But alas no. Even at higher level, there are always higher level and cooler pet NPCs to show you up. Where did the GM get such a ridiculous idea?…hmmm, upon looking at how foolish J.R.R. made the hobbits look at the beginning and how successful they were at the end…I now know.

There are tons more examples of other horrible RPG features to be found in Tolkien as well such as:

1) Getting lost in Moria. A maze of passages, and if Gandalf had chosen wrong they may have wandered aimlessly for weeks. J.R.R. takes great pains to demonstrate how clever Gandalf is at choosing the right path based on the clues. How many GMs took that as permission to leave obscure clues about the right path (if the players remember to ask for them) and then let the party get completely lost if they miss them? Gawd how tedious and boring.

2) Marching Order. How many different times does Tolkien take great pains to show who followed who and who was guarding the rear. Enough times that GMs started to believe this crap was fun and go to great lengths to get “marching orders” from players. Hell I’ve played with groups that had half a dozen standard marching orders depending on hall width and lighting conditions and health of the party that they’d announce and switch between like a SWAT Team clearing a crack house.

3) Watches: Oh ye gods. Even more tedious and more futile then marching orders how many hours have been wasted on establishing watches. I definitely blame this bit of nonsense on J.R.R. who took unnatural delight in describing in great detail who was on watch when. Boring to read…boring to play.

4) Obsession with equipment: On no less than 3 occasions readers were subjected to Samwise waxing on about how much he wished he’d remembered to bring a rope and how sorry he was that he’d forgotten it. Add to that the trouble caused by Old Man Willow because the hobbits had no axe, and the lack of torches in Moria (a point J.R.R. makes very clear…no torches); add further tedious descriptions about leaving behind the cold weather gear once they got far enough south (done in dialogue no less) and you have the beginnings of one of the worst traditions in all of gaming. I can still recall the hours wasted in recording lists of Iron Spikes, 10’ Poles, 50’ of Rope, and flasks of oil.


In other words, after re “reading” Tolkien for the first time in well over a decade I was struck point blank with exactly how many features that I grew to loathe and despise in gaming could be traced directly to LotR (and FotR in particular).

It astonished me to discover how many bad gaming habits can actually be characterized as successful emulation of Tolkien. Emulation of an author whose creativity was pure genius, whose recording of every conceivable fact was Herculean and whose love of history was profound…but emulation of an author whose actual story telling abilities (and sense of pacing especially) left A LOT to be desired. Is it any wonder that so much of 70s and 80s gaming (IME anyway) consisted of meandering pointless quests where lists of equipment and marching order was more important than any sense of plot or pacing…

Bad Role-playing…I blame Tolkien.

Best... post... EVER!!!

Happy New Year.

So, so true Ralph. I really can't think of any rebuttal. Thank you for putting my reluctance to enjoy Tolkien into a much more researched and articulate form than I ever could.

Edited to add: Ralph, you have to post that on the rpg.net forums, or if you won't, let me!

I must admit that i agree with you somewhat. I also feel the need to point out a couple of things.

1. Fellowship is by far the worst written of Tolkein's books. I'm not sure exactly what happened, but your point about pacing is spot on.
2. The Two Towers is paced better and The Return of the King even more so.
3. The Hobbit is brilliant.

I get the feeling that when Tokein was putting Fellowship together he was torn between writing a book similar to the Hobbit (which he had yet to write) or the Silmarillion (ditto.) I would almost say that Fellowship was Incoherent. It's almost as if Tolkein couldn't decide if he was telling a story or presenting a world...

Thomas

What Smerf said, except that the Hobbit had been published prior to Tolkein starting on FotR.

Oh and Ralph, your mistake is that you've confused the protagonists. Aragorn and Gandalf are obviously the PCs. :)

(Not that that changes the overall point... people have been role-playing for years as though the hobbits were the PCs....)

Wow Ralph...what a fantastic insight.

I remember thinking my own reading of Tolkien was like seeing a beautiful story through the crude and painfull storytelling. It is a testament to Tolkien that people can admire the story even after and in fact despite the way it is written. Remarkably, in fact, I remember thinking the same of some of my early game experiences. The possibilites of the game, beautiful as they were, obscured by this odd and clumsy fashion of playing.

regards,

Trevis

LordSmerf wrote: 2. The Two Towers is paced better and The Return of the King even more so.

As a matter of fact, Tolkien didn't know where the story was going until he had them nearly to Rivendell, according to something I read somewhere. Up to that point, he was trying to create an adventure story from the starting point, not from the destination.

That may be another aspect of RPGs that spring from him; I'm not entirely sure of the alternative, though. When I was writing Verse Three, Chapter One, I realized very early on that I needed a pretty clear idea of where the story was going if I had any hope to get there; and that writing a book was very different from running a game for precisely that reason. It turned a lot of my thinking on its head--for example, in most Multiverser games, gather worlds are pretty open in the possibilities, while if you've got a tightly plotted world it generally works better as a solo. In writing the novels, I've found that when I get the characters together my plotting has to be a lot tighter than when they're on their own.

So maybe this is a subject for another thread, but is there a way to run an RPG that starts with how it's going to end and works toward that from the beginning, or are we stuck because of the nature of the beast with starting from "we can do something cool with this" and meandering for a while until we figure out where it's going, like Fellowship did?

--M. J. Young

And I'll blame Peter Jackson for the next generation of crap roleplayers emulating his crap movies. (Correction: Bad Taste was a good movie.)

Happy New Year!

Valamir wrote: The whole book is a template for every bad GM habit you can think of. Enter Pet NPCs Aragorn and Gandalf who do everything cool there is to do while the PCs cower in fear. No matter what the PCs attempt, its futile and often used by the GM to trigger yet another encounter demonstrating how foolish and helpless the PCs are and how cool and amazing the NPCs are.
...
It astonished me to discover how many bad gaming habits can actually be characterized as successful emulation of Tolkien. Emulation of an author whose creativity was pure genius, whose recording of every conceivable fact was Herculean and whose love of history was profound…but emulation of an author whose actual story telling abilities (and sense of pacing especially) left A LOT to be desired. Is it any wonder that so much of 70s and 80s gaming (IME anyway) consisted of meandering pointless quests where lists of equipment and marching order was more important than any sense of plot or pacing…

I don't really understand what do you mean by this? That Tolkien would have been a bad GM? Well, then it's good that he wasn't! For he was a good WRITER, whose job is to tells his story. His books are still sold and read, and that shows how he was in that. So good that still his books are the base from which to build. In good and in bad: there are too many stories where group of heroes travel somewhere to save the world from evil overlord... But then, among those many fantasy books and stories, there are many masterpieces too, many really original ones that might not exist if there never was Tolkien and his LotR.

But I digress. It suddenly hit me on one of those long stretches between rest stops that FotR is the source of much of the bad role-playing I'd experienced in my childhood and have since come to loath.

This one's quite hard to answer. On the one hand, I'd really want to go to the whole literary merit of Tolkien thing, to explain about literary taste and the fact that the very points fantasy fanboys nowadays detest in the LotR are in fact significators of it's quality. I'd like to contrast and compare american and european taste in literature, perhaps even literature and entertainment (largely the difference between LotR and those crude Jackson movies) themselves.

But this isn't a forum about those things, and most of us have probably talked quite enough about it anyway. I simply cannot understand anyone who would blame the nowadays unique focus and pacing of Tolkien's fantasy and prefer some calculating, easily palatable rewrite of the pulp authors. I don't expect anyone from that camp to understand the opposite view either, what with the assumptions about literature being so different.

So I won't go to that. Instead we have to focus on the contention; is LotR to blame for bad GM habits? As Endoperez already noted, the habits Valamir enumerates are actually a mark of a, in the lack of a better word, 'literary GM', who tries to play illusionist genre simulation. Is this playing style Tolkien's fault?

For now I'd like to see some refined arguments for the contention to believe it. Why it is specifically Tolkien that encourages illusionist practices? Couldn't one get the same ideas from reading any literature? Imagine a Howard-fanboy running a game where a player character is forcibly crusified, and will die horribly if he doesn't understand to kill and eat carrion birds with his teeth. Why is it that Tolkien gets the blame, when superficially any book can be so abused?

On the other hand, I could believe that Tolkien has confused entire generations of fantasy gamers. If Valamir doesn't understand LotR enough to appreciate it, is it any wonder most all other gamers do not? Then a GM comes along, rips Tolkien for plot structure, and never stops to think that mixing Tolkien up with vancian sword and sorcery is a horribly bad idea. Tolkien being strongly christian in his themes and ethics, with helpless hobbits run aground by fate, how can you expect it to work with those brawny barbarians that are the staple of fantasy gaming? Of course you get discordant play. So I can readily believe that Tolkien isn't understood and if there is a real dependence between LotR and rpgs themewise, then Tolkien indeed has confused many.

But, as said, I don't buy the contention that pastiching Tolkien is bad because his literature is bad. It seems clear that it'd be bad even if you did it to a good book (which LotR is to my mind) if you didn't know what you were doing. And clearly the examples given by Valamir are a sign of a GM not knowing what he is doing, if not for any other reason, then because this kind of GM clearly doesn't understand the style he is striving for. If you want illusionist genre simulation, do you really want to throw dice all the time and deceive yourself with giving your players a "choice" in a place where you really aren't giving one? Nothing in Valamir's examples is specifically linked to Tolkien, and there's even nothing bad there, assuming you find illusionism palatable.

Paganini wrote: Oh and Ralph, your mistake is that you've confused the protagonists. Aragorn and Gandalf are obviously the PCs. :)

Endoperez wrote: I'm not sure about the sessions of your lifehood, but the examples you gave are examples of bad GM. I identify the problem they had is the want to tell their story. More spesifically, not the players' story, but the GM's. For them, the players are only ruining a good story, while for the players, he is not letting them to play.

Bad writer? Maybe. Bad world builder? Never. Tolkien created the most engrosing and thuroughly thought out world ever. While I agree that the events in The Lord of the Rings are probably the least exciting in all of the history of Middle-earth, they never-the-less showed a love and depth for a world that few of us could ever replicate. If I can develop a world half as beautiful, detailed, tragic, and enthralling as Tolkien, then I will have lived a satisifying life as a designer.

Peace,

-Troy

Well, I get what Ralph is saying, but I doubt it's any conscious or unconscious attempt at emulating Tolkien and more the "whoa-ho-ho, this could be an RPG play transcript" feeling Ralph got when he "read" it.

For the record, I did enjoy the Hobbit and have read it a couple times but I still can't get past Frodo leaving the Shire in FotR. Every single word Ralph said came from my lips about Tolkien as a writer. Especially where FotR is concerned.

There have been volumes written about how Tolkien came to write LotR and what he was attempting to do. I find is something to hotly debate in internet forums along side such topics as Stonehendge, Jack the Ripper, and which religion is the One True Religion and everyone else is wasting their time. It's a topic that is perpetually in discussion since no one will give any quarter, for various reason. None of them germane here.

But, this is my understanding of it, and it's how I explain it to myself and it does seem reasonable. Tolkien was a professor IIUC. A professor with acedemic interest in history, languages and mythology, if I have been well informed. The purpose of Lord of the Rings was to tell a history of this world of Middle Earth. Any storytelling merit was secondary, if that. I also have heard that he was making a new mythology since the modern world has forgotten the old myths. By all of this, I mean that his storytelling ability, which he did show in Hobbit was not in evidence or employ as much in Fellowship.

As far as the books selling and such, that is a topic that is beside the point of this thread. I mean, Citizen Kane tops many best movie ever made list. Most of the people I showed it to didn't like it. Yet, I did. There is no accounting for taste.

Strength 12
Intelligence 9
Dexterity 14
Taste 4

Hrm, sorry, but you know comparing literature and RPGs is futile, considering how utterly and entirely seperate the two are in terms of goals, design, and creative structure. A novel is not an RPG session, and vice versa.

And even though your point about bad habits arising from emulation of Tolkien's narrative structure is valid, Tolkien could not railroad his characters in any sense, entrapping them in situations, because he is a writer, not a gamemaster.

Thus, I think you could have easily made the exact same points about bad habits in RPGs without the rather overwhelming, unrelated critiques of Tolkien's work or processes as a writer, and the resulting particularly ridiculous comparisons, which, in my opinion, drowned and diffused your useful points.

Unfortunately, Ralph, this whole thread simply sounds like an excuse to bitch about (or defend)...Tolkien, not really discuss RPGs. It's a taste post, and has invited similarly worthless taste posts (ie: "the movies are crap", "the books are crap", "no, they aren't", "Gandalf is a PC", "No, he isn't", etc.) and is the sort of futile discussion that goes nowhere that is generally avoided around here.

Ultimately, I have to agree with John's point: you can bitch about Tolkien all you want, but he's still sold more books and been more widely read than most writers ever will. So, bitch about it all you want, but, please, not here, for I'm sure I'm not the only one with no desire to read similarly content-empty rants about the Matrix triology (or etc.) and what the writer/director/filmmaker did wrong/right modelled after the above.

Hence, I think we should ditch the whole book/movie/who is (not) a PC nonsense and discuss the actual RPG issue, leaving the literary criticism to other forums elsewhere on the 'net.

Not sure what your point is Raven. While I did include some side comments on Tolkien's writing the point was how GMs took the manner in which he handled his characters as a template for how to handle characters during play.

Your comment about him not being able to rail road his characters seems to have missed the point entirely. This isn't a discussion about what Tolkien did to his characters. This is a discussion about how GMs took what Tolkien did to his characters as guidance for how to run a gaming session.

Tolkien went to great lengths to demonstrate how despite the hobbits desires and best efforts to the contrary they wound up by Old Man Willow...and later in the barrow that they tried to avoid...and later in the Mines of Moria that they tried to avoid, etc. Is J.R.R. allowed to do that? Of course. He's the author.

But my point is that GMs then used this as a template for how to play. Tolkien had cool encounters in mind...willow, barrow, Moria. Even when the characters didn't want to go there, he made sure they wound up there anyway. Therefor...I'll come up with cool encounters for my game, even with the players don't want their characters to go there, I'll make sure they wind up there anyway.

Its a piss poor GMing technique. My recent epiphany that I was sharing in this thread is that rather than this poor technique simply springing from nowhere as the result of talentless GMs that it very likely came about as an emulation (concious or unconcious) of the FotR format. That early D&D play resembles this format so much that reading Tolkien now feels like reading gamer fiction to me is pretty conclusive evidence of the pervasiveness of this emulation.

So when a GM gleefully sits back confident that his players won't be able to avoid his latest encounter because they forgot to bring sufficient rope; its not just because he's a bad GM. Its because he's gaming the way Tolkien wrote. After all, did samwise kick himself for not having rope...

That's the point of the whole post, Raven. Whatever else you see there has been brought in by others...or perhaps by your own inherent dislike for comparing literature to RPGs. I'm not making such a comparison. I'm showing where GMs learned many of their RP techniques.

Valamir wrote: That early D&D play resembles this format so much that reading Tolkien now feels like reading gamer fiction to me is pretty conclusive evidence of the pervasiveness of this emulation.

This is what people are arguing. LOTR does NOT read like gamer fiction. In fact, I think many people are quite surprised to hear you say so. I know I am.

Valamir wrote: Is it true that anyone is going to argue that Tolkien wasn't a huge influence on early role-playing? I doubt it. Nor did I say anything of the sort. What astonished me was how many specific activities of Tolkien's characters were translated 1:1 into expected behavior of most early D&D groups. I knew the influence was there, but didn't realize how absolute a copy it was. Marching order, who's on watch, damn I forgot to bring rope...all lifted verbatim from FotR. Not just influenced...slavishly emulated.

As for your rant. I'm having trouble figuring out your point through all the hard to decipher sarcasm. But I never said PCs needed to be kewl or kick ass. What I pointed out is the simple truth that a GM who makes their player characters look foolish and shows them up with cool NPCs is a bad GM.

Valamir wrote: Reread it if its been a while. That's why I started this thread. I was shocked by how much like a game transcript it read.

Heya Ralph,

My objection to the post is purely presentational, and summarized by this section from my previous post: "could have easily made the exact same points about bad habits in RPGs without the rather overwhelming, unrelated critiques of Tolkien's work or processes as a writer...which...drowned and diffused your useful points."

Your comment about him not being able to rail road his characters seems to have missed the point entirely.

Hello: I am and official lurker I post very rarely, but I read daily. I have to admit this topic drew me out.
Considering JRRT’s works were written as books long before the early modern idea of a role-playing game was realized this is mute.
Books are not rpg’s, to blame and author’s style for how others used his work when viewed as source material or even as a basis for a fantasy setting seems to me to be a flawed intellectual exercise.
If an untalented Artist sights Picasso as an influence, and turns out flawed emulative compositions, do you blame Picasso?
If it does make sense to say if you do not enjoy JRRT you will not enjoy games or RP styles of those who attempt to emulate his style, (Weather t is a cognizant attempt or not.)
Was JRRT a great writer? I have no idea; I will let more literate posters judge. Did he influence early RPG heavily? Certainly. Is it his fault that he was emulated badly, or that the poster did not enjoy that style of play? No.
It is a good thing that places like this prove that RPG’s have moved well beyond the 70’s and 80’s model to a far more intriguing place.

Great Post and a great topic BTW.
Have a good new year

Well, I unfortunately have only had one experience with Tolkein, when I was much younger, about 15, when I ill-advisedly attempted to start with the only Tolkein book I had, the Two Towers. It read like a lead pancake - heavy, verbose, exceptionally antiquated dialogue and overly flowery dialogue and gesticulations - I read about 3 chapters and gave up - it was damn boring, and I was a hell of an avid reader.

The above is only to preface my lack of much credit to answer this, but I would also say I understand and agree with the idea of the original assessment, that most fantasy rpg sessions DO seem to take ALL the worst kinds of cues from Tolkein; basically, going on the whole 'If Tolkein gamed...' issue, he was a simulationist - so the painstaking worry over how many arrows are remaining, if you have a rope, how many ounces of water it takes to put out a campfire, whatever else, were guaranteed to damn some role-players' characters to a hell of 'gosh too bad you didn't write down quill pen on your sheet', or simply drove them away from gaming due to a fanatical tendancy toward the pedantic.

The fair nod has to, of course, be given to Tolkein, who was, indeed, not a gamer nor GM but a writer and so basically he's 'safe' from the criticism of worrying too much about the character's possessions, marching orders or whatever - they're his characters, they can be as anal-retentive as he wishes. Its the unfortunate truth however that GMs and even some players DO need to take notice of this idea, because maybe INSISTING on cataloging 27 pitons and 3 sets of clothes is not necessarily adding a whole lot to the overall enjoyment of the game, for everyone.

I played a few forum games with one player who could tell you after each post how many shells and other munitions he had remaining in EACH weapon, as well as whether or not they 'would' have destroyed that wall that *I* myself inserted into the story as an obstacle, or why the big tentacled monster should be dead when he threw a grenade at it - the main point of the game is being missed, of relying on the character and his own adaptability, rather than his personal arsenal - with help from some people here and RPG.NET, a halfway suitable solution was worked out where he could catalog and expound all his vast weapons and vehicles trivia and blast away at anything that moved, and fulfill his version of the fun quotient, while I allowed for basically the game being run entirely differently for the other players, who were a bit more accepting of working on character development. The point is, some people thrive on that sort of thing, the intricate what-is-where matrix for everything that exists, how big it is, etc - but its not a great idea to run an entire game on that concept and force everyone else into what might be an alien mode of thinking and priority.

Ralph, perhaps you're missing the thematic point that runs through the Lord of the Rings? As far as I'm concerned, it boils down to two statements:
1) you don't have to be powerful to change the world
2) mercy will always triumph in the end.

Now, if you were going to design a Narrativist RPG with those as Premises, I would bet you'd wind up with a story something like the Lord of the Rings.

The problem, if you ask me, is that when Tolkien got translated into RPGs, the game systems were predominantly Gamist, with a smattering of Simulationist. The RPG rules contradicted both of the themes addressed in the Tolkien books. In D&D, you DO have to be powerful, and mercy is a weakness. The real problem is just plain old Incoherence. Trying to get blood from a stone.

In response, GMs did the only thing they could. They gave up on the players introducing theme (because the rules gave players no means or motive), and introduced it themselves. How? Railroading, lengthy exposition and powerful NPCs. Those were the only tools they had, so they did the best they could, and generally without fully understanding why they were doing it.

So don't blame Tolkien, blame Gygax.

John Kim wrote: Um, hello? Is it seriously true that anyone isn't going to argue this?

What Jack wrote: For the record, I did enjoy the Hobbit and have read it a couple times but I still can't get past Frodo leaving the Shire in FotR. Every single word Ralph said came from my lips about Tolkien as a writer. Especially where FotR is concerned.

what he later wrote: There is no accounting for taste.

And the bible is even WORSE! God, how many gamers have gone to that and taken on a dogmatic theme to their games (Thou shalt not min max!), or dragging on and on just like all those begats! Or sticking in some UBER NPC like Jesus who, oh isn't it nice, saves everyone! No wonder one of the players in it back stabs Jesus for some silver! Wouldn't you!?

I mean, hell, don't writers know that when they write these books they also need to make them 'good RP design manuals' at the same time? How bloody irresponsible are they?

;)

<clap clap clap>

Great post, MJ! What you said! I was wracking my brains to come up with a way to seriouslly add to the thread without being trollish. Now I don't have to. :)

Dr. Velocity wrote: I would also say I understand and agree with the idea of the original assessment, that most fantasy rpg sessions DO seem to take ALL the worst kinds of cues from Tolkein; basically, going on the whole 'If Tolkein gamed...' issue, he was a simulationist - so the painstaking worry over how many arrows are remaining, if you have a rope, how many ounces of water it takes to put out a campfire, whatever else, were guaranteed to damn some role-players' characters to a hell of 'gosh too bad you didn't write down quill pen on your sheet', or simply drove them away from gaming due to a fanatical tendancy toward the pedantic.

jdagna wrote: The problem, if you ask me, is that when Tolkien got translated into RPGs, the game systems were predominantly Gamist, with a smattering of Simulationist. The RPG rules contradicted both of the themes addressed in the Tolkien books. In D&D, you DO have to be powerful, and mercy is a weakness. The real problem is just plain old Incoherence. Trying to get blood from a stone.
...
So don't blame Tolkien, blame Gygax.

Ralph, perhaps you're missing the thematic point that runs through the Lord of the Rings? As far as I'm concerned, it boils down to two statements:
1) you don't have to be powerful to change the world
2) mercy will always triumph in the end.

Valamir wrote: Some have said that they don't think these behaviors stemmed from the GMs exposure to Tolkien at all and would have existed even without LotR to draw from. If this thread is to continue I'd much rather have it continue in that vein which is at least relevant to roleplaying and is directly related to my points.

For my part, the shear number of parallels between the structure of FotR and the structure of late 70s / early 80s D&D (and especially that of the RPGA during its early years) is pretty convincing. I find the idea of parallel evolution of that number of concepts to be highly unlikely, especially given the huge known influence the work had. The bog standard animosity between Elves and Dwarves in fantasy works stems directly from Tolkien's influence on early gaming. Is it so unlikely that marching orders, equipment lists, and rampant GM manipulation of character stem from the same source?

Ralph, you're sniping at Tolkien for no good reason that I can surmise. If you want the thread to talk about literary sources of bad GM habits, fine. Using inflamatory speech about an extremely polarizing topic (the quality of LotR) is not going to encourage that. Quite the opposite, in fact, as we've seen.

And that's all I have to say about that.

As to the point of the thread, it's my opinion that any source (film, literature, art, etc.) can influence a GM for good or ill. It depends more on the GM than what he or she has read. I'm sure LotR has influenced some bad games. But then, I'm equally sure that it has influenced some excellent games. The GM is the important variable.

I enjoyed this, Ralph, although it was inflammatory.

Let me chime in first with two minor cavils at your praise for Jackson vis-a-vis Tolkien: first, Frodo at least has more agency in the novels than in the movie - he gets a few important decisions in the film but is robbed of many others - and second, omitting the Scouring of the Shire - which, like The Hobbit, actually is fairly well written - rips a big chunk of the moral heart clear out of the tale, and showing weary Frodo not being able to feel at home again after the return does not make up for this. I like the films quite well, and they are technically better realized relative to their art form than the novels are relative to theirs, but in spite of all that the moral seriousness of the novels, which only comes out intermittently in the films, places them in my mind at least far, far above the films as works of art.

As to learning bad GMing habits from Tolkien, possibly so, yes. Tolkien was fantastically, obsessively Sim-oriented, and no detail concerning Middle-Earth was too minor for him to spend a great deal of time on it. The three novels are culled from a huge, endless pile of unreadable DM notes that have now mostly been edited now by control freak Christopher Tolkien and can be bought as the 'history of middle earth' and all that.

But his major works are fundamentally moral tales, the Hobbit about Greed, the trilogy about Power. So he was using Simulationist mechanisms to address Narrativist authorial goals. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't: Tolkien's work Drifts badly, which is why many people feel it reads more like a history than a novel.

When you slap this influence onto the Gamist origins of RPGs in miniatures wargaming, you're set up for total incoherence. Welcome to role playing!

First, let me remind everyone that we can't discuss a novel as though it were a game -- Tolkien was not Simulationist or Narrativist or Gamist, his books can't Drift. Game theory cannot be applied to novels because...novels aren't games.

However, I agree with Sean's point about trying to slap Tolkien's morality play and his creation of mythic details into RPGs which did not support such elements very well (if at all), thus giving rise to incoherence.

Valamir wrote: Is it so unlikely that marching orders, equipment lists, and rampant GM manipulation of character stem from the same source?

I'm not a moderator, and my opinion carries no weight here, so take this only as my own personal opinion, please.

I understood Ralph making this thread over on RPG.net, because it's sort of the accepted place for debate for its own sake and 'stirring the pot'. But threads on The Forge usually have, y'know, a *point*, and I come here when I want to avoid needless controversy.

I certainly could be wrong here, but that's just the feeling I get from this thread. A 'd20 is awful' thread guised as a mechanics discussion would probably give me the same bad vibe.

John Kim wrote: Ralph, no one disagrees that Tolkien had a huge influence on both the design of D&D and on how early groups attempted to use D&D. However, the opposing point (as expressed by Justin and myself, among others) is that Tolkien's influences are not bad for role-playing in general. Instead, they are bad when combined with the D&D rules and early approaches -- because D&D was totally unsuited for doing it.

It depends more on the GM than what he or she has read

I agree that this subject does sort of have that rpg.net feel to it, the way Ralph set it up.

Raven, "can't" is such a funny word. People win Nobel prizes for e.g. applying psychology to economics, even though I'm sure those same people at some point got heat for crossing disciplinary boundaries. I wouldn't post the above comparisons as a way to elaborate GNS to newcomers, but I actually stand by the view that Tolkien's conception of what literature was was morality and value-driven and that his general approach to authorship was to hyper-focus on various kinds of exploration of his secondary world. These are somewhat like Nar and Sim from where I'm sitting, even though books aren't games. Furthermore, one kind of problem that people detect in the trilogy comes from the fact that Tolkien veers back and forth between storytelling and something that's more like history or myth, dreaming about his secondary world. This seems something like Nar/Sim incoherence, stemming from the fact that Tolkien often uses means more suitable to Sim-prioritized texts (history manuals, world guides) to accomplish his Narrativist goals. Yeah, OK, some aspects of the comparison are only metaphorical, but it's not a useless one for that reason.

Discussing x as though it were y is often a good way to derive knowledge about both. We have to keep such discussions out of teaching texts for the most part to avoid confusion, but that doesn't mean they're not valuable. I would think that in particular cross-referencing gaming theory, lit theory, psychology, and sociology would be extremely fruitful, because there are real-world connections between the four.

Anyway, all I meant to do was compare. Chess isn't an RPG either but the whole thing is intensely driven by Step on Up for most players at the tournament level anyway. Does that mean GNS applies to boardgames? I don't know, and it doesn't really matter to GNS, but it's still interesting to compare.

I will say that there are some comparisons that I find much harder to make plausibly - for example, I find Ralph's accusation of railroading in the initial post baffling. How can an author 'railroad' anyone? Railroading is essentially a conflict over authorship, involving two distinct wills which are both trying to dictate the same thing, and one of them invoking GM privilege to overpower the other. There's nothing like that in a book unless it's multiply authored, I don't think.

I think this thread is wonderful Ralph, I noticed this connection between bad gamemastering and Tolkien some time ago. Tolkien as a GM embodies another problem about our view of how to run a fantasy world.
Mostly in the belief that you need all of this massive amount of lush premade detail before you can do it.. Remember it's well known that both The Hobbit and 'Lord' are really just testbeds for all the sim detail Tolkein had made years, even decades before he thought of putting it into a novel. When GMs create (or spend money on big book of) all this sim material they want you (the players) to see it.
Hence the meandering side plots and diversions. The desire of the gamemaster to justify all this work (or money spent) by making sure the players go 'ooh' and 'aaah' over it by herding them around sll the 'fasicinating' set pieces and color objects he has created.

By the way somebody did boil down 'Lord' to about 100 pages, the Harvard Lampoon's 'Bored with the Rings' a parody to be sure but it actually boiled the salient plot points down to about that amount!

Hi Ralph, sorry I wasn't clear. Here's an attempt to clarify my disagreements...

I believe that the source of the problems you talk about in roleplaying didn't stem solely and directly from attempting to emulate Tolkien's work (although it was almost certainly a factor in some cases). And I'm talking about the specific examples you raise - equipment lists, railroading, posting guards, etc. Many other works of literature can and have contributed to these bad roleplaying habits, as have the D&D rules themselves. In short, I think your hypothesis is limiting and biased, but not completely without merit.

Greyorm wrote: First, let me remind everyone that we can't discuss a novel as though it were a game -- Tolkien was not Simulationist or Narrativist or Gamist, his books can't Drift. Game theory cannot be applied to novels because...novels aren't games

Calithena wrote: I will say that there are some comparisons that I find much harder to make plausibly - for example, I find Ralph's accusation of railroading in the initial post baffling. How can an author 'railroad' anyone? Railroading is essentially a conflict over authorship, involving two distinct wills which are both trying to dictate the same thing, and one of them invoking GM privilege to overpower the other. There's nothing like that in a book unless it's multiply authored, I don't think.

ethan_greer wrote: I believe that the source of the problems you talk about in roleplaying didn't stem solely and directly from attempting to emulate Tolkien's work (although it was almost certainly a factor in some cases). And I'm talking about the specific examples you raise - equipment lists, railroading, posting guards, etc. Many other works of literature can and have contributed to these bad roleplaying habits, as have the D&D rules themselves. In short, I think your hypothesis is limiting and biased, but not completely without merit.

Well, unfortunately I'm going out of town, which precludes continuing the conversation over the weekend. Here are some quick thoughts as to other negative influences (non Tolkien) on gaming before I head out the door.

The Dragonlance modules. Paul Czege can talk at length about how Dragonlance all but killed role-playing for him.

The Dragonlance Chronicles (original trilogy, especially the first book). You can almost see the players in the background flipping through rule books, choosing spells, etc. As such the trilogy works as a model for how a D&D game "should" be visualized. Problematic, I think.

The "for GM only" texts found in rules, supplements, and adventure modules. And the attitude that type of organization of material reveals about the designers' views on the roles of the players vs. that of the GM.

The B-grade fantasy movies of the early 80s that were partially inspired by and fed inspiration back into D&D.

In mentioning other authors, don't forget Vance - Gygax has stated that Vance was as heavy an influence for OD&D as Tolkien. Whether or not I believe that, I think Gygax probably does... :) Dunno anything about Vance, though, so I can't really speak to that.

Whether or not, and to what degree, all these other sources were influenced by Tolkien... Gah. I don't know if there's much point in trying to hash that out here. But I think that they've all clearly had a great deal of influence on our hobby in tandem with Tolkien's work - both on the specifics you mention, and on other factors of gaming not effected (or less effected) by Tolkien's work.

That's all I can think of right now and I'm literally heading out the door right now. I'll be back Sunday.

As far as I can tell (and yeah, I lived through it) Ralph is right that early roleplayers' took "inspiration" from various bits and pieces (for Color, say) of Tolkien, and it served them very poorly. It *is* remarkable how equipment lists and marching orders, which are clearly there in LotR, show up in RPG play and (in the way in which they were applied) are usually of no use at all in having that play be enjoyable.

Connecting that up with what those same bits and pieces mean *within* JRR's work is just pointless, though. Opinions will differ. IMO, JRR is often able to take such things and, in the context of his story, brillliantly weight them with moral implications and interesting meanings. Which is entirely irrelevant to the *real* (IMO) heart of the point that Ralph makes (whether it's the one he means or not) - taking these things from Tolkien and using them in RPGs resulted in some not-very-fun RPG play. But that's not because they were bad (neccessarily - some might be, sometimes - I'm not claiming that JRR was always a brilliant writter) within LotR.

Take that away from Ralph's post, and I think there's something useful to learn - both in general about taking stuff from a static fiction and using it in RPG play, and in particular about the history of our hobby.

Gordon

Valamir wrote: The characters stated what they wanted to accomplish, and Tolkien did everything in his power to prevent it from happening.

As to the rest of your insights I find them pretty weak. Sam mentions he wishes he had some rope, how is this a fixation on equipment lists? He didnt say he wanted some rope, a 10' pole, 3 weeks iron rations and a hooded lantern.

I dont remember Tolkien ever talking about setting watches, so I cant see how he influenced that element of game play.

Marching orders were a simple development that came from a party marching along the graph paper, you had to know who was the first to enter the hex where the pit trap was located.

Behavior that is the norm when writing a book, is railroading when applied to RPGs. Yes, many people have noted that my arguements in this thread could be applied to a variety of novels, not just LotR. But I would say 2 things to that 1) LotR is probably the most single influencial work to gaming, both in terms of its impact on gaming directly, and in terms of its impact on the entire genre of fantasy fiction which then gets incorporated into gameing, and 2) LotR makes it pretty easy to see the different hats J.R.R was wearing because he was so explict about every detail of what was happening. Thus, moreso than most other novels, it is much easier to simply divvy up those hats without needing to change much...because they are so well defined.

The influence of Tolkien's work upon role-playing and subsequent works of fantasy is likely so deep seated and widespread as to be below our casual awareness. Tolkien’s work is grafted into the architecture of pop culturedom with far reaching and subtle effects, such that when someone points out the “ripples in the pond” we squint our eyes and insist that the disturbance must stem from some lesser source, and not the aged leviathan coursing beneath the surface.

Had the substance of Ralph’s post not violated the sanctity of Tolkien, I doubt that such fervor would have been expended in reply. Personally, I’m mostly in agreement with his observations and conclusions. I’m also of the opinion that should the sacred idol of Tolkien be shattered upon it’s gilded altar then perhaps a decent amount of objectivity would eventually take root in discussions of his works.

I love the books (and the movies for that matter), therefore I must accept them for what they are; inspiring yet flawed works that have had far too much influence, much of it unfortunate, on the face of role-playing.

-Chris

I'll take you at your word when you say my memory may be foggy of certain events in the book, I'll admit it's been awhile since I last read LOTR. I will say however that the things you are pointing out never struck me as the important things about the books and not something I'd conciously try to emulate, and I dont think many gamers did. The attention to details like watches and supplies seems much more like the elements from war gaming than anything inspired by Tolkien, ie. unit x cannot attempt to climb the wall because he does not have 50'rope listed as an ability.

Valamir wrote:

You further say that marching order developed from tracking a party on graph paper. I believe that's backwards. Players didn't develop marching orders because they were using graph paper. Even in the early days one didn't map out marching down a corridor square by square with each figure moving. Graph paper was used when events when to combat rounds and to draw maps to avoid getting lost. The need for a mechanism to track marching order came from the players perception of a need to feature marching order. The mechanism developed to fill the need not the other way around as you suggest. I believe that need was highly influenced by Tolkien who went to great lengths not only to describe the order the party was in but why.

Behavior that is the norm when writing a book, is railroading when applied to RPGs. Yes, many people have noted that my arguements in this thread could be applied to a variety of novels, not just LotR. But I would say 2 things to that 1) LotR is probably the most single influencial work to gaming, both in terms of its impact on gaming directly, and in terms of its impact on the entire genre of fantasy fiction which then gets incorporated into gameing, and 2) LotR makes it pretty easy to see the different hats J.R.R was wearing because he was so explict about every detail of what was happening. Thus, moreso than most other novels, it is much easier to simply divvy up those hats without needing to change much...because they are so well defined.

If I understand your point, you're saying that many early GM habits can be directly linked witht the works of Tolkien. I see your point regarding equipment lists and marching orders, although I'm not fully convinced one way or the other. What I don't get is Tolkien being blamed for GM's railroading their characters.

Most GMs envision these kewl scenes and kewl NPCs for the players to meet. The problem is that when characters find a way around these scenes and these NPCs a "bad" GM doesn't know what to do. He may even think that he's cheating the players by not letting them experience the uber-kewl scene he had prepared for them. So he does what he thinks best. He railroads them into the scene not realizing he's doing more harm than good. I personally feel that's the sign of a "bad" and probably inexperienced GM. I don't see how Tolkien can be blamed for this. Maybe there were a few sporadic GMs who justified this with Tolkien, but I think most of the blame is with lack of creativity. I honestly believe that someone who has never heard of Tolkien would have these same tendencies.

If anything is to blame, it's fictitious media in general, where the paths characters take is always the dramatic one even if it's one we wouldn't choose. How many of us have thought while watching a movie, "I would not open that door" or "I'd run if I were him." But, we also know that it wouldn't be a very good movie if they didn't open that door or if they didn't stop and fight. This works in movies and books where there is one author. I think "bad" GMs try to force this into RPGs, thinking it worked in the movies, it should work here, hence railroading the PCs.

In short, Tolkien is to "blame" only as much as the majority of other novels and movies out there. But, it seems to me that ultimately the blame just falls on a "bad" GM.

He couldn't make up his mind whether he was writing a story or an encyclopedia and it shows. He skims over the climactic moments so he can rush into the next lull where he can present 14 more pages of history lesson, exposition, and bad poetry.

@ Tolk was primarily a historian linguist by education, which shows clearly in his writing. It seems what he should have done, is build the world and then hand it over to a storyteller who could write action. If a nympho maniac had written the story, there might have been chapters about orgies instead of chapters about history and the middle earth land scape.

But I digress. It suddenly hit me on one of those long stretches between rest stops that FotR is the source of much of the bad role-playing I'd experienced in my childhood and have since come to loath.

@ i'd say bad DMs are responsible for it. Has it gotten better? Are you playing with others your age?

How many campaigns have you played in where there was ostensibly some overall plot (to retrieve the macguffin or what have you) that was interrupted several times by tangential adventures and side plots? The actual story of FotR could have been told in 100 pages or less if you edit out all of the side plots and the like.

@ i went to college to retrieve a degree, and kept getting sidetracked in things like relationships, bills, concerts, family visits and jobs etc. In WWII all we had to do was get hitler, but we had to make stops in italy, africa and so on. What if in Dune Paul just said "screw it kill all the worms"? Or if LotR Gandalf cast a teleport spell in chapter 2, to send the ring into the lava? Get a video game and enter the cheat code to skip all the levels and watch the final cut scene. Let me know if that was fun or satisfying. The game was called dungeons and dragons, not sidewalks and bunnies.

2) second the "GM" makes clear that the road is a Bad Idea in that way all railroading GMs have that suggests dire consequences for defiance...hmmm...a choice that is no choice at all...check...FotR is full of those.

@ To me that all comes across as adversity and fate. The road to mordor could have been a sunny glade and a days ride, but that wouldn't have been much fun. The enemy opposed them at every turn, and in some cases nature itself was an obsticle. The enemy WAS hunting them and WAS turning weather and the environment against them. Some of those forests were in a sense entities that had good or ill will. He personnified the forests very clearly as being either for or against them. These were NOT our forests which didn't take sides in WWII. The forests in tolk would have taken sides.

@ Frodo and the gang were not PCs, they were NPCs. They didn't make choices at all, they did whatever the writer made them do. It was more like a DM wannabe running his module for himself, playing all the characters and fudging any rolls he didn't like. "Um, that roll doesn't count because the cat batted it" *rolls again* "20! that's more like it!"

After J.R.R. goes to such absurd lengths to herd the party where he wants, how can any GM not feel the right to do likewise.

@ If you are mad at you high school DM, look him/her up and give them an earful for railroading you.

4) The hobbits simply fall asleep. The line where J.R.R takes great pains to point out that Merry and Pippin fell asleep with their backs to the tree is almost painful in its heavy handed obviousness. Yup, more GM using the dice to railroad the players. How many Saving Throws vs. Magic, or Petrification Polymorph did the GM call for to ensure that somebody would fall into the trap.

@ Are you suggesting that hobbits don't need sleep? Was tolkien wrong about the species he invented? They had to fall asleep eventually. i suppose they could have fallen asleep by a normal pine tree and that scene could have been left out. Would you then complain about frodo complaining about having pine needles in his pants?

@ Why did you keep reading if you hated it so much? Masochism? When you ride roller coasters do you critique the curvature being too excessive when everyone else is screaming and having a good time?

?Hey?what about getting an axe and chopping the opening wider??
?Do you have an axe listed as part of your equipment??
?No?but I?m sure my character would have remembered to bring one?
?If its not listed you don?t have one?

@ The inventory in an RPG is a means of accountibility. That way the player can't say "Um, yeah, so i pull out OTHER rope/wand of orcus/ring of regeneration". And the DM can't say "Um, no, you don't have any pitons/potion of levitation." The player can then respond "Um YEAH i do, it is in my inventory and YOU approved it!".

@ In a story it can be a means of showing practical reality or a plot device. If you go mountain climbing without a rope, you are in for a tough trip, no matter how epic your goal is. Sam couldn't just jaunt over to Home Despot and pick up a rope. If the fellowship had a plane they could have flown to mordor, but the whole series would have been 10 pages.

6) The super-cool-way-more-better-than-you pet NPC. We?ve all seen these. The NPC that is kewler, more powerful, and more effective than the PCs. The pet NPC who is basically the GM?s own personal character that, since he?s the GM, he gets to do whatever he wants with.

@ yeah, i hate this too, DMPCs i call them. Another term is 'elminster syndrome.'

Oh?and how did they escape from the barrow (which could have actually been a pretty cool encounter)??yeah that?s right?pet NPC Bombadil to the rescue to show-up the PCs yet again. Oh the Humanity.

@ Deus ex Mechina. Always bad, always the result of poor planning by the DM. NPCs should be helpful on rare occasions, but the players should be the once to pull of the miracle. In D&D it gets harder and harder to make challenges without shattering suspension of disbelief. How do you have a maze when the wizard can cast teleport? Star Trek abuses this in the other direction. When transporters / shields / telempathy would solve the problem, guess what isn't working? Yup, the very thing you need.

Enter Pet NPCs Aragorn and Gandalf who do everything cool there is to do while the PCs cower in fear.

@ Again, i would contend all the characters are NPCs. However comma it should be noted that Aragorn is a (hu)man, a ranger, and a future king. He's like a 20th level ranger. Frodo is a 0th level Nothing. Sam is a 5th lever gardener. Merry and Pippen *might* be 1st level thieveses. Gandalf is not even mortal, his more like an avatar/angel. The story and the movies for that matter clearly point out that the hobbits are farmers who seldom leave the shire or do anything interesting. Aragorn, is it quite clear, has been adventuring for a long time. Gandalf for several life times. So why involve hobbits at all?

@ Tolk likes the hobbits, he wished that we were all hobbits, living pastoral lives without greed, envy or wrath. Just happy little farmers. Frodo was given the ring because he was a hobbit and not as suceptible to the rings corruption. In the LotR RPG it says that the power of the ring is related to the stature of the wearer. On frodo it gave invisibility, on aragorn or gandalf it would have made them almost unstoppable.

Where did the GM get such a ridiculous idea??hmmm, upon looking at how foolish J.R.R. made the hobbits look at the beginning and how successful they were at the end?I now know.

@ The hobbits were innocent, not foolish. PCs are not innocent, and they are supposed to be trained. The hobbits are not PCs, they are more like the nameless villager NPCs. Frodo != Tasselhof. If we dropped you into a combat zone, you would wet yourself and panic. Real life soldiers usually panic and look silly when the fur starts to fly, but as they get more experience they learn to control that fear. Likewise, the Merry and Pippen, by the end find that they can be brave and fight, though they are but small. In the movies this is crystal clear, you see how small they are. How they go from overwhelmed to heroic.


1) Getting lost in Moria. A maze of passages, and if Gandalf had chosen wrong they may have wandered aimlessly for weeks. J.R.R. takes great pains to demonstrate how clever Gandalf is at choosing the right path based on the clues. How many GMs took that as permission to leave obscure clues about the right path (if the players remember to ask for them) and then let the party get completely lost if they miss them? Gawd how tedious and boring.

@ Any GM should (by now) know that NPCs should not be that involved. Advise, yes. Hand holding, no.

2) Marching Order. How many different times does Tolkien take great pains to show who followed who and who was guarding the rear. Enough times that GMs started to believe this crap was fun and go to great lengths to get ?marching orders? from players.

@ There is a trip wire across the hallway. Who is the most likely to trip it? The guy at the back or the guy at the front? Think long and hard about that. If a spinning blade is gonna shoot out of the wall and cause damage, knowing who is going to get hit is going to be important to the players. How do you determine that if you don't know who is in front to trip the wire? Roll for it? "Wait a minute, five other guys walked right over that wire and it hits ME? WtF,O?" Unless of course your contention is that the party should walk abreast....

3) Watches: Oh ye gods. Even more tedious and more futile then marching orders how many hours have been wasted on establishing watches. I definitely blame this bit of nonsense on J.R.R. who took unnatural delight in describing in great detail who was on watch when. Boring to read?boring to play.

@ if an encouter is going to happen at X am, how do you know who is awake at that hour? Should i as the DM just go "uuhhh, Steve! you were awake when they show up". If you and a group of friends were travelling through a hostile environment, where there are wolves and worse trying to find and kill you, and you HAVE to sleep, wouldn't you sleep better if you knew someone would wake you if there was trouble? Let's say we have no watch. The ring wraiths surround the party and kill you all in your sleep. Woo hoo! Having a watch is necessary for survival. Having alive PCs is necessary to a campaign. So we have to have someone awake (not snoring and dreaming) to alert the others that they are under attack. How do you know who will be awake then?

@ Instead of whining about watch order, try coming up with a solution to the necessity of a watch and knowing WHO is on watch WITHOUT a watch order. One possibility is that when the night attack comes, make a roll to determine who is up, but then you open yourself up to ppl saying "no i would be asleep then because i need X hours rest for casting spells, so my character would have taken the first watch. The elf needs less sleep than i do so wouldn't he be awake by then?" Allowing players to choose is the most logical solution. Unless you rule out night encounters, by some miracle nocturnal predators and fiends all agree to not attack the sleeping do gooders.

Bad Role-playing?I blame Tolkien.

@ Blame bad GMs and RPG developers. Tolk didn't know what was going to happen with his books. And the things you mention here are storytelling / DM/GMing issues NOT role-playing.

C. Edwards wrote:
Had the substance of Ralph’s post not violated the sanctity of Tolkien, I doubt that such fervor would have been expended in reply. Personally, I’m mostly in agreement with his observations and conclusions. I’m also of the opinion that should the sacred idol of Tolkien be shattered upon it’s gilded altar then perhaps a decent amount of objectivity would eventually take root in discussions of his works.
-Chris

Valamir wrote: You say "instead they are bad when combined with the D&D rules and early approaches"

I said "by this I mean old school D&D and games of similar ilk" and

"An entire generation of role-players in the 70s and 80s had modeled their role-playing so perfectly on Tolkien's model that reading Tolkien now seems like a role-playing session itself"

So what exactly are you opposing.? I find it completely disconcerting that you would paraphrase exactly what I said in the original post but try to frame it as an opposing position.

Valamir wrote: As for your Water Uphill campaign. I'm not sure how that's in the least bit relevant. First at no time did I suggest having protagonists who where weaker than the NPC was a bad thing. The point I made pretty stridently was that the GM making the weaker PCs look foolish and incompetant in order to show case the cooler NPCs was a bad thing. Since I doubt you were doing this in your campaign, your campaign as an example doesn't really apply since its not the situation I was discussing.

I'm repeating myself, and John, and others, but - short and sweet (for me):

The problem is not that Tolkien is bad (whether he is or isn't we shouldn't even be talking about here - so let's not. Really, let's not - Ralph's opening post and many responses need to have that issue stripped right out). The problem is that Tolkien was applied inappropriately to roleplaying.

And it is interesting how that happened, and still happens. It looks like taking X, Y and Z from book A will provide a fun game - but it doesn't work that way. "Some assembly required," and folks from back-in-the-day all through to the present forget to do that assembly.

Gordon

Caldis wrote: The opposite of this is true as well, spewing overt hatred of a work that many find to be very compelling does not add anything to ones arguement. Ranting about the lack of quality of one of the most popular books in all of fantasy literature drops ones post to the level of a troll and virtually negates any rational arguements one tries to make in the same post.

Maybe Fellowship is just Frodo's player's 300-page character writeup. Can we blame Tolkien for that? I bet there are character writeups out there somewhere that actually include songs.

On the other hand, what a kicker. "My character has come into possession of the one ring." Play it a little differently and you've got yourself a game of Charnel Gods.

Valamir wrote: In other words, after re “reading” Tolkien for the first time in well over a decade I was struck point blank with exactly how many features that I grew to loathe and despise in gaming could be traced directly to LotR (and FotR in particular).

Valamir wrote: Bad Role-playing…I blame Tolkien.

C. Edwards wrote:
Well, see, that's kind of my point. Ralph posted some opinion, some observation, and some thoughtful criticism. I certainly wouldn't say he was "spewing overt hatred".

Also, when popularity becomes the true hallmark of quality, I don't want to know. Just slip me some of that special kool-aid.

So, to recap, we are the acolytes of a fat, bloated hobby suckling from the teats of our sacred cows.

-Chris

The characters stated what they wanted to accomplish, and Tolkien did everything in his power to prevent it from happening... The lesson...never let the characters get what they want, or go where they want, or do what they want.

Discussing x as though it were y is often a good way to derive knowledge about both. <snip>

greyorm wrote: My disagreement arises solely from the fact that all of what you're stating "this stuff came from" or "gamers emulated his treatment of the Fellowship" ...

Hi all. I've been reading this forum on and off for some time now, but have never posted before.

Given all this discussion about what influences are responsible for "bad roleplaying", I am wondering what criteria posters here would use to judge whether roleplaying is good or bad. I mean here actual play, not game design.

For instance, some posters have argued that the inclusion of equipment lists (or possibly an unreasonable emphasis on them) is a mark of bad roleplaying. If it is bad roleplaying because of an unreasonable emphasis upon some aspect, how would you judge what is unreasonable?

Is it possible to have objective criteria by which the quality of roleplaying (its goodness or badness) can be judged? I don't believe so, as I believe that people can only apply their own subjective criteria, but I am interested in hearing other viewpoints.

Regards
Taina

Taina wrote: Hi all. I've been reading this forum on and off for some time now, but have never posted before.

Is it possible to have objective criteria by which the quality of roleplaying (its goodness or badness) can be judged? I don't believe so, as I believe that people can only apply their own subjective criteria, but I am interested in hearing other viewpoints.

Valamir wrote: So I think that there are numerous sources like you suggest, but they are secondary or derivative sources themselves.

This, I think, falls into the realm of GNS. Good and bad are kind of dodgy terms. I would say it has more to do with appropriateness. That is, for some types of, say, narrativism I can see an emphasis on an equipment list would be counter productive to the goal and, thus, unreasonable.

@ Agreed. The original post was written by someone who is clearly prejudiced toward N type games, whereas the first generation or two of RPGs were more G/S oriented. Narrativist RPGs are a fairly new invention. Storyteller is the first game that comes to mind that took some of the emphasis off of stats and put it on story and character. Many of the games being made in the DIY mode are very N slanted, which i think is a reaction to G/S games being made by companies. People who like G/S material are not put off by the issues he mentions, in fact they might see them as necessary or logical.

@ To me this is much the same as indie movies and music. They are a response to the pop versions of their media. Games like QuickDraw are almost deconstructionist in comparison to D&D.

@ The problem (i have) with the post is that it was how opinions were stated as fact, and were written by a 'hater'*. For myself, i dislike Shadowrun. The appropriate way to express that is "i find that combining magic and high tech in one setting to be redundant. One would come to dominate quickly, and what is magic but technology that hasn't been discovered yet (read: explained by science)". Valamir's approach was "Shadowrun is teh $uX0RZ. If you run it you are teh $uX0RZ. If you don't agree with me you are an 1D10T." The other minor issue is confusing bad GMing with bad RPing. Oh, and the spelling.

*Hater - One who dislikes something so much that they feel they must convert others to that hatred. Usually inspired by something that is widely accepted or popular. Usually the basis for the hatred is the popularity of the subject in question, not its merits or lack thereof.

@ Perhaps his post should have been: The Gamist Contrivances and Simulationist Detailism of first generation of RPGs might be the result of GMs trying to imitate LotR. That might be a thread worthy of The Forge.

@ What would have been ideal would be a thread that offers or asks for help on getting away from details and contrivances. How do you have the players get to where you need them to be without railroading them? What are alternatives to inventories, marching orders and watch schedules?

@ Problems are boring, solutions are sexy. Any fool can rant/troll and point out flaws. Asking for help takes courage, finding solutions requires intelligence and creativity.

Funny, I didn't get the idea that Valamir's approach was in anyway...if you don't agree with me you are an idiot...

Very much got the idea that the style of the professors writing wasn't much for him... but not so far as to not 'read' the works.

It didn't seem too hard to get the idea that the were strong parallels between what he read, and many early disfunctional gaming experiences...

A fun question really about whether some bad GMing could be due to trying to emulate JRR in the early days.

My opinion is that it is co-incidence, part from wargaming, and could happen trying to emulate other authors, but it is certainly interesting to consider whether some bad habits could have been inspired from such an popular source.

Certainly wouldn't be at all controversial if he had claimed that some of his best RPG experiences came as an direct inspiration from such source material.

I can see how the read could parallel bad play experiences... and personally I love the books.

An interesting thread from all angles, but certainly Ralph isn't some kind of Trolling thread monster...

Quite right Bob. I'm in no way a "hater" of Tolkien. I've read the LotR and the hobbit at least 3 times (though not recently) and am currently working my way through the unabridged audio version. I could have purchased the BBC dramatised version instead, but I specificallly sought out the unabridged version. I would not have sat through nearly 20 hours of listening if I was a "hater".

I do believe that one can be critical of someones weaknesses and still be appreciative of their overall talent.


Further, Apeiron, Narrative play is by no means a new invention. In fact, one could argue that it existed at the very beginning of the hobby in equal measure with other forms, until it was systematically rooted out during the 80s and early 90s.

As your for suggestion to provide solutions...solutions to what? I was postulating a likely origin for problems that existed in gaming decades ago (and served as the foundation for "what gaming is supposed to look like"). The solutions are already out there. The style of play that was once standard is now much less so. The thread was pointing out a area of historical interest, not a current problem that needs fixing (and least not anything that hasn't been addressed numerous times here anyway).

With one minor caveat, I agree strongly with Valamirs proposition, and consider many of the objections to originate from the Sacred Cow Defense League.

As it happens, I wonder if marcher order, role specialisation and equipment fetishism arise from the military locus of much early RPG and a sort of emulation of the Long Range Patrol in Vietnam. This gives us our pit and other traps, the importance of marching order etc. Vietnam was roughly contemporary with early RPG.

But I think the central thrust is accruate; the main characters are continually deprotagonised. Watching the films, I found myself steadily less sympathetic to the plight of the characters, who were pretty much victims throughout. I also agree that the major NPC characters like Gandalf are basically plot devices; when one of the hobbits said "But we have the White Wizard on our side, that has to count for something" I remarked to my friend "You'd think so, wouldn't you". But my view on this is that the hobbits are meant to be children, whose experience of the world is being dragged hither and yon by the inscrutable demands of arbitrary adults

What I think LOTR did for fantasy in general was give it a decent Sim basis arguably for the first time. Certainly, as a nipper reading the books, what struck me was the sense of reality and place - as a childrens story, its a pretty radical departure from a fairy-tale constructed entirely to be moral homily. It made a fantastic world a 'real' place, and that in many ways was what caught the imagination, certainly in my case.

From that perspective I would endores Valamirs claim that much of bad RPG arises from the LOTR, if for no reason other than the fact that LOTR as a work of such repute, such respect, such fame, that it provides legitimacy to a GM duplicating the perceived process of the books. The argument that one of the doyens fo English literature, one of the most famous books, supports game play mode X is a very strong one and often unchallangeable. LOTR does validate the Sim heavy attention to detail exhibited by the marching order and whatnot. It does endorse the primary characters being at the mercy of more powerful secondary characters. I don;t think Tolkiens dfead hand rached out and wrote GM's notes, but the LEGITIMACY provided by Tolkiens example was, IMO, a very powerful influence.

contracycle wrote: I [...] consider many of the objections to originate from the Sacred Cow Defense League.

But I think the central thrust is accruate; the main characters are continually deprotagonised. Watching the films, I found myself steadily less sympathetic to the plight of the characters, who were pretty much victims throughout.

LOTR does validate the Sim heavy attention to detail exhibited by the marching order and whatnot. It does endorse the primary characters being at the mercy of more powerful secondary characters. I don;t think Tolkiens dfead hand rached out and wrote GM's notes, but the LEGITIMACY provided by Tolkiens example was, IMO, a very powerful influence.

contracycle wrote: But my view on this is that the hobbits are meant to be children, whose experience of the world is being dragged hither and yon by the inscrutable demands of arbitrary adults

[code]Perhaps this is why there's such disagreement if we can't even agree on the basic tenets of the novels. I totally disagree with this statement as Tolkien goes to great pains to make Frodo in his 50s before sending him out on his quest and is another reason I dislike the movies. Why cast a teenager as a 50-year-old hobbit?[/code]

Tolkiensian minutia is way off topic for the thread. But I did want to point out that Frodo's coming of age party was at age 33 (same time as Bilbos 111). If this is assumed to be the equivelent of mid teens in human years (not an atypical age for being considered an "adult" in preindustrial society---and following the "tweens" of the 20s of which the impression is given as being adolescent)) then when in his 50s Frodo's age would be the equivelent of 20-something. If we assume a more modern 21 for "coming of age" then by 50 he'd be the equivelent of 30 in human years...which given the small stature of hobbits may still look younger to humans.

In any case, Frodo was not a middle aged character.

Hello,

It may be time to close this thread and take any sub-topics to other, new threads. Ralph? Going once, going twice.

Best,
Ron

There are some topics that have arisen in the thread that I think warrant some additional attention. I hope their postulators will at some point start a thread on them (for instance, Gareth's aside on the possible link between Vietnam squad actions and party design is intriguing). But I'm thinking that everything valuable that could be said in this thread has been.

All set, then. This one's closed.

New threads, everyone.

Best,
Ron