The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

[ASOIAFrelatedusername]

As good as the orcs look, I really hope that they went to all this effort just to have them as plain baddies.

[Ran]

2 hours ago, ASOIAFrelatedusername said:

As good as the orcs look, I really hope that they went to all this effort just to have them as plain baddies.

One can hope.

One of the funniest roleplaying occasions I ever had was on Elendor MUSH, when an orc showed up at the gates of Minas Tirith claiming it had become friends with an elf and no longer wanted to do evil. I (a Rohirrim) and a Ranger of the North who happened on the scene were the only two characters who called bullshit while the other Gondorian players were mostly all for letting her through the gates to talk with Denethor. Inspired by the line from the book about no evil creature of Sauron's having entered the gates until the Witch-king destroyed them, the Ranger and I ended up drawing our swords and blocking the gate, refusing to let the orc pass for fear it was some evil design of Sauron's.

All was resolved when Faramir (RIP, Andy) wandered in, wondered what in the world possessed his fellow Gondorians, and had the orc executed out of hand.

 

[Werthead]

3 hours ago, Ran said:

One of the funniest roleplaying occasions I ever had was on Elendor MUSH, when an orc showed up at the gates of Minas Tirith claiming it had become friends with an elf and no longer wanted to do evil. I (a Rohirrim) and a Ranger of the North who happened on the scene were the only two characters who called bullshit while the other Gondorian players were mostly all for letting her through the gates to talk with Denethor. Inspired by the line from the book about no evil creature of Sauron's having entered the gates until the Witch-king destroyed them, the Ranger and I ended up drawing our swords and blocking the gate, refusing to let the orc pass for fear it was some evil design of Sauron's.

All was resolved when Faramir (RIP, Andy) wandered in, wondered what in the world possessed his fellow Gondorians, and had the orc executed out of hand.

I suspect that Tolkien himself would have been horrified at that. As a Catholic, he was a firm believer in that there was no evil that could not be redeemed (as shown in the books by Gollum, who is nearly redeemed but fails due to the influence of the Ring), and towards the end of his life spent considerable time reconsidering the idea that all orcs were evil all the time, and how a reconsideration of that would fit in with the last great revision he planned to make to the Middle-earth mythos.

A revisionist take of Middle-earth in which the orcs are not all evil all the time would be fine, but it would also require some kind of explanation with the orcs of LotR if they are trying to retain "compatibility" with the Jackson movies. If these orcs are indeed at a low point without Morgoth or Sauron around to command them, perhaps they can show them starting to build their own societies and look beyond just being bad, but then Sauron's return forces them back into subservience to evil.

[ASOIAFrelatedusername]

4 hours ago, Ran said:

One of the funniest roleplaying occasions I ever had was on Elendor MUSH, when an orc showed up at the gates of Minas Tirith claiming it had become friends with an elf and no longer wanted to do evil. I (a Rohirrim) and a Ranger of the North who happened on the scene were the only two characters who called bullshit while the other Gondorian players were mostly all for letting her through the gates to talk with Denethor. Inspired by the line from the book about no evil creature of Sauron's having entered the gates until the Witch-king destroyed them, the Ranger and I ended up drawing our swords and blocking the gate, refusing to let the orc pass for fear it was some evil design of Sauron's.

Executing is rather extreme and Tolkien certainly would not have approved. However no Gondorian would have just let on orc pass into Minas Tirith and speak to the Steward himself. At best they would be imprisoned and interrogated.

 

28 minutes ago, Werthead said:

A revisionist take of Middle-earth in which the orcs are not all evil all the time would be fine, but it would also require some kind of explanation with the orcs of LotR if they are trying to retain "compatibility" with the Jackson movies.

It would also be throughly unnecessary and unfitting for an adaptation of Tolkien's Second Age. And personally I doubt that anyone could make that attempt sucessfully. Shadow of Wardor gets praised by some for its supposed "humanization" of orcs, but in truth all they did was give them quirks and turn them into something to Warhammer's interpretation.

[JGP]

4 hours ago, Ran said:

All was resolved when Faramir (RIP, Andy) wandered in, wondered what in the world possessed his fellow Gondorians, and had the orc executed out of hand.

 

RIP Andy? What what?

[Ran]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

and towards the end of his life spent considerable time reconsidering the idea that all orcs were evil all the time, and how a reconsideration of that would fit in with the last great revision he planned to make to the Middle-earth mythos.

The game was based on LotR, not half-finished philosophical meanderings in HoME. I think the destruction of fleeing orcs and that none were taken prisoner at the Black Gate is consistent with Faramir on our game having no use for orcs and having it executed.

I think the context of the fact that a bunch of other playersr were eager to buy an orcs very unthematic sob story needs to be considered as well. Elendor was sometimes rather wild and woolly and feature characters helped to guide the game.

@JGP

Faramir at that time was played by Andy (as he was known, actual name Ben). He was a founding admin on Blood of Dragons and played Sarmion Baratheon. He passed away in 2016 due to an inoperable brain tumor, far too young.

 

 

 

[JGP]

1 minute ago, Ran said:

 

@JGP

Faramir at that time was played by Andy (as he was known, actual name Ben). He was a founding admin on Blood of Dragons and played Sarmion Baratheon. He passed away in 2016 due to an inoperable brain tumor, far too young.

I remember Andy. That's sad news, man. 

[Ran]

Just now, JGP said:

I remember Andy. That's sad news, man. 

Yeah. One of our oldest friends from online. Knew him for 20 years.

[JGP]

Didn't he also play Imrahil at the time? All these Elendor memories rushing in.

[Ran]

4 minutes ago, JGP said:

Didn't he also play Imrahil at the time? All these Elendor memories rushing in.

He may have, I'd have to login and check. He was Denethor, as well, and pretty sure he did a stint as Aragorn. His favorite character was probably Andrandir, his Ranger. He was also Beircheart in Rohan.

[Darryk]

Did any of you guys ever play MUME?

[JGP]

Not I.

At one point I considered playing The Blood of Dragons MUSH though. 

[Ran]

43 minutes ago, Darryk said:

Did any of you guys ever play MUME?

Afraid not. Elendor was the only Tolkien game I played.

 

@JGP

Think I'm wrong about his having been Aragorn. He was indeed Imrahil, from 2003 to 2004.

[JGP]

11 minutes ago, Ran said:

 

@JGP

Think I'm wrong about his having been Aragorn. He was indeed Imrahil, from 2003 to 2004.

I thought so. Andy, Indy and Inni [sp?] made Dol Amroth rp alright for Herumuchtoolongtotype.

---

Sorry for the thread derail, just sad about Andy and little nostalgic at the moment.

[Ser Drewy]

 

New leaks from FellowshipOfFans suggests Numenor will have an army that is 50/50 men & women, that they haven't been to war for hundreds of years, and will have a large cavalry with a lot of horse-imagery in their weapons/armour. 

[Corvinus85]

38 minutes ago, Ser Drewy said:

New leaks from FellowshipOfFans suggests Numenor will have an army that is 50/50 men & women, that they haven't been to war for hundreds of years, and will have a large cavalry with a lot of horse-imagery in their weapons/armour. 

sigh

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, Ser Drewy said:

 

New leaks from FellowshipOfFans suggests Numenor will have an army that is 50/50 men & women, that they haven't been to war for hundreds of years, and will have a large cavalry with a lot of horse-imagery in their weapons/armour. 

One of the problems of trying to portray two time periods simultaneously, one in which Numenor is peaceful, non-expansionist, doesn't have an army etc, and another in which they are a powerful empire with huge mainland holdings and have been kicking the shit out of people they don't like for centuries. The two really don't work well together.

There were large numbers of horses on Numenor though, as per Unfinished Tales.

[Ser Drewy]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

One of the problems of trying to portray two time periods simultaneously, one in which Numenor is peaceful, non-expansionist, doesn't have an army etc, and another in which they are a powerful empire with huge mainland holdings and have been kicking the shit out of people they don't like for centuries. The two really don't work well together.

There were large numbers of horses on Numenor though, as per Unfinished Tales.

I've wondered if doing a film series might've been a wiser choice. You could make a film about the Forging, one about the War of Elves and Orcs, one about the rise of Numenor, Akallabeth, Last Alliance etc and you could imply many years have passed between each film. I'm not really sure how successful Amazon's time smooshing is going to be. 

[ASOIAFrelatedusername]

The horse imagery thing is just weird and I wonder if there was not some kind of mixup. Why do this? I can adopt a shallow Hollywood producer mindset and see the point in having massive amount of cavalry and gender equality in the army, but there should be nothing stopping them using the more popular Numenorean imagery. Hell, it would make more sense to imitate the Gondorian style from the movies.

[Corvinus85]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

One of the problems of trying to portray two time periods simultaneously, one in which Numenor is peaceful, non-expansionist, doesn't have an army etc, and another in which they are a powerful empire with huge mainland holdings and have been kicking the shit out of people they don't like for centuries. The two really don't work well together.

There were large numbers of horses on Numenor though, as per Unfinished Tales.

I always assumed that Numenor's armies did not contain much cavalry, much like Gondor's armies. Even in Isildur's days, Gondor didn't have much cavalry. At the Gladden Fields he and his retinue are on foot.