User avatar
Rafamir
Posts: 99
Joined: Tue 20 Jul 2021, 04:23

Re: Ruins of the Lost Realm

Fri 29 Apr 2022, 00:25

Dang it, now I'm going to have to enlarge the box of typical Dwarven names on page 35 and errata all those in... :D
 
User avatar
Francesco
Posts: 32
Joined: Thu 04 Jun 2020, 21:14

Re: Ruins of the Lost Realm

Fri 29 Apr 2022, 15:02

Well... Tolkien himself wasn't above such things! :) Let's take a look at the dwarven names in Völuspá:

...those, and 'wormtongue', Eärendil, Atalantë, Avallónë, Turin/Kullervo...

In general, I think that rooting new creations into older ones helps in giving them substance. Perhaps the 'boneless' reference appears to be too much on the nose because the character and his surname has been made popular by the tv show.

Francesco
 
User avatar
Ferretz
Posts: 46
Joined: Mon 01 Jun 2020, 19:35
Location: Ski, Norway
Contact:

Re: Ruins of the Lost Realm

Fri 29 Apr 2022, 15:19

Well... Tolkien himself wasn't above such things! :) Let's take a look at the dwarven names in Völuspá:

...those, and 'wormtongue', Eärendil, Atalantë, Avallónë, Turin/Kullervo...

In general, I think that rooting new creations into older ones helps in giving them substance. Perhaps the 'boneless' reference appears to be too much on the nose because the character and his surname has been made popular by the tv show.

Francesco
Well, at least at our table, the game will grind to a halt if I introduce The Green Knight or Ivoch (Ivar) the Boneless in our campaign. It might be because we're in Norway, and Viking culture might be a bigger thing here in Scandinavia than elsewhere. Names such as Ori and Nori aren't recognized the same way, being tiny parts of Norse myths.
But each group is different, of course.
 
gyrovague
Topic Author
Posts: 591
Joined: Tue 28 Apr 2020, 16:52

Re: Ruins of the Lost Realm

Fri 29 Apr 2022, 15:30


...those, and 'wormtongue', Eärendil, Atalantë, Avallónë, Turin/Kullervo...

In general, I think that rooting new creations into older ones helps in giving them substance. Perhaps the 'boneless' reference appears to be too much on the nose because the character and his surname has been made popular by the tv show.

Francesco
Yeah, for me it's not just the use of names that are associated with a story, but that the story itself comes with it. One or the other separately would have been fine.
 
User avatar
ottarrus
Posts: 192
Joined: Fri 15 Oct 2021, 14:11
Location: Tacoma WA

Re: Ruins of the Lost Realm

Sun 01 May 2022, 01:57

Any word on when this and Strider Mode will be available to non-backers?
More than happy to throw my money at it.
 
gyrovague
Topic Author
Posts: 591
Joined: Tue 28 Apr 2020, 16:52

Re: Ruins of the Lost Realm

Sun 01 May 2022, 02:00

Well... Tolkien himself wasn't above such things! :) Let's take a look at the dwarven names in Völuspá:

...those, and 'wormtongue', Eärendil, Atalantë, Avallónë, Turin/Kullervo...

In general, I think that rooting new creations into older ones helps in giving them substance. Perhaps the 'boneless' reference appears to be too much on the nose because the character and his surname has been made popular by the tv show.

Francesco
Yes, very much do. Before the tv show a reference to Ivar probably would have been fine. And there was a recent Green Knight movie, as well.
 
Sebastian
Posts: 246
Joined: Thu 01 Oct 2020, 04:58

Re: Ruins of the Lost Realm

Tue 03 May 2022, 08:08

Concerning names and already established myths, that appear in RotLR, I don't care that much. Tolkien himself drew heavily on european myths. And to be honest, not that many of my potential and actual players can connect those dots. Even I, although quite interested in those parallels, don't get every hint.
 
Vuriche
Posts: 43
Joined: Mon 01 Jun 2020, 23:38

Re: Ruins of the Lost Realm

Thu 05 May 2022, 23:36

I have, from just looking at the first few pages, the sense that this book might do for Eriador, what The Heart of the Wild did for Eastern Rhovanion - that is expand it into a breathing, living world that is interesting to play in, rather than just a chunk of wilderness. That sets the bar very high, so it'll be a most interesting read to say the least.

Well, wow, that was some excellent writing and very decent material right there. Who's the author? Ah, Gareth, of course, leading a great team of writers. Reading this book was a joy and it's the best book by far for the line in many years in my eyes. A feast of plenty if you will.

But, a HotW this is not. Part of it is probably due to the differences in how the books are constructed and what each book is trying to achieve. Whereas HotW was clearly meant to be the definitive region supplement for both the Vales of Anduin and Mirkwood - RotLR is a much more fragmented product, sprinkling its diverse content all over Eriador. In HotW, the focus on regional descriptions and world-building was complemented perfectly by the later release of Darkening of Mirkwood, which added the actual campaign narrative that HotW did not touch upon. RotLR instead has both location descriptions and campaign material, and as such it certainly does much to whet the appetite, but is ultimately unable to provide a full meal on either end. Most of what RotLR touches upon, it does competently, but, due to the incoherence of the material presented, reading it almost left me even more confused about how Eriador might work as a setting, than I was before. A living, breathing world Eriador is not, at least not yet.

In all fairness, I do admit that I don't believe that RotLR was ever intended as a HotW for second edition. A more apt comparison is likely to be Tales from Wilderland, an early campaign supplement to keep gaming groups occupied while the writers toil away at future works. As such, I believe that we will see volumes that do focus more on creating a coherent campaign setting by fleshing out the cultures and areas of Eriador in a more comprehensive fashion and also a more fleshed-out campaign narrative. Within such a context, I will likely look at RotLR in a new, even brighter light, as a complementary volume to these other supplements.
 
SykesFive
Posts: 39
Joined: Tue 07 Sep 2021, 21:15

Re: Ruins of the Lost Realm

Fri 06 May 2022, 16:53


If I had one criticism it is the choice to include certain concepts that are lifted straight out of our own history, legends and myths. This is very immersion-breaking, especially at our table. Examples would be "The Green Knight" (pg 84) and even calling an NPC "Ivoch the Boneless" (pg 45), who is even the son of a mighty chieftain. Middle-earth should be inspired by such things, not copy them, I think.
I suspect this is the author's nod to Tolkien's own scholarly output which included an edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in Middle English and a well-regarded translation into Modern English which was broadcast by the BBC. Had Tolkien not published anything about Middle Earth, I suspect he'd be remembered among scholars of medieval literature above all as a scholar of SGGK.

What struck me about RotLR is that it's just overrun with "knights." Am I reading a supplement for King Arthur Pendragon? Tolkien generally avoided that term in his Middle Earth fiction and when he used it, it almost always referred to the warriors of southern Gondor, who were always seen at a bit of a distance. The Rohirrim are not knights; they have a horsey culture but their expressions are heroic, not chivalric. (This is a bit ironic since in his translations of Old English Tolkien was fond of throwing in the word "knight.")

And then we have Nimue of Lond Daer, who is surely an interpretation of the Lady of the Lake from the Arthurian mythos (with whom she shares a name) crossed with Beowulf. She swims under the water and finds a weapon, but uses it herself to slay the threat and is acclaimed as queen in her own right.

On the whole, it is an interesting interpretation of what the periphery of Gondor's knightly culture might look like.
 
gyrovague
Topic Author
Posts: 591
Joined: Tue 28 Apr 2020, 16:52

Re: Ruins of the Lost Realm

Fri 06 May 2022, 19:35


And then we have Nimue of Lond Daer, who is surely an interpretation of the Lady of the Lake from the Arthurian mythos (with whom she shares a name) crossed with Beowulf. She swims under the water and finds a weapon, but uses it herself to slay the threat and is acclaimed as queen in her own right.

On the whole, it is an interesting interpretation of what the periphery of Gondor's knightly culture might look like.
See, I actually liked the Beowulf allusion, largely because it was only an allusion. I also loved that she's named Nimue, without it being the Nimue of Arthurian mythos. (Bernard Cornwell's Nimue is one of my favorite fictional characters.)

Same thing with all those dwarf names, and Gandalf: yes, Tolkien drew those names from Nordic myths, but the characters themselves are different. If Ivoch the Boneless had been a cowardly fisherman it wouldn't have been as jarring, and I would have enjoyed the reference. But a crippled, tactically brilliant warlord riding around in a chariot? Too close.

I will likely be changing some names/details in my own implementation. Fortunately, that's easy to do, right?

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 3 guests