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Worlds of Design: Reassessing Tolkien’s Influence
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<blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9206633" data-attributes="member: 6790260"><p>There are two ways (that come to mind, anyway) that a work's influence can be bad. One is to insert unneeded flaws deep into the foundations of something, so that it becomes difficult to fix those flaws later. I'm specifically thinking of the...shall we say, racially-insensitive ways that Tolkien describes some orcs and "Southron" humans. Ironically, his work isn't all <em>that</em> bad about this even by today's standards, but it really did lead to an awful lot of racist tropes getting woven into orcs as an archetype, some of which we're still fighting to this day.</p><p></p><p>The other, less overtly harmful but in some ways more insidious, is that it can close minds. I don't mean in the sense of becoming bigoted or whatever; I mean this in the sense that people will outright reject anything that doesn't fit the mold...or at least their idea of the mold. People build up really really specific, and really limiting, ideas of what is <em>allowed</em> to be part of the genre. This directly leads to something I've lamented many times over the years on this forum: "We have the freedom to create ANY world we imagine--so of course every world we imagine is <em>exactly the gorram same</em>. How stultifyingly dull our hobby becomes!"</p><p></p><p>There's nothing wrong with having useful touchstones. "Bad" influence, however, <em>closes off</em> interesting new developments, rather than supporting useful ones. And there is absolutely a metric crapton of judgment and opposition to things solely because they aren't familiar, largely meaning because they weren't present in Lord of the Rings.</p><p></p><p></p><p>In my current campaign, I generally avoid most of it, other than the the elf and dwarf stuff, which I kept because I just like Tolkien-style elves and dwarves (though I invented new explanations for the nature of Tolkien-style elves). Well, sort of; religion is not so distant, but it is very explicitly left as an open question and there has only been one, <em>very</em> limited intervention of any such being (specifically, altered perceptions and a few lines spoken to just one person, not to the whole group, with no actual physical appearance at any point.) There <em>is</em> organized religion...but there are multiple religions, and all of them are represented by people or non-divinity celestial/infernal beings.</p><p></p><p>It's an Arabian Nights style setting, so magic items and magic generally are pretty common, and money and power and diplomacy matter a lot more than they do in Tolkien's work. The history of the world is a little slower than ours, but that's in part because a lot of work went into <em>magic</em> rather than <em>tech</em> as it did IRL. But experimenting with wizard-type magic is incredibly slow and dangerous, and most Waziri (wizards) are <em>incredibly</em> jealous about their discoveries, meaning that a lot of work gets lost before it can be truly understood by the community overall. Other forms of magic aren't really amenable to scientific experimentation, instead being much more about intuition and revelation, which rather slows the advancement process. </p><p></p><p>Further, until about 1600 years ago, humanity/etc. in the local area were mostly <em>enslaved</em> by the Genie-Rajahs, who packed up their stuff and moved to Jinnistan at that time. Going from "mostly slaves and wandering tribes" to "fully-developed civic culture" takes a LONG time, even with being able to colonize the cities the Jinnistani culture left behind, in part because they had to re-develop things like writing and reverse-engineer any technology left behind in order to develop their own industrial base. It's not that there's been a cultural stasis per se, it's that there was an <em>enforced</em> one for centuries to millennia before about 1600 years ago, and humanity has effectively regained a late-medieval/early-renaissance level of technology in about as much time as it took us to recover from the fall of Rome. That, at least to me, seems like an actually reasonable rate of advancement.</p><p></p><p>The party doesn't know about any "dark lord." There might be one, but if there is, the "dark" part is rather more literal, as any such "dark lord" has kept entirely <em>out</em> of the limelight.</p><p></p><p>I dunno if Tolkien really articulated the "group quest" idea. Conan adventured with friends too, even if the books were mostly about him. It's hard to write stories where you only have one character "on camera" most of the time.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="EzekielRaiden, post: 9206633, member: 6790260"] There are two ways (that come to mind, anyway) that a work's influence can be bad. One is to insert unneeded flaws deep into the foundations of something, so that it becomes difficult to fix those flaws later. I'm specifically thinking of the...shall we say, racially-insensitive ways that Tolkien describes some orcs and "Southron" humans. Ironically, his work isn't all [I]that[/I] bad about this even by today's standards, but it really did lead to an awful lot of racist tropes getting woven into orcs as an archetype, some of which we're still fighting to this day. The other, less overtly harmful but in some ways more insidious, is that it can close minds. I don't mean in the sense of becoming bigoted or whatever; I mean this in the sense that people will outright reject anything that doesn't fit the mold...or at least their idea of the mold. People build up really really specific, and really limiting, ideas of what is [I]allowed[/I] to be part of the genre. This directly leads to something I've lamented many times over the years on this forum: "We have the freedom to create ANY world we imagine--so of course every world we imagine is [I]exactly the gorram same[/I]. How stultifyingly dull our hobby becomes!" There's nothing wrong with having useful touchstones. "Bad" influence, however, [I]closes off[/I] interesting new developments, rather than supporting useful ones. And there is absolutely a metric crapton of judgment and opposition to things solely because they aren't familiar, largely meaning because they weren't present in Lord of the Rings. In my current campaign, I generally avoid most of it, other than the the elf and dwarf stuff, which I kept because I just like Tolkien-style elves and dwarves (though I invented new explanations for the nature of Tolkien-style elves). Well, sort of; religion is not so distant, but it is very explicitly left as an open question and there has only been one, [I]very[/I] limited intervention of any such being (specifically, altered perceptions and a few lines spoken to just one person, not to the whole group, with no actual physical appearance at any point.) There [I]is[/I] organized religion...but there are multiple religions, and all of them are represented by people or non-divinity celestial/infernal beings. It's an Arabian Nights style setting, so magic items and magic generally are pretty common, and money and power and diplomacy matter a lot more than they do in Tolkien's work. The history of the world is a little slower than ours, but that's in part because a lot of work went into [I]magic[/I] rather than [I]tech[/I] as it did IRL. But experimenting with wizard-type magic is incredibly slow and dangerous, and most Waziri (wizards) are [I]incredibly[/I] jealous about their discoveries, meaning that a lot of work gets lost before it can be truly understood by the community overall. Other forms of magic aren't really amenable to scientific experimentation, instead being much more about intuition and revelation, which rather slows the advancement process. Further, until about 1600 years ago, humanity/etc. in the local area were mostly [I]enslaved[/I] by the Genie-Rajahs, who packed up their stuff and moved to Jinnistan at that time. Going from "mostly slaves and wandering tribes" to "fully-developed civic culture" takes a LONG time, even with being able to colonize the cities the Jinnistani culture left behind, in part because they had to re-develop things like writing and reverse-engineer any technology left behind in order to develop their own industrial base. It's not that there's been a cultural stasis per se, it's that there was an [I]enforced[/I] one for centuries to millennia before about 1600 years ago, and humanity has effectively regained a late-medieval/early-renaissance level of technology in about as much time as it took us to recover from the fall of Rome. That, at least to me, seems like an actually reasonable rate of advancement. The party doesn't know about any "dark lord." There might be one, but if there is, the "dark" part is rather more literal, as any such "dark lord" has kept entirely [I]out[/I] of the limelight. I dunno if Tolkien really articulated the "group quest" idea. Conan adventured with friends too, even if the books were mostly about him. It's hard to write stories where you only have one character "on camera" most of the time. [/QUOTE]
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