Quote from: Exploderwizard on June 14, 2023, 10:42:53 PM

Quote from: jhkim on June 14, 2023, 03:57:55 PM
The bolded claim is completely wrong. Tolkien started creating Middle Earth in 1917 as a project for what he called "The Book of Lost Tales" -- which was two decades before he even started the plotline for The Lord of the Rings in 1937. During those two decades, he created vast hoards of unpublished notes and stories about Middle Earth, not to mention writing and publishing The Hobbit -- all long before he had decided on the plot for The Lord of the Rings.

His approach is why his work is a model for role-players. He created the world first, and then created stories to go in it.

What does the Book of Lost Tales contain? Stories. The world was designed to tell stories, not for active players to explore and create their own stories. Middle Earth works great for a story game where a particular plotline is developed and the players play through it. This is an entirely different thing from open sandbox play. Tolkien put a lot of effort and love into the setting as a rich backdrop to stories he wanted to tell.

Tolkien created the world first, and didn't know what stories he would tell in that world. At the time when he created it in 1917, he had an idea of "The Book of Lost Tales" as a title -- but that's it. The title wasn't used until after his death decades later, his son tried to edit together a bunch of his notes into a publication.

How Tolkien worked was to make copious notes about the world, and then later come up with ideas for characters, and then stories with those characters. This isn't exactly like an RPG world, but it was an important predecessor. I'd assert that it's different than a case where the author first has the idea for a story, and then comes up with a world for that specific story.

The Bronte sister's creation of Gondal is another example, and possibly better because it was developed inherently to be collaborative (among the three sisters).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gondal_(fictional_country)

How does MERP compare to The One Ring 2e?

Quote from: Monero on June 15, 2023, 03:48:17 PM
How does MERP compare to The One Ring 2e?

It depends on what you want out of your Middle Earth experience.  If you want free-wheeling, deadly action with lots of freedom to explore different times and places in Middle Earth but with fairly loose approaches to canon, then go for MERP.  If you want a game that slavishly tries to copy the books and offers little player agency while masquerading as a story/roleplaying game when it's really a glorified roll-playing game, then go for TOR 2e.  I will say the production values of TOR 2e are pretty high, but we loathed the intrusive mechanics, about 75% of which could be jettisoned and you'd have a better game.  Especially galling are the travel and audience rules where they just have you roll a bunch of dice to predetermine outcomes that should simply be roleplayed.  MERP, on the other hand, doesn't do much of anything with roleplaying mechanics, but does require lots of charts and bookkeeping.  It's easy enough once you learn the system, but newbies often find it daunting.

Quote from: Persimmon on June 16, 2023, 05:07:21 AM

Quote from: Monero on June 15, 2023, 03:48:17 PM
How does MERP compare to The One Ring 2e?

It depends on what you want out of your Middle Earth experience.  If you want free-wheeling, deadly action with lots of freedom to explore different times and places in Middle Earth but with fairly loose approaches to canon, then go for MERP.  If you want a game that slavishly tries to copy the books and offers little player agency while masquerading as a story/roleplaying game when it's really a glorified roll-playing game, then go for TOR 2e.  I will say the production values of TOR 2e are pretty high, but we loathed the intrusive mechanics, about 75% of which could be jettisoned and you'd have a better game.  Especially galling are the travel and audience rules where they just have you roll a bunch of dice to predetermine outcomes that should simply be roleplayed.  MERP, on the other hand, doesn't do much of anything with roleplaying mechanics, but does require lots of charts and bookkeeping.  It's easy enough once you learn the system, but newbies often find it daunting.

Said it better than I could have...TOR is a great looking game that isn't any fun to play. I got rid of all my stuff last year, MERP is still on the shelf.