[Lord of the Rings] Oh, CODA!?!
Callan S.:
I'd like to outline a cognitive element to this. I'll quote an author I like
Quote
I’ve spilled more than a few gallons of electronic ink over the years suggesting that much of fantasy’s appeal lies in the way provides readers the kinds of worlds that humans are prone to cook up in the absence of science, worlds adapted to our psychology, rather than vice versa. Scriptural worlds.
Chew that over a second time - worlds that are adapted to our psychology, not the other way around. Like if you think a small rock would fall slower than a watermelon, then in your fantasy world that is how you depict it/it is the case, because your fantasy world is adapted to the quirks of your psychology. That fantasy world is actually an expression of those quirks.
That's story logic. Scriptural worlds.
I'd almost call it the very foundation of simulationism.
The thing with rules - rules that don't magically change at someones whim - is that they do not adapt to your psychology. Actually, you have to adapt your psychology to the rules (side note: When someones fiddling around with the rules every five seconds, granted this isn't adapting to rules, it's adapting to someone elses whim).
So there is always going to be a clash if you expect a world that adapts to your psychology, but your using rules. Thus the good old GM advice where if the rules don't make 'good story', GM Herbie throws 'em out!
Side note: I'm pretty much describing fiction first Vs rules first as well, here.
Gregor Hutton:
Hello Again
Conor and I were playing again at the weekend and he's been re-reading the book closely again since the last game (in light of this thread). My Dunedain has now been trying to find missing children, taken by the Men of the Ettenmoors I think, from a nearby village.
We are still bashing our heads against the rules as written in the book and we've made some judgement calls on healing, but we had a stroke of luck. Alan was watching us play and wondered what we were doing. When we said we were playing the CODA version he kindly pointed us to John Kim's site. I wish we'd seen that before playing! John's review chimes very closely with our experience of the book, and is a good summary of how we've found it.
Anyway, I'd rather the thread didn't fall into a debate over the demise of Boromir. And given John's review and our experience of the rules so far I'm not sure where we take it next. We're wandering into the territory of making up rulings as we go along, or trying to incorporate the extensive errata.
I'll hopefully be able to update this thread later this week with the AP from the game on Sunday.
Gregor Hutton:
As a follow-up Steve has now created his Noldor Elf. So we have some magic in the game and another arrogant holier-than-thou character. Character creation was a swamp again, but we were able to get through it.
I really liked that Steve's elf (from Lorien) is looking for his lost sister, much as the villagers are looking for their lost children. It gave a resonant theme to play.
Anyway, the magic Steve's elf has access to has been interesting. I think Steve has been wearied every time he's cast a spell in game. He's got three spells, two of which he's used (Healing and some sort of Inimidate/Impress thing) and one that we haven't seen yet but want to... (Flame of Arnor? a sort of flaming howitzer of death with a range of 200 feet).
Magical healing is really strong and on tap (Steve just has to rest for an hour to get un-wearied) and it's at complete odds with our attempts at either natural or skill-aided healing, which are poor and hard to achieve.
More later on when I've had time to compose something. Steve might drop in with his thoughts too. He's got the book now to mull over magic.
Anders Gabrielsson:
On the question of healing: are there any passages in the book about people recovering from non-supernatural injuries? There's Frodo at Rivendell after he's been stabbed by the Nazgul and exposed to their black breath, and Frodo and Sam after they get back from Mordor which isn't so much about injuries... anything else?
I'm asking because my impression (coloured by the movies and based on reading the books many, many years ago) is that when peole get hurt they spend weeks upon weeks resting to get better, but I'm not sure if that's accurate.
pawsplay:
Quote from: Gregor Hutton on February 17, 2011, 11:52:06 AM
I guess this game is consigned to the dustbin of history now, but clearly it can't have been playtested before publishing. Some of the stuff was such a roadblock that it must have been handwaved by the GM in any playtesting that did go on.
After they told Steve Long that they weren't able to secure permission to use any of the Simarillion material or any of the old MERP material (now owned by the Tolkien estate), the main book was pretty much finished with bitter tears.
Character creation shows that they clearly made heavy revisions, and they failed to reconcile all the changes to the system.
Loremasters are like Magicians who hate themselves. This is one of those games that says, "We don't really care about balance. So kiss our ass."
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