King on Tolkien

[Scottomir]

I came across this passage on Tolkien in Stephen King's On Writing (2001). I wanted to share it with others because I really think it speaks to why many of us love role-playing in Middle-earth...

"Is there any rationale for building entire mansions of words? I think there is... Sometimes it's beautiful and we fall in love with all that story, more than any film or TV program could ever hope to provide. Even after a thousand pages we don't want to leave the world the writer has made for us, or the make-believe people who live there. You wouldn't leave after two thousand pages, if there were two thousand. The Rings trilogy of J.R.R. Tolkien is a perfect example of this. A thousand pages of hobbits hasnt' been enough for three generations of post-World War II fantasy fans; even when you add in that clumsy, galumphing dirigible of an epilogue, The Silmarillion, it hasn't been enough. Hence Terry Brooks, Piers Anthony, Robert Jordan, the questing rabbits of 'Watership Down', and half a hundred others. The writers of these books are creating the hobbits they still love and pine for; they are trying to bring Frodo and Sam back from the Grey Havens because Tolkien is no longer around to do it for them."

And are not we trying to do this, too, when we play our games?

[Owen E Oulton]

Not me. I don't particularly like Tolkein, and am not much interested in Tolkein-derived fantasy. In my gaming, I tend to go for SF, mostly Star Trek (of course!) and Traveller (largely E.E. "Doc" Smith influenced), and in Fantasy I much prefer to look to Robert E. Howard and Fritz Leiber for inspiration, with a dash of Zelazny. If I want epic quest-oriented Fantasy, I go to the source - The Garil Romances and Beowulf.

[REG]

Maybe that's what Tolkien tried to do when he wrote LOTR. Because he was inspired by Beowulf but there isn't enough of those kind of tales to be found. Both he and C.S. Lewis felt the same way what with all of the stories being published in their days.

[Janus]

Tolkien managed to create a world that is ‘real.’ It is the world itself I find fascinating. When we read the LotR we have the clear impression that the world was ‘there’ and not hastily created just before the curtain was raised and the story begun, (and that is actually literally correct, since he laboured for decades in that world before writing the LotR). The same with the characters; they are not props that are there to symbolise a thought or a feeling, but ‘people’ whose got caught in the story.

[ComaBoy]

I think we game in certain settings because we want the story to go on, because they're the places part of us would like to live in or just for the vicarious thrill of not being desk bound cube monkeys . . . er . . . mundane for a while.

[T'lara]

Sorry, Don this post you have made and this thread shows to me the gameline is dead. If you were suppose to merge with Decipher and from this change you have not heard anything... I say Star Trek is dead. Why would anyone want to pay for a site of a dead gameline? $20-25 is more than reasonable but... I personally would be open for a game that is alive than for something like that is a fan-based service for a dead line. If it was active yeah. The fans and employees have been screwed and we are talking about making this a free/member site?
I do not see any perks why I would want to pay anyway. The website had not been updated in forever and I could also put my money into a service that is not updated at all and waste $20-25 bucks. This is not looking good. I am sorry Don has lost $8000 out of his pocket but... it does not boude well as a good sign to me.

I hate to be Devil's Advocate but you have to look at this from this point too.

[REG]

???

(Psst! Wrong thread, dude or dudette.)