Fourth Age of Middle Earth gaming

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by whswhs

It's also clear that Galadriel had a large measure of sympathy for the Dwarves, and not only for Gimli.

Bill Stoddard

Right.


I'm inclined to agree with Jason that the feud among some Elves and some Dwarves is just that, a feud.
IMO, it has roots in specific historical events that concern certain nations or kinds of Elves and Dwarves; it doesn't represent anything universal in the nature of either race.



The 'different body language' idea is cool, though, and I might use it in some other setting.

[whswhs]

On another topic, I wanted to mentioned that I was looking through Fonstad's atlas, and I noted that she says that the Sea of Nurnen, which had no outlets, was salt and bitter, presumably like the Caspian Sea; but that the soil around it, formed by weathering of volcanic rock, would have been highly fertile. She suggests that it was a region of dryland farming, which would have been rather different from the agriculture of the highly fertile Shire.

Bill Stoddard

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by combatmedic

Right.


I'm inclined to agree with Jason that the feud among some Elves and some Dwarves is just that, a feud.
IMO, it has roots in specific historical events that concern certain nations or kinds of Elves and Dwarves; it doesn't represent anything universal in the nature of either race.

There might be a limited amount of metaphysical basis. The Dwarves are, after all, the 'stepsiblings' of Elves and Men. Elves and Men are the direct creations of God, whereas God gave life to the Dwarves but otherwise left Aule's vision intact. That does make for a certain difference in outlook and nature that might make relations more easily 'combustible'.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

There might be a limited amount of metaphysical basis. The Dwarves are, after all, the 'stepsiblings' of Elves and Men. Elves and Men are the direct creations of God, whereas God gave life to the Dwarves but otherwise left Aule's vision intact. That does make for a certain difference in outlook and nature that might make relations more easily 'combustible'.

On the other hand, the Noldor seem often to have been in sympathy with the dwarves, perhaps because the Noldor had a similar attunement to making and crafting. Both Galadriel and Celebrimbor had close ties to Khazad-dum.

Bill Stoddard

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by whswhs

On the other hand, the Noldor seem often to have been in sympathy with the dwarves, perhaps because the Noldor had a similar attunement to making and crafting. Both Galadriel and Celebrimbor had close ties to Khazad-dum.

Bill Stoddard

More specifically, both were tied to Aule, the Dwarves by the fact he was their 'creator' (subject to the ultimate source of their being in God), and the Noldor in that they were Aule's favorites, and revered him in especial (along with the general Elvish reverence for Elbereth) among the Valar.

[Johnny1A.2]

On the subject of gaming in the Fourth Age, or at least in the post-War of the RIng period, it seems to me that there is at least one period where the imagination is free to roam over enormous expanses.

At some point between the fall of Sauron and the beginning of recorded history, something happened that transformed the physical world, drowned Gondor and Mordor under the Mediterranean, made the other changes that turned the world of ME into the world we know.

JRRT never told us anything about this time, leaving it almost wide open for GM interpretation. It presumably came at, or close to, the turning of an Age, it might have been the event that heralded the Fifth Age.

(JRRT once said in a letter that he thinks we are at least in the Fifth Age now, and more likely by now in the Sixth. So if we assume that the Resurrection of Christ marks the beginning of our current Age, the transformation of ME into our world (physically speaking) might likely mark the 4E/5E transition.)

[combatmedic]

Originally Posted by Johnny1A.2

On the subject of gaming in the Fourth Age, or at least in the post-War of the RIng period, it seems to me that there is at least one period where the imagination is free to roam over enormous expanses.

At some point between the fall of Sauron and the beginning of recorded history, something happened that transformed the physical world, drowned Gondor and Mordor under the Mediterranean, made the other changes that turned the world of ME into the world we know.

JRRT never told us anything about this time, leaving it almost wide open for GM interpretation. It presumably came at, or close to, the turning of an Age, it might have been the event that heralded the Fifth Age.

(JRRT once said in a letter that he thinks we are at least in the Fifth Age now, and more likely by now in the Sixth. So if we assume that the Resurrection of Christ marks the beginning of our current Age, the transformation of ME into our world (physically speaking) might likely mark the 4E/5E transition.)

I imagine that turning of the ages as a process by which the poetically imagined history of Middle Earth in the Fourth Age merges with the known history of our world, and also with the scientifically imagined prehistory.
If I hopped in a time machine and set it for X number of millennia in the past, I’d never find Gondor or Mordor under what’s now the Mediterranean. But if my machine let me travel though the collective unconscious, into stories, I could find those realms in that part of the world.


We could perhaps draw a connection between the Biblical Great Deluge, the filling of the Med, and the assumed drowning of the former lands of Gondor and Mordor. Myth and a scientific understanding of prehistory may touch and join in such events.

I’m not certain that I’ve explained all this well enough. Let me know if any of you are confused, guys.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by combatmedic

I’m not certain that I’ve explained all this well enough. Let me know if any of you are confused, guys.

Makes perfectly good sense. I don't agree, mind you. I think JRRT felt the need to vaguely graft Middle-Earth into prehistory as a consequence of the logic of his framing narrative, and his attachment to making things earth-like. Sometimes he got too stuck on such pieces of logic, e.g., the Glorfindel problem.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Makes perfectly good sense. I don't agree, mind you. I think JRRT felt the need to vaguely graft Middle-Earth into prehistory as a consequence of the logic of his framing narrative, and his attachment to making things earth-like. Sometimes he got too stuck on such pieces of logic, e.g., the Glorfindel problem.

I've read some of the narratives he wrote as straight myth or epic, especially those that were compiled into the Silmarillion, and I find them less compelling than the hobbit novels, which had a stronger sense of mundane reality. So I'm not sure I'd count this as a fault.

Bill Stoddard

[combatmedic]

I had a longer conversation with my wife and another of the Thieves World campaign players about this before the game tonight.

I think we have multiple pasts, which are all valid and often overlapping but not necessarily congruent with one another. These include:

• the past of the mythic imagination. Of course, myths vary, so it's not a single past. Unless you believe in the monomyth or a unifying central myth.
  
• the past of the historians' imagination, the domain of the written word and scholarship. Again, it’s more of a realm than a single history.
  
• the past as imagined by the natural scientists, which only recently branched off to become its own past and which run deep into prehistory.

Within each of those fields; mythic, historical, and scientific, there are competing/varying versions of what came before the present day. All of them may overlap and intersect in various ways.

Middle Earth seems to me to have the strongest connection with the first of the three realms of our past and the weakest with the third, while it has a second (historical) past of its own that is connected with our history by echoes and similarities rather than direct links.

Note that 'scientific' is not the same as 'the non-human or pre-human natural world.' Thus, ME also being an earlier incarnation of ‘the Old World’ doesn’t necessarily imply its strong connection to the prehistoric past as imagined by 20th century scientists.