Historical accuracy and Fantasy gaming

[Fish]

Originally Posted by whswhs

That seems like quite a few who are neither warriors nor battle wizards.

Not enough — in that era, you'd expect a much higher proportion of the world to revolve around food production, but the Fellowship trekked across hundreds of miles of trackless waste and only once, in Hobbiton, did they cross farmland.

[Xenarthral]

Originally Posted by Fish

the Fellowship trekked across hundreds of miles of trackless waste and only once, in Hobbiton, did they cross farmland.

Isn't that a pretty natural result of deciding to travel through the wilderness
rather than populated areas?

And aren't the AD&D Elves influenced by Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword
as well? I seem to recall that he practically spelled out "90% Magic
Resistance against Sleep spells".

[Xenarthral]

That the presence of farmlands is assumed for populated areas?

If you're travelling through the desert there's not much reason to
point out each and every time a visited permanent settlement is
based around a source of water, is there?

[Fish]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

They visited several populated areas that lacked any evidence of the cultivation that would have been necessary to support their populations: Bree, Rivendell, Lorien, Edoras, Isengard in LOTR, the Woodland Realm in The Hobbit.

Yes, the farming is conspicuous by its absense. I suppose I notice stuff like that more since reading "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond.

I mean, the elves baked lembas and the dwarves baked cram. Who grew the grain, milled the wheat?

[zorg]

Originally Posted by Xenarthral

That the presence of farmlands is assumed for populated areas?

If you're travelling through the desert there's not much reason to
point out each and every time a visited permanent settlement is
based around a source of water, is there?

I agree. There was also suspiciously little mention of earthworms, leatherworkers, fletchers, barber-surgeons, tax collectors and whatnot. I'm rather sure this doesn't mean that Middle Earth lacks them.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Fish

Not enough — in that era, you'd expect a much higher proportion of the world to revolve around food production, but the Fellowship trekked across hundreds of miles of trackless waste and only once, in Hobbiton, did they cross farmland.

There was some small amount around Bree too, I think.

It does explain why there were so few towns and cities, though - all that warfare, disease, and ruin had done for all the farmers.

[zorg]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

One tends to see a field of wheat, still more an expanse of farmland adequate to feed a city like Rivendell or Edoras.

Certainly. I don't doubt that Rivendell either has fields (or imports food). That doesn't mean that this will come up in the story.

I imagine they also have some sort of toilets, but they don't come up either. :)

Anyway - LotR is a heroic tale. Grain production simply isn't important in a heroic tale. Why mention it? Tolkien mentions those things which do matter: legends, songs, kings and queens and rings, that sort of stuff.

At least, that's how I understood the books. I'm aware that one may interpret them differently :)

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by zorg

LotR is a heroic tale. Grain production simply isn't important in a heroic tale. Why mention it? Tolkien mentions those things which do matter: legends, songs, kings and queens and rings, that sort of stuff.

When I ran an LotR campaign, at one point, one of the players wanted to know if her character could make pungee sticks as traps for the orcs who were pursuing her. I said, "No, because there is no <fecal material> in Middle-Earth." Of course I didn't mean that literally; I meant that it was not in the decorum of Tolkienian fantasy to mention such things.

Bill Stoddard

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Fish

Not enough — in that era, you'd expect a much higher proportion of the world to revolve around food production, but the Fellowship trekked across hundreds of miles of trackless waste and only once, in Hobbiton, did they cross farmland.

And so? It's an adventure story, focused on a long journey through perilous circumstances and a war. Adventure stories traditionally don't pay a lot of attention to food production. If you read medieval romances, or ancient epics, you may occasionally meet a food producer (the swineherd in the Odyssey, for one), but it will not be the case that nine out of ten characters are food producers, which was certainly in the right neighborhood for most pre-industrial societies' overall populations.

But the statement "LotR is not focused on nonadventuring occupations, and nonadventuring characters are underrepresented in the story" is not equivalent to "nonadventuring characters are absent from LotR." To start with, at least one of the Fellowship, Sam Gamgee, is clearly not a professional adventurer of any sort; he's a gardener, with some skill in cooking. And he's not just a comedic servant, but one of the central heroes of the story. But I suppose in original D&D he'd have been written up as a "first level fighting man" character.

Bill Stoddard

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by whswhs

But I suppose in original D&D he'd have been written up as a "first level fighting man" character.

Now, OTOH, he'd be a Commoner4/Fighter1/Gardener5 at the end of the books and the Gardener Prestige class would pwn.