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Tolkien's Rings of Power for Fantasy Hero


fdw3773

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Has anyone tried converting the Rings of Power depicted in J.R.R. Tolkien's work (Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, etc.) to Fantasy Hero? I read the trilogy, The Hobbit, and The Silmarillion years ago and the description of what kind of abilities each possessed were difficult to script out due to the vagueness of actual abilities in the text.

 

A LoTR wiki does go into detail about the three Elven rings and little bit about the Dwarven rings. We know the One Ring gives its bearer invisibility and corrupts the user over time but since only Sauron knew how to wield its power that was briefly portrayed in the beginning of the Fellowship of the Ring film, it's kind of unclear of what the full extent of its abilities are.

 

Your thoughts?

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2 hours ago, Greywind said:

Was that Sauron using the power of the ring, or was that Sauron exercising his might as one of the Maia? Keep in mind, Sauron imbued the One Ring with his own life force.

My interpretation of that scene from the beginning of the Fellowship of the Ring film was that Sauron was using the power of the One Ring to make his mace strikes more devastating, impacting multiple targets at once per strike with a death blow. The One Ring glowed before each strike, implying that it was powering up Sauron before the mace strike, sort of like how Green Lantern's power ring glows before he delivers a massive attack in the comics. 

 

Like I said, it's kind of difficult to convert and script out the One Ring and the others for Fantasy Hero, whereas converting things like Perseus's winged sandals and cap of invisibility from Greek mythology were pretty self-explanatory from the story and easy to adapt.

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56 minutes ago, fdw3773 said:

My interpretation of that scene from the beginning of the Fellowship of the Ring film was that Sauron was using the power of the One Ring to make his mace strikes more devastating, impacting multiple targets at once per strike with a death blow. The One Ring glowed before each strike, implying that it was powering up Sauron before the mace strike, sort of like how Green Lantern's power ring glows before he delivers a massive attack in the comics. 

 

Like I said, it's kind of difficult to convert and script out the One Ring and the others for Fantasy Hero, whereas converting things like Perseus's winged sandals and cap of invisibility from Greek mythology were pretty self-explanatory from the story and easy to adapt.

 

The tricky part of that scenario is, the power of the One Ring is Sauron's power. He just put part of it in the One to enable him to control the other Rings of Power. If he never made the Ring that fight would probably have played out the same way. And of course, unlike the movie, the book doesn't describe any mechanism for the Ring's function.

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Peter Jackson said repeatedly in interviews that he really just did not like magic so his portrayals in the films is very limited and fairly mundane.

 

We only had a few very limited accounts of what the other rings did; Gandalf immune to the Balrog's fire, Elrond (I think?) Flooding the Nazgul at the ford, killing their horses.

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The One Ring was designed to make it easier for its wearer to dominate others, particularly those of weak mental fortitude or those easily corrupted. Sauron was all about domination and control, and the One Ring reflected this. He knew he would never be able to subdue and control his most hated enemy, the elves, through military action or the sheer power of his will alone, so he tricked them into crafting the means by which he could: the rings of power. His greatest fear in the Third Age was that his ring would find its way into the hands of someone who could use it against him; an elf lord, a descendant of the Kings of Westernesse, or another maia. They would have the means to bend Sauron's armies to their will rather than his, and he would be supplanted as the "lord of the rings" (and all of Middle-Earth as a result).

 

In terms of FRPG "powers", I would say it grants Invisibility with a very slow Transform Self into Wraith side effect, and a small Cumulative Mind Control with a massive Area of Effect that can only be unlocked by someone with a massively high EGO and PRE (and the Endurance to keep it going long-term).

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8 hours ago, Christopher R Taylor said:

Peter Jackson said repeatedly in interviews that he really just did not like magic so his portrayals in the films is very limited and fairly mundane.

 

We only had a few very limited accounts of what the other rings did; Gandalf immune to the Balrog's fire, Elrond (I think?) Flooding the Nazgul at the ford, killing their horses.

 

Jackson hardly needed to do anything to achieve that;  Tolkien used *very little* overt magic.  Even in the Silmarillion, at least past the point of the raising of the towers of the sun and moon, or perhaps the early days of the Two Trees.  

 

The biggest power of the Three was, let's call it stability.  AoE Radius (huge)...or MegaArea perhaps.  But applying that to...what, exactly?  Perhaps a Mind Control of a "Keep Out!!" towards evil critters, perhaps a Danger Sense over a similar area, responding vaguely to threats strong enough to shake off the mind control.  I can express it like that, but don't ask me to quantify them...they're plot devices, nothing more, and as such, unquantifiable.

 

The One Rihg...in Hero terms, I suppose you could say it was rooted in Sauron's mind control...and added Uncontrolled to it, so that Sauron didn't need to do anything.  The strongest tie was to the lesser rings...perhaps a Mental Transform of relatively low power but *insanely long* fade rate, on a trigger of "when the other person uses his ring."

EDIT:  that also suggests Mind Link (ringbearers), and the transform or mind control gets full IPE when Sauron helped to make the rings.  (The Elven rings weren't touched by Sauron, so they didn't get that...and the Elves could then block Sauron's influence.)

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And remeber the Lesser Rings, the Elven smiths' "essays in the craft". They are even more vaguely defined than the Great Rings, except that they're... lesser. I don't think anyone knows how many that were made or what their powers were. But for gaming purposes, they would be more easily handled, to be sure.

 

Following Gandalf's investigations into Bilbo's and Frodo's ring, invisibility and longevity, at least, does seem within scope.

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Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them,
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

 

Sauron would know where the bearers of the other rings were.

The Nine became the Nazghul.

The Dwarf-lords became more greedy.

Sauron played no direct part in the forging of the Three, if I recall rightly. The Elves hid them away out of fear.

 

Quote

The Ring's primary power was control of the other Rings of Power and domination of the wills of their users.[T 3] The Ring also conferred power to dominate the wills of other beings whether they were wearing Rings or not—but only in proportion to the user's native capacity. In the same way, it amplified any inherent power its owner possessed.[T 3]

A mortal .. who keeps one of the Great Rings, does not die, but he does not grow or obtain more life, he merely continues, until at last every minute is a weariness. And if he often uses the Ring to make himself invisible, he fades: he becomes in the end invisible permanently, and walks in the twilight under the eye of the dark power that rules the Rings.

J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring[T 1]

A mortal wearing the Ring became effectively invisible except to those able to perceive the non-physical world, with only a thin, shaky shadow discernible in the brightest sunlight.[T 3] All the same, when Sam wore the ring on the edge of Mordor, "he did not feel invisible at all, but horribly and uniquely visible; and he knew that somewhere an Eye was searching for him".[T 15] Sam was able to understand the Black Speech of Orcs in Mordor during his brief possession of the One Ring.[T 18]

The Ring extended the life of a mortal possessor indefinitely, preventing natural aging. Gandalf explained that it did not grant new life, but that the possessor merely continued until life became unbearably wearisome.[T 1] The Ring did not protect its bearer from destruction; Gollum perished in the Crack of Doom,[T 19] and Sauron's body was destroyed in the downfall of Númenor. Like the Nine Rings, the One Ring physically corrupted mortals who wore it, eventually transforming them into wraiths. Hobbits were more resistant to this than Men: Gollum, who possessed the ring for 500 years, did not become wraith-like because he rarely wore the Ring.[T 1] Except for Tom Bombadil, nobody seemed to be immune to the corrupting effects of the One Ring, even powerful beings like Gandalf and Galadriel, who refused to wield it out of the knowledge that they would become like Sauron himself.[T 5]

Within the land of Mordor where it was forged, the Ring's power increased so significantly that even without wearing it the bearer could draw upon it, and could acquire an aura of terrible power. When Sam encountered an Orc in the Tower of Cirith Ungol while holding the Ring, he appeared to the terrified Orc as a powerful warrior cloaked in shadow "[holding] some nameless menace of power and doom".[T 16] Similarly at Mount Doom, when Frodo and Sam were attacked by Gollum, Frodo grabbed the Ring and appeared as "a figure robed in white... [that] held a wheel of fire". Frodo told Gollum "in a commanding voice" that "If you touch me ever again, you shall be cast yourself into the Fire of Doom", a prophecy soon fulfilled.[T 17]

As the Ring contained much of Sauron's power, it was endowed with a malevolent agency. While separated from Sauron, the Ring strove to return to him by manipulating its bearer to claim ownership of it, or by abandoning its bearer.[T 20]

To master the Ring's capabilities, a Ring bearer would need a well-trained mind, a strong will, and great native power. Those with weaker minds, such as hobbits and lesser Men, would gain little from the Ring, let alone realize its full potential. Even for one with the necessary strength, it would have taken time to master the Ring's power sufficiently to overthrow Sauron.[T 20]

The Ring did not render its bearer omnipotent. Three times Sauron suffered military defeat while bearing the Ring, first by Gil-galad in the War of Sauron and the Elves, then by Ar-Pharazôn when Númenórean power so overawed his armies that they deserted him, and at the end of the Second Age with his personal defeat by Gil-galad and Elendil.[T 2] Tolkien indicates in a speech by Elrond that such a defeat would not have been possible in the waning years of the Third Age, when the strength of the free peoples was greatly diminished. There were no remaining heroes of the stature of Gil-galad, Elendil, or Isildur; the strength of the Elves was fading and they were departing to the Blessed Realm; and the Númenórean kingdoms had either declined or been destroyed, and had few allies.[T 5]

 

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Greywind put it quite succinctly. The rings of power amplify the intrinsic nature/character of the wearers. Dwarves only want to mine for treasure and build great mountain kingdoms, so it turned out there was little there for Sauron to exploit through his One Ring. Men lust for power and immortality, and that is a very easy thing for Sauron to take advantage of. And while it's true that Sauron would not have been able to "touch" the Elves through their rings, he would no doubt have been able to discern the locations of those rings through the One Ring, and would have spent considerable and terrifying effort to obtain them (and use them against the Elves in some fashion).

 

I would say that the One Ring has the ability to Sense the other rings of power over any distance, but this "Sense Rings of Power" is not a common ability of all rings of power, just the One. I would also say that the One Ring has the ability to extinguish the powers of the other rings, excluding the Elven rings of course. One has to imagine it was the threat of this that kept the Ringwraiths loyal to a large degree. I suppose you could write that up as some kind of Transform, but for simplicity's sake I wouldn't bother since the One Ring is essentially just a Plot Device artifact anyway.

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