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We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs


Chris-M

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Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

 

... a D20 High Fantasy setting based on African legends and history called Nyambe. It has some interesting stuff although the way they've turned various African Legends into Elves' date=' Dwarves etc is a bit awkward.[/quote']

 

Sounds like the "square peg, round hole" problem. :D I guess they solved the problem of fitting the setting into Dee&Dee by filing off the peg's corners.

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Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

 

Yes' date=' well - we can't all get our inspirations from drugs like Mr Moorcock :)[/quote']

 

Not just drugs - also sex and rock 'n roll. :)

 

While I like Moorcock's work (and over the last 10 years, he's actually become a fine writer) I can never take criticisms of a more popular, influential artist by another artist entirely seriously.

 

cheers, Mark

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Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

 

 

Thanks for the link Gojira, but I've already been there and read that. It's one of my favourite sites and it's where I got that infobit. It's also where I found out Barak from "The Belgariad" and "The Mallorean" is thought of as a rapist.

 

I also have "Sages and Swords" and "Lords of Swords".

 

I'm an S&S geek - so sue me :D

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Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

 

For some inexplicable reason I took a look at the online SRD. It got me thinking: if you were to strip out the traditional demi-humans and orcs, and ran a "human's only game," you could have some fun the "dungeons and dragons genre" of play. The system and style it engenders do allow for a certain high-falutin romantic bombast that could be a kick on occasion. And some of their pregen settings, without the demi-humans, would be well and truly unique (Ravenloft, Planescape, Spelljammer).

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Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

 

There's no need for an "African"-styled campaign to be "spear and sorcery". If you visit the African rooms of the British Museum' date=' there are plenty of swords there and some really wonderful multi-bladed throwing knives.[/quote']

 

True enough. Africa has seen a whole bunch of interesting weapons, I believe that the cwellan from the Symphony of the Ages may be based on an African weapon, (it's a sort of shuriken firing crossbow).

 

It's just that the spear is associated with African tribal warriors and I quite liked the name.

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Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

 

Not just drugs - also sex and rock 'n roll. :)

 

While I like Moorcock's work (and over the last 10 years, he's actually become a fine writer) I can never take criticisms of a more popular, influential artist by another artist entirely seriously.

 

cheers, Mark

 

There are also time period differences - applying more modern sensibilities to older ones. Especially in this case where there was a deliberate mythic style adopted making it even less "modern".

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Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

 

It would be quite interesting as a sort of thought experiment to imagine what fantasy would be like if Tolkien had drawn upon a different set of myths or if some other book had spawned the genre of fantasy.

 

If he'd used the Greek myths for example then the standard Fantasy races would probably be Centaurs, Satyrs and Nymphs.

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Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

 

There are also time period differences - applying more modern sensibilities to older ones. Especially in this case where there was a deliberate mythic style adopted making it even less "modern".

 

Sure. I haven't read Moorcock's book, but I have read some of his anti-Tolkein rants and one of his major sticking points seems to be that Tolkein's heroes (the hobbits in particular) are "too bourgeois " and that the viewpoint, looking back to a golden age was harmful, or that the language was "mock heroic". All of which are just a way of saying "I personally don't like that style". That's fine, but it's not useful literary criticism. It's particularly unuseful when writers like Dunsany, who share almost exactly the same traits (apart, possibly, for bourgeois heroes :)), are praised.

 

My guess, is that Mooorcock was scarred by being (unflatteringly) compared to Tolkein early in his writing career (the LoTR books hit their peak of popularity at exactly the time Moorcock was trying to launch a career as a novellist) and he's been carrying a grudge ever since.

 

However despite that, he is right in that Tolkein's popularity has distorted the fantasy market and I personally find Tolkein-derived elves, dwarves, etc (plus their spin-offs) pretty damn repetitive these days, both in gaming and fiction.

 

cheers, Mark

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Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

 

Sure. I haven't read Moorcock's book' date=' but I have read some of his anti-Tolkein rants and one of his major sticking points seems to be that Tolkein's heroes (the hobbits in particular) are "too bourgeois " and that the viewpoint, looking back to a golden age was harmful, or that the language was "mock heroic". All of which are just a way of saying "I personally don't like that style". That's fine, but it's not useful literary criticism. It's particularly unuseful when writers like Dunsany, who share almost exactly the same traits (apart, possibly, for bourgeois heroes :)), are praised.[/quote']

 

Its not a criticism unique to Moorcock, though its generally expressed differently, and not with Moorcock's vitriol. Namely, that the shire and hobbits perpetuate the myth of "merry old england," which never existed, and creates an image of a problem free historical period that was actually rife with poverty, suffering, and abuse of the poor. I don't generally find socio-political criticism of speculative fiction very telling as such criticism is almost always the product of narrow, social constructionist perspectives and in Tolkein's case he openly said he was basing it on contemporary Englishmen of a sort he was familiar with.

 

My issue with Tolkein doesn't presume any high-falutin' literary criticism ideas. I find him boring. Or rather, I found the Lord of the Rings boring. The Hobbit I actually enjoyed. Its not just his style, which he made intentionally archaic, but also his sense of pacing, obsession with moody poetry, characterization, and inability to finish up without a gazillion appendices. And I find Frodo annoying, which makes it hard since he's the ring bearer. No one likes a whiny martyr. Sam was a much better hero. I give Tolkein props for detailed world-building and an ability to give a sense of peoples and places - he did have a talent for that - but in the end he's an author I can put down. And that's my bottom line. I can put him down.

 

And, like I said, I find his impact on the hobby detrimental.

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Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

 

Its not a criticism unique to Moorcock' date=' though its generally expressed differently, and not with Moorcock's vitriol. Namely, that the shire and hobbits perpetuate the myth of "merry old england," which never existed, and creates an image of a problem free historical period that was actually rife with poverty, suffering, and abuse of the poor. I don't generally find socio-political criticism of speculative fiction very telling as such criticism is almost always the product of narrow, social constructionist perspectives and in Tolkein's case he openly said he was basing it on contemporary Englishmen of a sort he was familiar with. [/quote']

 

Right. I can - and would - accept the criticism that Tolkein's idealised society is not someone else's idealised society and that medieval England was hardly paradise (though to be fair, I think the Shire is more Regency than Medieval, with its pipes, tankards, handkerchiefs, umbrellas and waistcoats). But as you note, that's hardly literary criticism.

 

My issue with Tolkein doesn't presume any high-falutin' literary criticism ideas. I find him boring. Or rather' date=' I found the Lord of the Rings boring. The Hobbit I actually enjoyed. Its not just his style, which he made intentionally archaic, but also his sense of pacing, obsession with moody poetry, characterization, and inability to finish up without a gazillion appendices. And I find Frodo annoying, which makes it hard since he's the ring bearer. No one likes a whiny martyr. Sam was a much better hero. I give Tolkein props for detailed world-building and an ability to give a sense of peoples and places - he did have a talent for that - but in the end he's an author I can put down. And that's my bottom line. I can put him down.[/quote']

 

Which is were we cross from literary criticism to personal preference. I found the books "can't put down until the last page is read" gripping. Pretty much everything you mention - pacing, poetry, even the appendices - appealed enormously to me. I don't however, mistake that to mean that it's great literature (though I think it is). It just means I like it. The great literature claim, if it is to stand at all, rests on the novelty of the books and the impact they had: like it not, LoTR more or less singlehandedly moved fantasy fiction into the mainstream in a way Howard, Dunsany, Hodgson and Machen had never managed.

 

And' date=' like I said, I find his impact on the hobby detrimental.[/quote']

 

I can't really hold Tolkein accountable for that, though: I blame the lack of imagination of the hacks who followed him and the companies and public who demanded "Another book just like that last book that was successful".

 

cheers, Mark

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Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

 

I think every modern fantasy book, whether written in English or not, will be compared to Tolkein. He just became too prevalent, marketted and talked about for the genre.

Once one publisher starts putting blurbs on books that include statements like "comparable to Tolkein at his best" to promote their new book - every publisher starts doing it.

It becomes a genre publishing meme.

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Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

 

Of course, Tolkien didn't know he was helping to inaugurate a literary genre. Nor did he care. Fantasy novels were very rare in the fifties, especially in Britain - Howard, Leiber, Lovecraft et al wouldn't be rediscovered until the sixties. It was the publisher's idea to break it up into three books. Tolkien intended it as a single volume divided into six books, plus the appendices, etc.

 

I'm sure that the thought that every publisher since would compare every other fantasy story to his work would fill him with horror - not to mention disgust. He didn't write LotR as a "fantasy novel", he write it in the style of a medieval romance, intending it to be a "mythology for England".

 

I've always considered the Shire to be the English countryside - specifically Oxfordshire and Berkshire - during the time of the Great War. Remember, Tolkien served in World War 1 as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers and saw action in the Somme as well as many of his friends killed in action.

 

Also, consider this: Tolkien developed the languages first, then developed his world as a place where they might be spoken.

 

If Tolkien has left us a legacy then it should be this: have a very clear understanding of your world, its history, its people and their cultures before you start. I'm sure he would say in the strongest terms "Don't copy what I've done. Create your own world."

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Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

 

Which is were we cross from literary criticism to personal preference.

 

Something I am completely up front about. :D

 

I can't really hold Tolkein accountable for that, though: I blame the lack of imagination of the hacks who followed him and the companies and public who demanded "Another book just like that last book that was successful".

 

cheers, Mark

 

"Sages, be careful with your words lest your disciples come to drink bitter waters." (Heresy).

 

Of course, you are right, its not his fault, but "badly cloned tolkein" is a - if not the - pervasive genre in the hobby.

 

Dismayingly so.

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Re: We Loves Us Some Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs

 

I've always considered the Shire to be the English countryside - specifically Oxfordshire and Berkshire - during the time of the Great War. Remember' date=' Tolkien served in World War 1 as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers and saw action in the Somme as well as many of his friends killed in action.[/quote']

 

Tolkein himself said that was his inspiration for the Shire, which makes the "merry old england" criticism, well, hard to take.

 

If Tolkien has left us a legacy then it should be this: have a very clear understanding of your world' date=' its history, its people and their cultures before you start. I'm sure he would say in the strongest terms "Don't copy what I've done. Create your own world."[/quote']

 

Word.

 

Even though I don't care for the books I've always given him props on his world and culture building - he constructed an impressive edifice in that regard.

 

And yes, a little originality wouldn't hurt.

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