Gloranthan
Member
- Joined
- Dec 4, 2022
- Messages
- 163
I recently read a post (I've since lost it) about Sauron vs. Superman. The author points out that the types of 'power' and the logic of their universes are very different. A great deal of Sauron's power is that his overwhelming spirit will cow people and keep them from even trying to fight them, even though he can be hurt by mortals (and has been). In DC comics, on the other hand, people who can 'cause fear' have quantifiable super-powers which can be overcome, it's not something inherent to the fabric of the world that bends others to their will. Superman's physical feats are far superior to anything done in Middle-Earth, excepting Eru himself (Superman has created entire planets with life...in a few minutes), and fought dark gods without flinching. He doesn't become weak in the knees at the presence of Darkseid but steps right up to him and starts making demands. The logic of the universes and characters are simply too different to compare them in a meaningful way.
This point is also quite applicable to the difference between the nature of role-playing games and the fiction of Tolkien. Game masters may choose to keep certain things vague and up to GM fiat, trying to replicate the 'feel' of Middle-Earth Powers and magic but this is in great tension with the nature of a game, as a game, which wants to have quantifiable mechanical relations to determine how things go whenever there is doubt. AD&D is famous for its Deities and Demigods book where you get the monster statistics for a broad variety of mythical and religious figures. MERP did the same thing, in several supplements we get statistics for the ancient elves, Sauron, Balrogs, etc. and they essentially have ridiculously high stats and amazing physical/supernatural powers, most of which are not obvious at all from the books or even the films. These book are silly if you want to take them literally, treating the abstract and qualitative strengths of Feanor and Gothmog as though they were comic book super-powers and artillery spells.
There is always the option, often wise, of simply not introducing such characters or allowing players to fight them. But, invariably, some plot or character agency will lead into a situation where someone wants to fight Sauron in his tower, and has amassed ridiculous in-game spells and so forth to do so. The game master could simply say, "Sauron breaks your mind, now you're his slave" but a lot of players won't like that. If Sauron breaks them, they want Sauron to roll on a table to do it. But if that happens it then becomes possible for Sauron to critically fail and get decapitated by a critical success, banishing him to be a formless spirit. Tolkien would probably think that this sort of thing was just impossible - Aragorn could not have just walked up to Sauron and stabbed him to death, even if he had a cool magic sword. Because attribute creep from levels isn't a thing on the Tolkien fiction, and influence in his world has more to do with character and soul-fire than with how many cars you can bench-press or what kind of lasers your wizard can shoot.
Which role-playing game do you think has dealt the best with this issue, and how would you deal with it? In my Burning Wheel game based in the Sea of Rhun I deliberately went for a sword & sorcery angle - I kept much of the content of Middle-Earth the same but accepted that the tone and quality would be different, and that was okay. In that game it would be (theoretically - very theoretically) have been possible for a sufficiently powerful player character to have gone up to Durin's Bane and bashed him apart with an Artha-fueled mace. So, basically, I just accepted that RPGs and quantitative mechanics don't work the same way authorial fiat do. But I know some people who want a more 'authentic' Middle-Earth would find it quite unsatisfying to hear that the Witch-King went down to an ambush and a stabbing fest.
Perhaps a more 'narrative' RPG could handle these issues with more subtlety, but those rely even more on the players and game master being on the same page, and if players 'want' to kill Sauron they will invent a rationalization as to why it's possible.
I don't mean to suggest that the characters in Tolkien's world are unkillable by humans if they're powerful, but the circumstances in which they could be defeated would be much more determined by spiritual conflict, the right timing, and the ever-appreciated assistance of Illuvitar.
Similar issues exist in war gaming.
This point is also quite applicable to the difference between the nature of role-playing games and the fiction of Tolkien. Game masters may choose to keep certain things vague and up to GM fiat, trying to replicate the 'feel' of Middle-Earth Powers and magic but this is in great tension with the nature of a game, as a game, which wants to have quantifiable mechanical relations to determine how things go whenever there is doubt. AD&D is famous for its Deities and Demigods book where you get the monster statistics for a broad variety of mythical and religious figures. MERP did the same thing, in several supplements we get statistics for the ancient elves, Sauron, Balrogs, etc. and they essentially have ridiculously high stats and amazing physical/supernatural powers, most of which are not obvious at all from the books or even the films. These book are silly if you want to take them literally, treating the abstract and qualitative strengths of Feanor and Gothmog as though they were comic book super-powers and artillery spells.
There is always the option, often wise, of simply not introducing such characters or allowing players to fight them. But, invariably, some plot or character agency will lead into a situation where someone wants to fight Sauron in his tower, and has amassed ridiculous in-game spells and so forth to do so. The game master could simply say, "Sauron breaks your mind, now you're his slave" but a lot of players won't like that. If Sauron breaks them, they want Sauron to roll on a table to do it. But if that happens it then becomes possible for Sauron to critically fail and get decapitated by a critical success, banishing him to be a formless spirit. Tolkien would probably think that this sort of thing was just impossible - Aragorn could not have just walked up to Sauron and stabbed him to death, even if he had a cool magic sword. Because attribute creep from levels isn't a thing on the Tolkien fiction, and influence in his world has more to do with character and soul-fire than with how many cars you can bench-press or what kind of lasers your wizard can shoot.
Which role-playing game do you think has dealt the best with this issue, and how would you deal with it? In my Burning Wheel game based in the Sea of Rhun I deliberately went for a sword & sorcery angle - I kept much of the content of Middle-Earth the same but accepted that the tone and quality would be different, and that was okay. In that game it would be (theoretically - very theoretically) have been possible for a sufficiently powerful player character to have gone up to Durin's Bane and bashed him apart with an Artha-fueled mace. So, basically, I just accepted that RPGs and quantitative mechanics don't work the same way authorial fiat do. But I know some people who want a more 'authentic' Middle-Earth would find it quite unsatisfying to hear that the Witch-King went down to an ambush and a stabbing fest.
Perhaps a more 'narrative' RPG could handle these issues with more subtlety, but those rely even more on the players and game master being on the same page, and if players 'want' to kill Sauron they will invent a rationalization as to why it's possible.
I don't mean to suggest that the characters in Tolkien's world are unkillable by humans if they're powerful, but the circumstances in which they could be defeated would be much more determined by spiritual conflict, the right timing, and the ever-appreciated assistance of Illuvitar.
Similar issues exist in war gaming.
