Talking about how to make sure your RPG Homebrew world is not crap like Rings of Power. In the process I point out something about WHY RoP sucks that I haven't seen anyone else notice yet!
#dnd #ttrpg #OSR #ringsofpower #HouseOfTheDragon

If only I had access to the foundational texts of an entire genre, and a billion dollars to embezzle, I'm pretty sure I could avoid sucking.

Question on your Sword and Caravan supplement comment, is it going to cover a specific period or topic, whereas the original book is a more high level overview? I'm really curious about the setting, but I was trying to see if I could get some players together for L&D/DA first.

Quote from: Zelen on September 16, 2022, 06:55:06 PM
If only I had access to the foundational texts of an entire genre, and a billion dollars to embezzle, I'm pretty sure I could avoid sucking.

Fantastic lol

It's good that Amazon is getting all this backlash, but I doubt they'll learn from it.
Tolkien himself used elements of real-life history and legends, although I've always found Turin to be a bit too much like Sigurd/Siegfried.

Quote from: Zelen on September 16, 2022, 06:55:06 PM
If only I had access to the foundational texts of an entire genre, and a billion dollars to embezzle, I'm pretty sure I could avoid sucking.

Funny thing, they don't have the access to said text, they have access to a few appendicies

Quote from: Zelen on September 16, 2022, 06:55:06 PM
If only I had access to the foundational texts of an entire genre, and a billion dollars to embezzle, I'm pretty sure I could avoid sucking.

They only have access to what is said about the Second Age in LotR Appendices, LotR itself and The Hobbit, nothing else. First they paid $250 millions for this, then they committed 1 billion dollar and five seasons on a bunch of pages.

Considering that the show is going... not well, that House of the Dragon is obliterating it in the ratings and how shitty everything is in RoP, some are thinking that this folly Amazon is stuck with would make more sense as the front for a money laundering scheme. There are already rumbles that heads are rolling at Amazon Studios. I wouldn't be surprised.

The thing is, even with just the appendices, if Amazon had stuck to the lore, they had enough to make a good show.  But they wanted to use Tolkien as a cover for their SJW bullshit, thinking they had a built-in audience that would happily consume whatever they churned out while buying their woke messaging.  But it turned out that the true Tolkien fans are smarter than that and have united in their derision of that dumpster fire of a show.

The rumor going around Twitter is the series started off as an adaptation of BioWare's Dragon Age, but was minimally reworked to fit Middle Earth after securing the rights...

Yeah, I saw that Twitter post too, and with the caveat that I havent played Dragon Age, it seemed plausible. Many execs think fantasy/sci-fi fans have simplistic adolescent tastes, so it's on brand that they would just reskin a script.

Quote from: Palleon on September 17, 2022, 06:28:36 PM
The rumor going around Twitter is the series started off as an adaptation of BioWare's Dragon Age, but was minimally reworked to fit Middle Earth after securing the rights...

Considering, first, that I would not trust anything the twitterati says, the scenes of Khazad'dum DID look very Dragon Age. However, Amazon secured the rights back in 2017. I find it hard to believe that a workable script has been kicking around that long and the show is STILL awful trash that sounds like it was written by a drunk DM the night before a game.

Quote from: Reckall on September 17, 2022, 03:16:47 PM

Quote from: Zelen on September 16, 2022, 06:55:06 PM
If only I had access to the foundational texts of an entire genre, and a billion dollars to embezzle, I'm pretty sure I could avoid sucking.

They only have access to what is said about the Second Age in LotR Appendices, LotR itself and The Hobbit, nothing else. First they paid $250 millions for this, then they committed 1 billion dollar and five seasons on a bunch of pages.

Considering that the show is going... not well, that House of the Dragon is obliterating it in the ratings and how shitty everything is in RoP, some are thinking that this folly Amazon is stuck with would make more sense as the front for a money laundering scheme. There are already rumbles that heads are rolling at Amazon Studios. I wouldn't be surprised.

Always happy to see a shitty megacorp blow hundreds of millions and fail.

Quote from: Effete on September 17, 2022, 07:09:57 PM

Quote from: Palleon on September 17, 2022, 06:28:36 PM
The rumor going around Twitter is the series started off as an adaptation of BioWare's Dragon Age, but was minimally reworked to fit Middle Earth after securing the rights...

Considering, first, that I would not trust anything the twitterati says, the scenes of Khazad'dum DID look very Dragon Age. However, Amazon secured the rights back in 2017. I find it hard to believe that a workable script has been kicking around that long and the show is STILL awful trash that sounds like it was written by a drunk DM the night before a game.

Back in 2017 they were working on two series: Rings of Power was the "family oriented" one, while Conan the Barbarian was the "Sex, blood and violence" one meant to capture the "Game of Thrones" crowd. According to the grapevine, RoP was not woke and the scripts produced for Conan were just amazing. While both were about to be greenlighted, however, the management was metooed and replaced with a certain Jennifer Salke (who was at once glorified by the woke press).

Salke of course ditched the "toxic masculinity" in Conan and cleaned house in RoP, demanding a rewrite with more grrrrl power (i.e. only grrrrl power) - the sources be damned. This led to chaos, as the two showrunners had no experience in show running in the first place. The result is the mess we see, with incomplete scripts (they mention the Silmarils but they don't explain what the Silmarils are), astoundingly bad editing, inconsistent cinematography, incomprehensible plot points (Galadriel decides to swim across a whole ocean - I'm not joking), a glacial pace and collapsing ratings. And I could go on (review manipulation by Amazon, attempts to pay YouTubers, the rights to "Everything Tolkien" being bought by the Embracer Group for one third of the price they had in February...)

So, heads are bound to roll at Amazon. We are all waiting for it. It will be fun.

Edit: Oh, I almost forgot. The writer/show runner for that wonderful Conan series? Ryan Condal? Yup, he was picked up by HBO and is currently running The House of the Dragon. Shit happens.

Quote from: Reckall on September 18, 2022, 11:43:29 AM

Quote from: Effete on September 17, 2022, 07:09:57 PM

Quote from: Palleon on September 17, 2022, 06:28:36 PM
The rumor going around Twitter is the series started off as an adaptation of BioWare's Dragon Age, but was minimally reworked to fit Middle Earth after securing the rights...

Considering, first, that I would not trust anything the twitterati says, the scenes of Khazad'dum DID look very Dragon Age. However, Amazon secured the rights back in 2017. I find it hard to believe that a workable script has been kicking around that long and the show is STILL awful trash that sounds like it was written by a drunk DM the night before a game.

Back in 2017 they were working on two series: Rings of Power was the "family oriented" one, while Conan the Barbarian was the "Sex, blood and violence" one meant to capture the "Game of Thrones" crowd. According to the grapevine, RoP was not woke and the scripts produced for Conan were just amazing. While both were about to be greenlighted, however, the management was metooed and replaced with a certain Jennifer Salke (who was at once glorified by the woke press).

Salke of course ditched the "toxic masculinity" in Conan and cleaned house in RoP, demanding a rewrite with more grrrrl power (i.e. only grrrrl power) - the sources be damned. This led to chaos, as the two showrunners had no experience in show running in the first place. The result is the mess we see, with incomplete scripts (they mention the Silmarils but they don't explain what the Silmarils are), astoundingly bad editing, inconsistent cinematography, incomprehensible plot points (Galadriel decides to swim across a whole ocean - I'm not joking), a glacial pace and collapsing ratings. And I could go on (review manipulation by Amazon, attempts to pay YouTubers, the rights to "Everything Tolkien" being bought by the Embracer Group for one third of the price they had in February...)

So, heads are bound to roll at Amazon. We are all waiting for it. It will be fun.

Edit: Oh, I almost forgot. The writer/show runner for that wonderful Conan series? Ryan Condal? Yup, he was picked up by HBO and is currently running The House of the Dragon. Shit happens.

Damn!  This explains a lot, assuming all the info is accurate.  And what a fucking shame.  Two of my favorite IPs--Tolkien & Conan, both ruined by SJW bullshit and toxic femininity.

I do like Kenneth Hite's approach on this - he usually runs in his home campaign and writes games that are set in an off-brand real world, and he's a history guy from University of Chicago with an edict memory (which he says he's done his best to erase with liquor). So as a result, his games feel sort of real because they have sort of real people embedded in an actual history (not what we would want it to be) context. It's a perfect crutch for a GM!

Also, I'd want to point out that there are great ways to leverage an existing fantasy setting in a way that RoP could have done but didn't. The best campaign I ever ran was the 1.5 year Darkening of Mirkwood - also set in Middle Earth, but

1. sticks as close as it can to real world cannon;
2. invents cool stuff, but cool stuff that has references to the cannon;
3. when it references people Tolken invented, they're like Token's invention;
4. when it introduces new people, they aren't OP weirdos, but feel like characters that could have existed.