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BerethEdhellen
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Post One Rule to Rule Them All (please read)
on: August 19, 2006 10:30
PLEASE NOTE THAT AS OF AUGUST 1ST ALL MIDDLE-EARTH RELATED THREAD WILL TAKE PLACE IN THE 'TOLKIEN RELATED' FORUM AND ALL THREADS TAKING PLACE IN OTHER REALMS SHOULD BE PLACED IN THE NON-TOLKIEN FORUM. THE ORIGINATOR OF A THREAD CAN STILL DECIDE IF THE THREAD WILL BE CANON OR WILL ALLOW SOME NON-CANON MATERIAL.


The following comments will no longer apply and this forum will be closed;
All Middle Earth threads will automatically begin in the Tolkien Related Forum UNLESS the plotline and characters have been presented to the Moderators and been approved by them as a canon thread, in which case they can begin in Totally Tolkien. This means that the Totally Tolkien thread will have many less threads as 90% or more of our members do not adhere to strictly canon posts.

If approved, the thread owner can introduce the thread in TT but then must take full responsibility of fellow players to maintain its integrity. Should the owner lose control or fail to care about keeping it TT, the owner will be pm'd that within 24 hours, and unless corrections/edits have been made and canon posting begins again, it will be moved to TR.

Canon is defined as adhering to that written by Tolkien himself; i.e. LOTR, The Hobbit, Sil, HOME, Letters, etc. Simply put, any of the named characters/locations/events in Tolkien's works cannot be changed in any way. For example, the main characters cannot have additional relatives not mentioned, cannot be slain or said to do anything or be any place Tolkien did not write himself. Locations must remain the same as must time frames of events.

Non-canon (and thus suitable for TR threads) can include the films and other sources that have made translations or offered theories. However, fan fiction will not be considered a source. Here, for example, Legolas could have been said to have had a sister, Faramir and Eowyn might have journeyed to Rivendell for vacation, or the main characters may not be mentioned at all other than as references. Rangers were limited to the Dunedain and Ithilien (they were not ubiquitous) and there were no female Rangers written about by Tolkien, however, in TR, they could exist. The same goes for healers, who in JRRT's written works were limited to the Houses of Healing in Minas Tirith and Rivendell. In TR they would be allowed in other places on a limited basis. However all changes to the canon should be 'within reason' and within the world of Tolkien.

First and foremost, we must all remember this is a Tolkien Site...not Dungeons and Dragons, not Eragon, not Harry Potter. As much as possible, you should be trying to re-create Tolkien's world with imagination and inventiveness.

All other rules for this Tolkien RPG Forum site will still apply:
..No magic/telepathy (other than those specifically mentioned and even those in limitations)
..No Mary-Sues (and you all know what that means)
..No modern day slang (as in...'Yeah', 'cool', 'hey guys', 'group hug', 'let's get it on', etc.)
..No modern day clothing (as in tight leather pants, short skirts, trench coats, Indiana Jones hats, etc.)
..No Godmodding.
..No speaking/acting/moving for other player's chars without express permission
..No other worlds/chars except Tolkien's...even in TR (i.e. no Anne Rice, HP, Stephen King, etc.)
..No profanity or sexually explicit discussions
..No machine gun or double posting
..No rudeness or attacks against any member of CoE (moderators are members of CoE too)

Certainly preferred:
..Read some of Tolkien's books, don't just rely on the films, guesswork or word of mouth for information.
..Use the encyclopedias and maps in Elrond's Library to determine people/places/distances.
..Posts of at least one or two healthy paragraphs.
..Use of Capital letters, punctuation, separated paragraphs (in other words, reasonably comprehensible English).
..Use of spell check....PLEASE!
..Something besides fighting orcs, easterlings -or- fighting orcs, easterlings -and- fighting orcs, easterlings....come on, folks....where is the imagination in that?
..Attempt to come up with more than one character. Right now, we can read a dozen different threads and they all have the same characters all doing the very same thing. It is difficult to tell one thread from another...they all run together as one big thread split in 12 threads.

We will give you time to read this and then we will be doing some house cleaning. Expect many threads to be moved from TT to TR due to being non-canon. Carry on!

[Edited on 07/31/2014 by PotbellyHairyfoot]
Life is good! Live it to the fullest. Love well those near and dear. "You cannot step into the same river twice, for the waters are ever flowing on ....." Heraclitus I Aear cân ven na mar
PotbellyHairyfoot
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Post RE: One Rule to Rule Them All (please read)
on: August 20, 2006 04:19
Something that some members seem a bit unclear about;
We aren't saying that your Totally Tolkien thread can only contain people, places, things, and concepts that were discussed in the books. What we are saying is that the people, places, things, and concepts that you use cannot disagree with or make changes with what we know of Tolkien's universe as detailed in the books.

Some general examples-
if your characters live in a stone castle in Rohan ( or even Mirkwood) the thread will be Tolkien Related as buildings in Rohan, including the King's hall, were generally constructed of wood ( Thranduil, king of the Elves of Mirkwood, lived in a cave system)
-if your story is about a group of early 4th age characters seeking to rebuild or resetlle some of the parts of Gondor or Arnor that were formerly settled and nothing in the thread differs from what is common knowledge, the thread could be located in the Totally Tolkien forum.
- if the main characters in the story are assassins, mercenaries, run a school for criminals, or speak to each other with modern slang as though they are hanging out at the mall, the thread will not be acceptable in either forum.( this doesn't apply to TR threads about characters that somehow get transplanted to Middle-earth as long things don't get out of hand and the world isn't changed from Tolken's world - that is to say the character doesn't end up with mysterious or magical abilities that didn't exist on Middle-earth)
- if your characters are Drow or ride winged horses, or can heal injuries by passing their hands over them, they definitely do not belong in the TT forum and will not even be acceptable in the TR forum. ( Drow and winged horses aren't from Tolien's works and Tolkien's healers worked more from knowledge rather than any special 'powers')
- if your thread is about characters or places in Middle-earth not mentioned in detail in Tolkien's works and none of your details contradict any known details, then it is likely that your thread will fit in the TT forum.
- if the thread is based on the movies rather than the books, then the thread belongs in the TR forum.

Finally, if you wish to start a Roleplay about people, places, or things that don't belong in Middle-earth you should consider starting your thread at our sister site Loki's Palace a Roleplay site that welcomes RPs of all types and on all topics. ( click the underlined word to bring up the site)








[Edited on 14/9/2006 by PotbellyHairyfoot]

[Edited on 13/1/2007 by PotbellyHairyfoot]
Gandolorin
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on: December 22, 2013 06:20
Some thoughts.

This is starting to remind me of the conflict between „Lit“ and „Lang“ at the English School during pretty much all of JRRT’s professional career at Oxford. Tom Shippey still had to deal with some of it during his studies and professional time, but „Lang“ was either dying by then or confined to a very small specialist niche.

„Lang“ was the rigorous study of Anglo-Saxon, no less taxing that that of Latin and Old Greek. To do justice to a TT RPG seems to me to require something equivalent to „Lang“, (detailed) knowledge of “i.e. LOTR, The Hobbit, Sil, HOME, Letters, etc.”, to which I would at least add “Unfinished Tales” and “The Children of Hurin”.

Books by T.A. Shippey, Patrick Curry, Katharyn Crabbe, Joseph Pearce, Verlyn Flieger, Robert Foster, Douglas A. Anderson, Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond are also helpful.

Come to think of it, I have just named the people who are qualified to handle a TT RPG in the strictest sense in the preceding paragraph – plus an unknown number from the Tolkien Society.

How likely is it that very many of the RPG fans have that kind of background? I have read every book mentioned here and also books by all of the above authors, but I would still be hesitant to claim that I would not go astray from the canon in an RPG (besides the fact that RPGs were not my line when they proliferated in the pre-online-games period, and it has stayed that way).

On the other hand, there are dozens of centuries in the Second and Third ages with very little detail, mostly widely spaced great events. Even leaving aside the East and the South as being off-stage at all times (though at least Aragorn – and Gandalf? Spent some years there), there is awfully much to be filled in in Numenor and, much more so, in Middle-Earth in the Second Age. There are more Annals for the Third Age, but still much that can be construed below the level of royal houses and nobility. Those might very well be off-stage for the actual action of the RPG (“during the reign of Romandecil” or similar time brackets).

And last, the Fourth Age has practically only a few prominent dates for the main characters, ending with Aragorn’s Death – if you don’t count the aborted “The New Shadow” attempts by JRRT himself noted in “The Peoples of Middle-Earth”.

Much space that can be filled, I would say.

[Edited on 12/23/2013 by Gandolorin]
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