Why did he do it?
>>94722570to have a vehicle for pushing his conlangs on unsuspecting audience, he was archetypal worldbuilder way ahead of the time
>>94722570>>>/lit/ is that way, ask them
>>94722570>Why did he do it?He didnt do anything. Mabel did all the work
>>94722577>>94722664Lurk more./tg/ is not just for games,but for fantasy and scifi discussion in general.
>>94722570>Why did he do it?For the fun of it. simple as
>>94722890>Mabelliterally who
>>94723315The person who lives inside my walls
>>94723328>The person who lives inside my wallsYou have a person inside your walls? Doesn't sound that bad. I myself have rats in the walls; can't stand their chittering.
>>94722570He just wanted to write fantasy novels and did it right.Also happy birthday, Tolkien!
>>94722570Because he was an evil piece of shit. Probably because he was a Jew worshipper>>94723379>He just wanted to write smoking propaganda Ftfy
>>94722570Do what? Be born?
>>94722570Autism. Happy birthday professor.
>>94722570>born on the third, THREE rings for the elven kings, under the sky>in the year 1892, eight minus one is SEVEN for the dwarf lords, in their halls of stone, and NINE(ty two) for mortal men, doomed to die>in January, the first of months, in other words ONE ring to rule them all, one ring to find them. One ring to bring them all in in the darkness bind them. In the land of Mordor, where the shadows lie.Bravo, professor.
>>94722890Are you suggesting that maybe...Maybe it's Mabel-ing?
>>94723997
>>94722570To amuse himself, his friends and his children
>>94722570I'm going to do it, I'm being booooooooooornHeh, thanks babe, time to get old and die now
>>94722664We used to have a Tolkien general, you know.
>>94722570What? Be born?
>>94725120Yeah and generals are fucking cancer and ruin everything they touch so I bitched about it every thread until they stopped. Jannies on all the good boards banned all generals years ago.
>>94725270and then the whole bus clapped
>>94725270Fair enough, I have a distaste for generals as well. But one could always discuss fantasy on /tg/.
Reminder that Tolkien thought technology was magic, and he basically pulled a Clarke before Clarke.
>>94725608Yes this "what game" bullshit is nothing but spam. /tg/ has always been a melting pot.
>>94725647True and he also hated chuds and racists.>"The treatment of colour nearly always horrifies anyone going out from Britain, & not only in South Africa. Unfort[unately], not many retain that generous sentiment for long." ― Letter 61 — Written to Christopher Tolkien who was stationed in South Africa during World War II>"I have the hatred of apartheid in my bones; and most of all I detest the segregation or separation of Language and Literature. I do not care which of them you think White." ― From a Valedictory Address to the University of Oxford in 1959>"It was Sam's first view of a battle of Men against Men, and he did not like it much. He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man's name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil at heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace." ― The Two Towers, "Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit".>"I must say that the enclosed letter from Rutten & Loening is a bit stiff. Do I suffer this impertinence because of the possession of a German name, or do their lunatic laws require a certificate of arisch origin from all persons of all countries? ... Personally I should be inclined to refuse to give any Bestätigung (although it happens that I can), and let a German translation go hang. In any case I should object strongly to any such declaration appearing in print. I do not regard the (probable) absence of all Jewish blood as necessarily honourable; and I have many Jewish friends, and should regret giving any colour to the notion that I subscribed to the wholly pernicious and unscientific race-doctrine." ― Letter 29 — in response to Tolkien's German publishers had asked whether he was of Aryan origin
>>94725760>"Thank you for your letter. I regret that I am not clear as to what you intend by arisch. I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-Iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. My great-great-grandfather came to England in the eighteenth century from Germany: the main part of my descent is therefore purely English, and I am an English subject — which should be sufficient. I have been accustomed, nonetheless, to regard my German name with pride, and continued to do so throughout the period of the late regrettable war, in which I served in the English army. I cannot, however, forbear to comment that if impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.>Your enquiry is doubtless made in order to comply with the laws of your own country, but that this should be held to apply to the subjects of another state would be improper, even if it had (as it has not) any bearing whatsoever on the merits of my work or its sustainability for publication, of which you appear to have satisfied yourselves without reference to my Abstammung." ― Letter 30 — Written directly to Tolkien's German publishers
>>94725760>>94725768And yet he still describes his world's not!Africans as "half trolls" with with white eyes and red lips. At the same time he wouldn't approve of shit like black skinned elves. He was a massive purist and he would have hated Jackson's movies too, beyond appearances (he likely would have appreciated what went into the Shire).
Whose words are most likely to be still remembered 500 years down the line? Tolkien, Martin or Rowling?
>>94725804>his world'sArda is our earth in the mythological past, same as with Howard. Far-Harad is literally Africa.>At the same time he wouldn't approve of shit like black skinned elves. Never said otherwise.
>>94725807Tolkien has a dedicated academic following so he wins easily. Rowling is a distant second, having written a series that outsold the bible. And who even remembers Martin now? The disgust with the show's ending is on par with the Star Wars prequels.
>>94725804
>>94725807Tolkien was a word smith and a sage of the living experience. He truly thought the human world could be a more beautiful place, deep down, which is what the elves represent, and he truly detested the hideousness of big industry, especially the War Machine, which he equated to black magic and sorcery, from his time fighting in the world war. He hated man's war and hatred against the beauty and the mystery and the wonder (and thus the magic) within nature. Mordor is applicable to the modern setting, at its worst.
>>94725861>Tolkien has a dedicated academic followingFor LotR I mean, he's a hugely influential scholar in his own right too.
>>94725868>ifunnygo back
>>94723997He also died in 1973.3 rings for elves7 for the dwarf lords9 for men1 to rule them all
Happy Birthday professor! Fantasy wouldn't exist without you.
>>94722570Traditional games?
>>94722570Because of the war and a blank paper in a students thesis papers.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlCC7Av_I8Qhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEQNhwJVTy4
>>94722570The better question is why did grognards follow him like blind sheep. Any attempt to make de-Tolkienized fantasy leads to seething and kvetching from a gaggle of parrots cawing about "le subverisve! le bad!". Truth is if Tolkien got shrapnelled by perfidious Hunic Prussorcniggers and some other fantasy author with a completely different style made the first big thing, you'd be dickriding that style just as hard and shitting on possible altfuture-Tolkiens as being suversive hobby ruiners.
>>94728974They didn't. None of those people were actually around at the time nor do they play games. They simply aren't grognards in the first place.
>>94722570Happy Birthday professor, thankyou for work
>>94725760>>94725768Now post the late war letters.
>>94723295>t. actual newfag, thinking he's gonna do le ebic Tolkien shitpostig
>>94725120... which doesn't make this thread even remotely close related to tabletop games, and has ZERO plans to be about games, so guess what: go fuck yourself, you fucking child.
>>94729678>>94729683Cry about it.
>>94729572This lmao. He said openly he admired the Germans more than the Americans.
>>94729572>>94729787Okay and how does disliking America contradict anything he had already said you shiteating retard? Was that seriously your best counter? Usually chuds cope with "b-but he would be racist and support brexit now!"
>/lit/ thread in /tg/>the discussion is /pol/
Imagine the tabletop world without Tolkien and his stories. It would be a lackluster and uninspiring reality.
>>94732176>>thread in /tg/>>the discussion is /pol/many such cases
bump
>>94736877This user probably thinks LotR is older an Conan
It’s always funny watching woke activists and social media signalers deal with old white authors. Tolkien was a very standard European liberal of his day — which would get him instantly banned from Reddit and mainstream social media sites today. Someone who was just a little edgy for his time like Lovecraft would be in fucking PRISON today.
>>94745627Lovecraft would also call you a retarded nigger for using words from ebonics like woke, one of the things that old white authors had over current cuckservatives
>>94725647He isn’t wrong. His depiction of elven “magic” where everybody was mystified by their presence and how everything they made just seemed to fucking rock with ethereal beauty and functionality and they just looked puzzled and didn’t even know how to start to explain how everything “magical” was totally normal high-quality elven craftsmanship to them applies really well to any dying high tech society.I own a little hand drill. It looks like a dildo but it’s incredibly useful. I could explain, to a Neanderthal, the rough physics of a screw and the drill bit and the rotation, and maybe even the motor inside to an extent. But it would be completely lost on them and I couldn’t even start on the battery or casing or magnetic bit heads. And yet here is this tool I’m exceedingly proficient with that lets me instantly touch walls and wood planks and bind them together with a sort of gentle push that makes a hammer and nails pale in elegance and design. And he’s right irl. Everything we consider magical has turned out to be some matter of undiscovered nature. And every magical rite we practice without knowledge of its logic has some small degree of real effect in our perception when performed with sincerity.
>>94736877standard fantasy IS lackluster and uninspiring, if tolkien didn't write a thing there would be very few differences, maybe we'd have fewer annoying elf and dwarf tropes but we'd have other annoying tropes instead of them
>>94731393He know that muttmerica was hell on earth
>>94722570He pondered on causes and principles, which very few writers do nowadays.The elves are good-natured and cool headed cause they live a lot of years, dwarfs are proud cause they are highly tribal and so on.I imagine him smoking his pipe and spending insane amounts of time without writing anything while going thru all of iterations of cause and consequence to anything he was thinking.The Silmarillion isn't something he wrote as 'deep lore' to milk the fans with a 'behind the scenes' kickstarter it was his personal notes.
>>94722570>'Where am I, and what is the time?' he said aloud to the ceiling.'In the House of Elrond, and it is ten o'clock in the morning.' said a voice. 'It is the morning of October the twenty-fourth, if you want to know.'"How can such an autist when it comes to worldbuilding and fantasy naming conventions just copy paste our own time and date system into his works?
>>94722570>We come, we come with roll of drum: ta-runda runda runda rom!>We come, we come with horn and drum: ta-rūna rūna rūna rom!>To Isengard! Though Isengard be ringed and barred with doors of stone;>Though Isengard be strong and hard, as cold as stone and bare as bone,>We go, we go, we go to war, to hew the stone and break the door;>For bole and bough are burning now, the furnace roars - we go to war!>To land of gloom with tramp of doom, with roll of drum, we come, we come;>To Isengard with doom we come!With doom we come, with doom we come!Your response?
>>94722570Someone couldn’t guess what he named the bearded tree fellow.
>>94731393>! I wonder (if we survive this war) if there will be any niche, even of sufferance, left for reactionary back numbers like me (andyou). The bigger things get the smaller and duller or flatter the globe gets. It is getting to be all one blasted little provincial suburb. When they have introduced American sanitation, morale-pep, feminism, and mass production throughout the Near East, Middle East, Far East, U.S.S.R., the Pampas, el Gran Chaco, the Danubian Basin, Equatorial Africa, Hither Further and Inner Mumboland, Gondhwanaland, Lhasa, and the villages of darkest Berkshire, how happy we shall be. At any rate it ought to cut down travel. There will be nowhere to go. So people will (I opine) go all the faster. Col. Knox says ⅛ of the world's population speaks 'English', and that is the biggest language group. If true, damn shame – say I. May the curse of Babel strike all their tongues till they can only say 'baa baa'. It would mean much the same. I think I shall have to refuse to speak anything but OldMercian. But seriously: I do find this Americo-cosmopolitanism very terrifying.seems p chuddy to me.
>>94748990he was simply a localist and a nativistthis may be shocking to some, but there's plenty of space between being a homoglobo drone and a hitler worshipping poltard
>>94722570which system?
>>94723295no it isn't.
>>94725716no.
>>94725760>"Of course, all those earlier letters I wrote were just a smokescreen to pacify those Jewish communists that control all media on Earth. The US fought the wrong enemy." - final letter found in his study, written in 1972
>>94728974First = best, old > new, tradition > subversion. Stay furious commie faggot
>>94725941LOTR and the Legendarium as a whole have a substantial academic following. He's not quite at Shakespeare levels, but he might be given a couple hundred years.
>>94748744>Fifteen birds, in five fir trees>Their feathers were fair, in the fiery breeze>What funny little birds, they had no wings>Oh what shall we do, with the funny little things?>Roast em alive>Or stew em in a pot>Fry them, boil them, eat them hot>Bake em, fry and roast em till breads blaze and eye glaze >In cinders lie beneath the sky, so the dwarves shall die!
>>94749720>There is no 'symbolism' or conscious allegory in my story. Allegory of the sort 'five wizards = five senses' is wholly foreign to my way of thinking. There were five wizards and that is just a unique part of history. To ask if the Orcs 'are' Communists is to me as sensible as asking if Communists are Orcs.That there is no allegory does not, of course, say there is no applicability. There always is. And since I have not made the struggle wholly unequivocal: sloth and stupidity among hobbits, pride and [illegible] among Elves, grudge and greed in Dwarf-hearts, and folly and wickedness among the 'Kings of Men', and treachery and power-lust even among the 'Wizards', there is I suppose applicability in my story to present times. But I should say, if asked, the tale is not really about Power and Dominion: that only sets the wheels going; it is about Death and the desire for deathlessness. Which is hardly more than to say it is a tale written by a Man!
>>94750059mean to reply to someone else? lol
>>94748707it's for the best, the inverse autism of not allowing any measurement be the same is worse
>>94722641his conlangs suck though
>>94745800A cave man would have better spatial insight than we do today. He would absolutely understand a hand drill.Modern electronics are different, but let's be honest. Most of us reduce the details to a handwave-y "electrons moving around" level too.
>>94750075Oh sorry, let me try again>Anyway, I have in this War a burning private grudge—which would probably make me a better soldier at 49 than I was at 22: against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler (for the odd thing about demonic inspiration and impetus is that it in no way enhances the purely intellectual stature: it chiefly affects the mere will). Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light.
>>94748707Tolkien presented himself as a localiser. As with the naming conventions, the ones you see in the text are adapted to your English sensibilities.Maura Labingi asked for the date and might have been given it in the Shire reckoning (which, with 12 months of 30 days, plus 5 special days per year, isn't too far from the Gregorian calendar) or perhaps in the Reckoning of Rivendell, which is far less common, but to help immerse readers, Maura was localised to the nice, familiar Middle English name Frodo and the calendar was similarly changed.
>>94751215Specifically, with Winterfilth from the Shire calendar being localised as October, if he didn't adjust the date backwards accordingly, the 24th of October referenced in the text would actually correspond to 14 October in the Gregorian calendar.
>>94745800>Everything we consider magical has turned out to be some matter of undiscovered nature. And every magical rite we practice without knowledge of its logic has some small degree of real effect in our perception when performed with sincerity.I mean, that's precisely what magic is, at the end of the day. An angle. A point/sleight of view. A hat to wear. "Magic".Gandalf isn't a wizard back in Valinor. He goes out of his way to describe (not define) what he does as "spells", and he dons the wizardly/sagely image, which is his station: the pointy hat. He's a stage magician of higher capability. An alien UFO is borderline capital-m Magic to modern day physicists, even if they don't use the word, the same way the elves are magic to men. It's a big black box there is no bigger black box than the deep black abyss that is space btw to us, that's white within to the alien. Is it magic to the alien? It depends on the alien ("Can anyone else generate their own relativity? "No? "I'm the wizard."). Magic is a bar/angle, or one-sided, different for everyone, tand humans look to the elves the same way the elves look to the maia/wizards. The bar for magic is higher/lower for some. Higher for the elves. Lower for humans and hobbits. It's all psychology, all exposure logic, the mind's eye, etc. The five istari wizards are like if a higher/alien societies sent down five of their most learned to guide a lesser world and its denizens back on the right path. There are Prime Directive parallels in Tolkien's works.
>>94751560This is why I find that, the more ALIEN the magic, the better, or more magical. Magic IS alien.
>>94751253>>94751215I had a feeling he wouldn't overlook that part kek, that makes it a bit better, but even with the meta-explanation it does take me out of it a bit, I'm not a fan >>94750380I'm usually with you and I think keeping the 12month, 7day week system intact is good for readability, but I think at least calling it 8th moon or something would have helped. It just irks me hearing that latin October, as it also makes you think that, then the other months named after roman war gods and emperors must also be there, and I just don't like it, even if he does his red book stuff, as something this jarring doesn't come up anywhere else really.
>le heckin s0iance is le heckin magic Tolkien was peak Reddit
He just wanted to tell stories to his kids.
>>94751769Reminder that according to Tolkien elves die if they get raped. Their soul literally leaves their body in disappointment.
>>94732176>Cigar transforms into poo than vanishes.Thats why you know AI is dumb and more or less just a tool.
>>94729678>>94749687Lurk more.
>>94748707Bullshit fantasy names don't enhance fantasy stories
>>94752896/tg/ is for traditional games. lurk more.
>>94753918Tolkien is grandfathered into /tg/ relevance. Always has been, always will be. Cope
>>94754060Isn't and won't be. Cope.
>>94751783but they are their soul, so it's more like they discard their used body and go get a new one
>>94722570>Why did he do it?He a real nigga no cap
>>94748990Now corners near and corners farAre somehow the same coffee barAnd community is felt againThanks to folks I've never metThey slayed the artistsSold their artsGave the toddlers shopping cartsRaised the pricesRaised the rentSome days I wish that I could go back againNo, I can't go back againhttps://youtu.be/sH9_6G7q5dk?si=ksWI5qWOmMq1pNYm
>>94722570Games?
>>94749314>nativistI don't know if you know this, but nativists are considered chuds nowadays.
>>94754091Watcha gonna do about it? Cry to the jannies?
>>94722570>Why did he do it?He wanted to write books and he did it.
>>94749720>"Sieg Heil!" - Tolkien's final /tg/ shitpost, written in early 2025
>>94760040Considering his actual opinions it would be:>The industrial revolution and it's consequences....
>It's the daily /tg/ Tolkien seethe threadI'm so sorry he'll be remembered long after you've turned to dust and that totally unique campaign setting you came up that is totally so incredibly original and groundbreaking is gone. I am so sorry you're going through this, /tg/.
/tg/ was always a Moorcock board. Epic Pooh is exactly the sort of thing I expect to see here.
>>94761683The author is too woke to be allowed considering the current political climate.
>>94763348Different from /tg/ how?
