Realism in Middle-earth

[torus]

More generally, I think you might be falling into the trap of constructing the world primarily or even solely to replicate what Tolkien described in his stories, rather than as a setting for new adventures.

You don't know me and have never played in one of my games, so I won't take offense that you basically just, at best, patronized me and, at worst, called me unimaginative.

I did neither of those things; I merely expressed a contrary view. Please be assured that the offence you claim not to have taken was entirely unintended.

The challenge you have set yourself, to generate adventures while hewing as closely as possible to both the sense and content of Tolkien's works as written, is of course perfectly valid, and I could imagine enjoying it for a while. Ultimately however I suspect I would find it unsatisfying, creating what would feel to me a pastiche of Tolkien. His works for me are not the boundary but the starting point from whence I set out to explore a world which, in some sense, both he and I (and other hands) have created.

[Glorelendil]

Because you mentioned the basic nature of people (being essentially good or evil) and that struck four chords with me:
1. Aquinas was the quintissential medieval philosopher and Tolkien liked to have medieval or "dark age" bits in his work alot.
2. Aquinas basically took the best organized system of knowledge known to him (Aristotle's system) and tried to synthesize it with his own Christian faith. Tolkien was both very interested in pre-Christian peoples and even if Middle Earth was our world in the past (as he sometimes said) it clearly predated Christianity. So going back to Aquinas' source seemed like another good bet.
3. The Middle Earth creation myth gives every indication of being more or less literally true within the setting and it shares a key point (the "Fall" of a very powerful being and their subsequent working of evil into the world on many levels) with the Judeo-Christian creation story. Both Thomas Aquinas and Professor Tolkien were quite devoted Catholics. Aquinas' work is a painstaking analysis of darn near everything from theology to psychology given the assumptions of that faith. Since Tolkien shares those assumptions it seems likely that their answers would be at least similar. I assume that his own worldview at least influenced Middle Earth a little.
4. Totally subjective: Tolkien and Aquinas both give me a feeling of having thought things through very deeply from multiple angles and put them back together in a way that Locke and Rousseau do not. Rousseau and Locke and definitely doing the Englightenment shtick of breaking a thing to figure out what it is. Not ciriticizing the analysis approach: I'm heavily trained in it and use it every day...it just doesn't feel like Middle Earth to me.

Ah, got it. I thought you were suggesting an alternative answer to the state of nature question, from an Aristotelian perspective. Maybe something having to do with existence vs. essence (which strikes me as possibly applicable here, although I don't see exactly how at the moment.)

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Even though I believe various shady businesses and the more mundane professions would have existed in the world of Tolkien, they would have been very much in the background and not noticed at all by an adventuring party unless the LM wanted it to be noticed.

I agree with this. Unless there is a reason to bring up the village blacksmith or a local crime-lord, any such things can be ignored.

Me too; and those reasons can be simply to add to atmosphere and verisimilitude to the descriptions of a place, foreshadowing if needed in the future, etc. They don't have to be important to the plot of a current adventure or something immediate.

For example, I would likely not put the shadier stuff in Dale or Bree or Minas Tirith for the characters to stumble across. Now if they are intentionally trying to find that gambling den or opium den (or appropriate M-E drug) or brothel, I would figure out something for them to find. But lets say the adventurers are down in Umbar. You can bet that in a Corsair base this kind of stuff would be more common and obvious. The same with any other city once influenced or controlled by the Black Numenoreans or other followers of Sauron..

[Otaku-sempai]

For example, I would likely not put the shadier stuff in Dale or Bree or Minas Tirith for the characters to stumble across. Now if they are intentionally trying to find that gambling den or opium den (or appropriate M-E drug) or brothel, I would figure out something for them to find. But lets say the adventurers are down in Umbar. You can bet that in a Corsair base this kind of stuff would be more common and obvious. The same with any other city once influenced or controlled by the Black Numenoreans or other followers of Sauron..

Oh, for sure! Normally, the worst mischief that I would likely have local Bree-lads get up to would probably be on the order of smoking their fathers' pipes out behind a barn or swiping a keg of ale. If I wanted to show darker forces at work in the region then some Bree-landers might take to dog fights in the Thieves' Glen, or an outsider might try to start a cult around a Warg totem (the former might even be connected to the latter).

[Rich H]

I think that if someone wanted to make their game have a more Tolkien feel, they would not ignore the presence of human vices and depravity, but they would not focus on them either. To me Tolkienesque heroes don't live in a perfect world, they just are operating on a level above the the darker elements of the world.

Not ignoring the rest of your post, because it's great, but this bit is very much something I agree with and I think I still follow even though those 'darker' elements of human vice are mentioned in some of my description - they aren't the focus of the game but they are there to show that people do engage in such activities. And I think that's important to present. Your players may be the heroes but there are other that aren't, for whatever reason, and these exist in cities such as Dale and Minas Tirith.

The challenge you have set yourself, to generate adventures while hewing as closely as possible to both the sense and content of Tolkien's works as written, is of course perfectly valid, and I could imagine enjoying it for a while. Ultimately however I suspect I would find it unsatisfying, creating what would feel to me a pastiche of Tolkien. His works for me are not the boundary but the starting point from whence I set out to explore a world which, in some sense, both he and I (and other hands) have created.

Yep. That's my approach too, although you've expressed it far better than I could.

[Stormcrow]

Realism, shmealism. What's important is that the author (or Loremaster) has produced a secondary world in which the reader (or players) can successfully invest secondary belief. As long as this secondary belief is maintained, it doesn't matter whether you introduce anachronisms*, grit, prostitutes, or what have you.

* The stories of Middle-earth do not take place in the Middle Ages, so it's not an anachronism to give hobbits clocks, umbrellas, and tobacco, or to do any of the other allegedly anachronistic things Tolkien does.

[Glorelendil]

* The stories of Middle-earth do not take place in the Middle Ages, so it's not an anachronism to give hobbits clocks, umbrellas, and tobacco, or to do any of the other allegedly anachronistic things Tolkien does.

Yes. I frequently see arguments of the form "because Middle-earth is based on the Middle-ages, and in the Middle-ages such-and-such was true, it must be (or probably is) also true in Middle-earth."

And the other issue with clocks and postal service and the like is the question of why they don't seem to exist outside of the Shire, anachronism or not. Because "realistically" one would expect such inventions to be found in Laketown and Minas Tirith, right?

I don't feel the need to come up with explanations or justifications; that's just how things are in Middle-earth.

[Rich H]

* The stories of Middle-earth do not take place in the Middle Ages, so it's not an anachronism to give hobbits clocks, umbrellas, and tobacco, or to do any of the other allegedly anachronistic things Tolkien does.

Yes. I frequently see arguments of the form "because Middle-earth is based on the Middle-ages, and in the Middle-ages such-and-such was true, it must be (or probably is) also true in Middle-earth."

And the other issue with clocks and postal service and the like is the question of why they don't seem to exist outside of the Shire, anachronism or not. Because "realistically" one would expect such inventions to be found in Laketown and Minas Tirith, right?

I don't feel the need to come up with explanations or justifications; that's just how things are in Middle-earth.

Completely agree, although in the past I have gamed with such people that do raise such issues and others that use them to invent other things as they also "... existed before clocks and umbrellas in our world so I'm making one in Middle-earth". Thank the unicorn my current group of RPers/friends aren't like this and just play and enjoy the "secondary world", as Stormcrow states.

[Otaku-sempai]

* The stories of Middle-earth do not take place in the Middle Ages, so it's not an anachronism to give hobbits clocks, umbrellas, and tobacco, or to do any of the other allegedly anachronistic things Tolkien does.

You're right, Tolkien set the end of the Third Age of Middle-earth at approximately the time of Sumer and the hero Gilgamesh--thousands of years before the Middle Ages! That said, I kinda wish Tolkien had gone back and set it two or three thousand years earlier, long before the start of the Hebrew calendar.

More importantly though (and I think you would agree), Middle-earth represents a Mythical Age (or Ages) that is not meant to be wholly realistic, much like the Greek Age of Heroes where mythical creatures roam a land where men build working wings made of wax, and gods walk the earth seducing women in the shape of swans or cursing a person for being too vain or even just too beautiful. But I still enjoy inventing an explanation for Bilbo's mantle clock! It's a fun exercise of the imagination.

[atgxtg]

* The stories of Middle-earth do not take place in the Middle Ages, so it's not an anachronism to give hobbits clocks, umbrellas, and tobacco, or to do any of the other allegedly anachronistic things Tolkien does.

Yeah. The hard part for those of us running a game is that we don't really have any sort of guidelines as to what extent some of these anachronisms exist. We know of those things that are noes as being at some specific location, but we don't know if they existed elsewhere, or if other anachronistic items exist side by side with the known items but just weren't mentioned. Heck, we don't really even know just what the general technology available to the inhabitants of Middle Earth. It's generally assume to be akin the the Middle Ages, but a case could be made for an earlier age.

Since several thousand years go by in the three ages leading up to the war of the ring, it's seems somewhat odd that technology doesn't seem to advance much. In fact it seems to have regressed. It's like if our cultures all peaked around the time of Ancient Egypt.

So it's it's a bit tricky. Ultimately all a LM can do is research what he can and try to made an educated guess for the rest.