Finrod Felagund wrote:*On a wider point I've never really liked Tolkien's ideas about pointless victories and fighting hopeless battles. I understand it's his Catholic sensibility but it's always struck me as the sort of thing a mardy old codger would believe! I haven't LM'ed Darkening of Mirkwood, but I've always thought that if ever I do so, I shall change it so that player actions actually can help the Woodmen survive for the long term. It makes their role and actions all the more important.
I guess, just to offer a final counterpoint*, I would just point out that your viewpoint is totally valid, but it's also just that. What does "important" mean here? Sounds like the idea of agency is really important to you--that the players get to roam around setting rights to wrongs wherever they go. I'm not sure that Tolkien's viewpoint is only personal--it's also historical. He's writing about a world and a time where not many really enjoyed the kind of agency you are talking about.
Tolkien's characters aren't comic book heroes or movie characters in Hollywood where the day is always saved, and I for one value that kind of honesty and complexity. They are embedded in a murky, dense history that very much defines who they are and what they can do. (And yes, there's the theme of predestination, that stinks of religious undertones, but I take Tolkien on his word that his works aren't intentionally allegorical, and so I wouldn't write out this aspect by calling solely on his personal religious or cultural beliefs, abandoning the work itself and what it has to tell us.)
So if the woodmen take actions that are heroic, but unsuccessful, are they really not "important"? Do we really only remember, discuss, honour the oppressed who succeed and overcome and are written about? Or can we take a minute to inhabit other worlds where the kind of stability and privilege and success that we are so accustomed to don't exist. Where we don't get to identify as "heroes", as "agents", but as humans, individuals who in unique circumstances, in individual episodes, have to make and live by hard choices. Who make the right choices without the necessity of success or rewards.
This is getting a little philosophical, but I've heard many here rail against the slash-and-loot, ultra-epic, ultra-successful culture of DnD and other rpgs. What I really enjoy about this ruleset and this community is the idea that we could tell other kinds of stories. That are a little more real, more historical, more mythical. Something I'm really interested in is how to keep that feeling in a long running campaign without it getting that rinse and repeat feeling, and I think part of the way that Tolkien models that kind of storytelling is by constantly disempowering his characters--whether through geography/scale, history/place, individual strength, magic**, and so on and so on.
So I guess this is all a long way of saying, let's not dismiss Tolkien's mode of storytelling because of his personal beliefs, or because we have less practice telling these kinds of stories in this genre in our culture. Try it out, tell hard stories, and find it doesn't work for you and your group. Decide you don't like it for yourself for your own reasons. But let's not throw out Tolkien's way of thinking about things because it doesn't fit our time and place.
*Disclaimer: I'm not actually sure where I stand on these issues, but I'm kind of playing devil's advocate in order to explore my own thoughts as much as anything. But if it isn't interesting to anybody, I'll put a lid on it.
**Seems like magic is really the perfect metaphor here. Tolkien's world isn't only low-magic, whatever magic their is is not accessible to the narrators/characters in the story. It's embedded in weapons that were forged ages before they existed, is woven into cloaks in elven realms by maia, its possessed by the wise, it's contained in rings that threaten to control them if used. It is unaccessible, often unwieldable--at least, not with any kind of reliable . . . success.
