Grand unified books thread

[Sheilbh]

One thing that we should see is the publication of that re-reading of Tolkien from a Russian author - which I think is still not available in English because of the estate. But it sounds fascinating from my understanding it's a shorter re-telling of the LOTR from the perspective of a basically precociously industrialising Mordor while the elves and hobbits and wizards coming against them represent reactionary, pseudo-feudalist agrarian societies.

No idea if it's good but it sounds very interesting.

[crazy canuck]

I am looking forward to see what can be produced once the estate loses control over content.

I predict:

• A massive amount of AI schlock.
• A significant amount of Hollywood formula big budget stuff (I include games in this) with medium to no amount of soul.
• A significant amount of "Tolkien, but with a cool twist!" Most of it will be terrible, but there'll be a few things that are interesting.
• A significant amount of indie/ low budget "trying to stay true to the spirit of Tolkien". Some of them may even succeed at that goal.
• A few obviously political attempts to co-opt Tolkien for whatever agenda. They'll be uniformly terrible, whether you agree with the agenda or not.
• Some Tolkien based crypto scams.
• A good number of Tolkien based board and card games, running the gamut from terrible to good.

I remember a time when I admired your optimism 


One thing I am hoping for is the someone takes a run a creating a table top RPG game based on the Silmarillion (similar to what Iron Crown almost pulled off back in the day).

By the way, I gave permission to Mrs. CC to give all my old D&D stuff to the local hobby shop. She came back and said they insisted on giving her money for what she was giving them.  And they gave her quite a lot of money. Turns out she didn't just take the D&D stuff.  She took all my (to me priceless) out of print and never to return Iron Crown Rolemaster collection.  A little part of me died inside.  But to her it was all the same stuff.

[Sophie Scholl]

By the way, I gave permission to Mrs. CC to give all my old D&D stuff to the local hobby shop. She came back and said they insisted on giving her money for what she was giving them.  And they gave her quite a lot of money. Turns out she didn't just take the D&D stuff.  She took all my (to me priceless) out of print and never to return Iron Crown Rolemaster collection.  A little part of me died inside.  But to her it was all the same stuff.

Ooof. I have the Minas Ithil book (and awesome giant map!) and a lot of the pdf's. If you want, I can send some of them your way. They aren't a true substitute for the physical books, but they might help ease the pain a little. 

[Jacob]

Yikes 

[crazy canuck]

By the way, I gave permission to Mrs. CC to give all my old D&D stuff to the local hobby shop. She came back and said they insisted on giving her money for what she was giving them.  And they gave her quite a lot of money. Turns out she didn't just take the D&D stuff.  She took all my (to me priceless) out of print and never to return Iron Crown Rolemaster collection.  A little part of me died inside.  But to her it was all the same stuff.

Ooof. I have the Minas Ithil book (and awesome giant map!) and a lot of the pdf's. If you want, I can send some of them your way. They aren't a true substitute for the physical books, but they might help ease the pain a little. 

I will keep that in mind

[Neil]

LOTR or Dune, or even Star Wars to an extent, got a lot of value from the feeling we got a glimpse of a much larger universe. Our current tendency to over-explain everything reduces quite a bit the mystique and mystery of these stories.

Agreed.  On of my favorite authors, Roger Zelazny, used to write a short story featuring the main characters and settings of the novel he wanted to write, and then erased the short story so that it would be in the back of his mind when he wrote the novel, but would never appear in print to ruin the mystique of the novel.

I remember the first time I read Lord of Light.  I thought I'd missed something.

[Neil]

By the way, I gave permission to Mrs. CC to give all my old D&D stuff to the local hobby shop. She came back and said they insisted on giving her money for what she was giving them.  And they gave her quite a lot of money. Turns out she didn't just take the D&D stuff.  She took all my (to me priceless) out of print and never to return Iron Crown Rolemaster collection.  A little part of me died inside.  But to her it was all the same stuff.

Ooof. I have the Minas Ithil book (and awesome giant map!) and a lot of the pdf's. If you want, I can send some of them your way. They aren't a true substitute for the physical books, but they might help ease the pain a little. 

It's amazing how the values of those things add up.  I've been cataloguing my library for insurance purposes, and the hundreds of gaming books that I have added up to a pretty significant percentage of the overall value.

[grumbler]

One thing that we should see is the publication of that re-reading of Tolkien from a Russian author - which I think is still not available in English because of the estate. But it sounds fascinating from my understanding it's a shorter re-telling of the LOTR from the perspective of a basically precociously industrialising Mordor while the elves and hobbits and wizards coming against them represent reactionary, pseudo-feudalist agrarian societies.

No idea if it's good but it sounds very interesting.

Available for download as a pdf Here

It is an okay read. Nothing special except for the role reversal.

[Admiral Yi]

Who's doing the invading in the Leninist version?