Home » Reading & Literature » J.R.R. Tolkien » There Are Games Afoot! - Page 9

There Are Games Afoot! - Page 9

© Michael Martinez

And then there are the dragons. There are lots of dragons in Tolkien. It's just that most of them aren't named. So who is to say that some intrepid party of adventurers didn't drive back the dragons early in the Third Age? And if thieves' guilds are an absolute necessity, they can show up in the larger cities (Annumninas, Fornost Erain, Osgiliath, etc.) without too much trouble. Religion, on the other hand, presents a real problem for game designers. Traditional role-playing games have clerics who draw upon the powers of their gods for healing and other forms of magic. There can't be anything like that in a true-to-Tolkien game. God is there, in the background, but there are no priests. There are seers (a la Malbeth) but the old I.C.E. magic system really doesn't work well for Tolkien. Neither does the AD&D system, nor any other system I've come across. For one thing, all role-playing games try to limit magic by imposing restrictions on race and profession. If you're of a certain race, you either cannot use magic or it's very difficult to learn, or else you have to be of a certain profession. But Tolkien's world didn't work that way. Individuals had aptitudes for certain tasks and abilities. Hobbits didn't use magic, except for "the ordinary everyday sort which helps them to disappear quietly and quickly" (see "An Unexpected Party" in The Hobbit). But Tolkien doesn't say they couldn't use magic. In the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings he notes that "Hobbits have never, in fact, studied magic of any kind". The restriction he imposes is a cultural one, not a genetic racial ability (or disability). Their ability to hide is attributed to "ordinary everyday" magic in one book, and dismissed as a "professional" ability that seems like magic to Men in another book. But nowhere is it stated that Hobbits cannot use magic. Which isn't to say that a role-playing game should encourage people to develop Hobbit-sorcerors who go around casting fireballs. But if the magic system allows people to cast fireball spells, Hobbits shouldn't be excluded from learning how to do such things. Of course, Tolkien's magic is a mixture of lore and innate abilities. The angelic beings which became the Valar and Maiar (and the Istari were Maiar) were immensely powerful creatures; Tolkien sometimes allowed his characters to refer to them as "gods". But these Ainur were not omnipotent. There were limits to these beings' strengths. They grew weary, and if they took incarnate forms (living bodies, physically biological shapes in which their spirits dwelt) the Ainur could be injured or even killed.

The copyright of the article There Are Games Afoot! - Page 9 in J.R.R. Tolkien is owned by Michael Martinez. Permission to republish There Are Games Afoot! - Page 9 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.