site banner
PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   2275 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for October 31, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

2
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Is it not completely insane that we still don't have a serious role-playing game set in Middle-Earth? It's pretty much the perfect setting for a fantasy game. So much lore, such cool environments, lots of great characters that could be involved, and it gave rise to so much of popular fantasy. So why the fuck can I not play a BG3 or KOTOR or even Pillars of Eternity style RPG set in that universe???

A Middle Earth setting that is true to Tolkien lacks an essential element for an MMO: morally grey factions.

40k is the perfect setting for tabletop gaming because there are no good guys, so you don't have any problem running any two races/factions against each other. It's not even hard, from a lore perspective, to come up with reasons why two guard units or marine chapters or demon cults or orc waaaaghs are fighting. Everything is pure gameplay.

In Middle Earth, humans and elves and dwarves can only fight orcs, unless it's a big misunderstanding and huge tragedy that we will mourn for a thousand years. There's no lore-natural PVP aspect. There's limited lore-natural small scale events. Everything is the big stuff.

There's constant opportunity for humans to fight humans, just not opportunities that a developer is going to be eager to take.

"Tolkein's orcs are a metaphor for black people" is some bullshit that woke people use to bump up publication and hate-click numbers and normal people ignore. "Tolkein's black people are a metaphor for black people" isn't quite true either, but that's a harder sell to normal people, and while I'm usually a strong proponent of facts over feelings, I'm not sure "Ackshually the violent ones are a metaphor for some North African muslims" is going to help here.

unless it's a big misunderstanding and huge tragedy that we will mourn for a thousand years

Yes, certainly. We can just add more entries to the list, then?

There's also dwarves fighting elves on a large scale, occasionally, and on a small scale the elves seem to have their share classically-fey annoying tricksters and the dwarves have selfish and greedy troupes; there's enough room for moral ambiguity. But I think the problem isn't that you have a bunch of factions who trust each other too much, the problem is the opposite of:

There's limited lore-natural small scale events. Everything is the big stuff.

In the LotR books we get a worms-eye view of one part of a larger conflict, which apparently leaves lots of room for smaller-scale events to fill out an MMORPG ... but as soon as you try to get into any big stuff you're limited by the fact that our worms-eye view was of the most important part of the larger conflict, and we know how that ends. After the end is a world with less conflict and less magic and less interesting opportunities for an RPG, but before the end is a world where your RPG can only tell the side quests, because you know how the main questline ends and it's not anything to do with you personally.

With a typical MMORPG, who cares, just retcon in some more high-fantasy epic stuff and squeeze it in somewhere, and trust that your players won't stress too much about how the dragon people and the panda ninjas and on and on fit together coherently ... but the whole point of licensing LotR would be to draw in LotR fans who might get skittish if you keep getting weirder and weirder.

I've never played LotR Online, but now I'm seriously wondering how they do it. I thought it got kind of sidelined by the WoW juggernaut, went Free-to-Play, and petered out, but now I'm reading that the latest expansion for this 2007-launched game was released in November 2024, as part of a roughly one-per-year release schedule that's actually sped up after a 2013-2017 lull. Is it really that good? It's got to at least have some kind of diehard fanbase to keep servers running and content creation continuing for 18 years.

"Tolkein's orcs are a metaphor for black people" is some bullshit that woke people use to bump up publication and hate-click numbers and normal people ignore.

I was going to rant a bit about how normal people most certainly do not ignore the whole, "Tolkien is Problematic," narrative and that in fact Once Upon a Time when I was trying to slog my way through Writing Fantasy, Sci-Fi, and Horror for Dummies and all of its preachiness about making your fiction about Important issues, making your world Diverse, and being Inclusive in your writing, etc., etc., it was in fact the one page panel about Tolkien being Problematic for the lack of PoC in his writing that led me to give the whole thing up as a bad job. That really ground my gears!

Then I remembered that I'm not normal people.

There are a ton of runner-up MMORPGs still running after years or decades. Ultima Online has been up for 28 years. EverQuest. I thought I heard they shut down Final Fantasy XI a few years ago, but nope. Still going. Guild Wars. Dark Age of Camelot. RuneScape.

I guess once a game gets big enough, it gets enough of a fan base deeply invested enough that they never leave.

I didn't realize it lasted that long either. TIL

There was an MMORPG that was pretty well-received, but trying to compete with World of Warcraft was a losing proposition.

I played that game just a bit. It was super comfy. I understand why people didn't like it, because the actual gameplay was pretty much "like World of Warcraft but not as good." But it was really fun to just hang out in Middle-Earth, especially the Shire. You could grow pipeweed and smoke it. I think I'd get really addicted if they made a game that made it more like Animal Crossing and less like WoW.

Yeah but it's almost 20 years old. That's a lotta outdatedness in the video game world. They should make it again.

The rights are probably quite expensive, and people want to play the hero of the story. If you set the game after LotR, in the Fourth Age, then the biggest stories have already been told. If you set it before it, then we already know how every major story ends.

A low fantasy game about the Reunited Kingdom trying to assert its dominance over a new frontier like Angmar, Mordor and Lindon could be interesting, but you don't license fucking Middle-Earth to write a story without elves or dwarves or wizards or orcs, it's a massive waste of money.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance but it’s Turin Turambar slumming it with the petty dwarves.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats