Sunday, October 21, 2018

The Terrible Battle of Five Armies

As many of my friends and readers know, I am a huge fan and contributor to The One Ring Roleplaying Game (see my page on this blog dedicated to unofficial materials I've created for the game). In my view, it is the greatest roleplaying game ever produced for a number of reasons that I won't jump into in this post, except to say that one of its greatest strengths is how it was designed around the source material: the literary works of J.R.R. Tolkien.

Cover art for The Battle of Five Armies board game published by Ares Games.
As I was thinking about how characters develop in a roleplaying game versus how characters develop in a novel, my thoughts turned to The Hobbit and imagined if Professor Tolkien were a Loremaster running a game of The One Ring based on that adventure story. Particularly, I imagined how he would handle the climactic battle at The Lonely Mountain. What would be his true focus and why? Would he set up hours and hours of rolling dice and testing the prowess of his players' weapon skills? In the end, would everyone go away exhausted, yet thrilled with the glory of battle?

Looking at The Hobbit critically, The Battle of Five Armies is perhaps the second most important event in the story, second only to Bilbo's finding of the One Ring; the defeat of Smaug is probably third. Yet, in a game of The One Ring, this battle would probably be handled best as a prolonged event in narrative time, rather than as an episode of combat round by round. This seems to be the way Tolkien treats the battle in his book as well. Rather than long and detailed reports of the action, he only gives us broad and general descriptions, leaving much more to the imagination of the reader.

Let's pretend the game is underway. Tolkien, the Loremaster, calls the battle "terrible" and then gives an overview of the situation: the history, the geography, and the importance of the unity between Elves, Men, and Dwarves against a common enemy.

Bilbo is a player-hero and his player grabs storytelling initiative to tell everyone his thoughts. He says that the battle is the most dreadful of all his experiences and he hates it more than anything else. Tolkien allows Bilbo's Merciful trait to keep him off to the side, where he remains "quite unimportant" in the battle at the moment and out of harms way.

Tolkien then retakes the narrative and describes the rocks as being "stained black with goblin blood" and that "many of their own [the goblins'] wolves were turning on them and rending the dead and the wounded." Their bodies "were piled in heaps till Dale was dark and hideous with their corpses." In general, he describes the Battle of Five Armies as being filled with blood, betrayal, and death.

Because of such anguish, Tolkien requires a Corruption test. Bilbo's player fails the roll and gains 1 point of Shadow. He says, "Misery me! I have heard songs of many battles, and I have always understood that defeat may be glorious. It seems very uncomfortable, not to say distressing. I wish I was well out of it." Because he plays his character's qualities well, Loremaster Tolkien thinks of a way to let him out.

Tolkien tells Bilbo he can see Eagles approaching. "The Eagles!" Bilbo cries, informing his allies. The player suddenly has hope that the end is near. Maybe the glory of victory will remove his misery. 

But that is not how Loremaster Tolkien decides to end it. Instead, a stone hurtling from above smashes into Bilbo's helm, he falls to the ground, and is knocked unconscious. When he finally wakes up, he is all alone lying on the flat stones of Ravenhill; no one is nearby. It is obvious that the battle is over and the victory has been won, but he missed it all. Tolkien says, "A cloudless day, but cold, is broad above you. You are shaking, and chilled as stone, but your head burns with fire..." 

Bilbo's player reveals his thoughts. "Victory after all, I suppose!" But the Loremaster reminds him that his head is aching. "Well, it seems a very gloomy business."

At this moment, the second most important event in The Hobbit is upstaged by an even more significant development: Bilbo's growth as a hero! 

You see, war is a terrible and gloomy affair, and the Battle of Five Armies teaches him that there is not much glory in either defeat or victory. Yet, long afterwards, Bilbo would recall the battle with fondness; he was proud to say that he took part in it. Certainly not because he enjoyed violence, but for the unity of the Free Peoples.

I'm not going to lie. I enjoy combat in roleplaying games. I like defending the good, the innocent, and righteous while vanquishing evil enemies. This is heroic to me. I see it as a form of compassion toward the weak and helpless. Tolkien, however, was a bit more familiar with warfare than I. If it were always so clearly good versus evil, he might agree with me. But, he saw corruption at various stages. He also saw that God could even use evil to bring about good. Therefore, we should not be so quick to kill, but to show pity. Look at how he treated Gollum.

All of this teaches me that roleplaying games do not have to glorify violence in order to be entertaining or satisfying. A change of focus to the heroic development of the characters and the overall advancement of good makes for a much deeper game than spending hours rolling dice and killing the bad guys. 

Monday, March 19, 2018

They Stand Tall in Our Dreams

‘I need no map,’ said Gimli, who had come up with Legolas, and was gazing out before him with a strange light in his deep eyes. ‘There is the land where our fathers worked of old, and we have wrought the image of those mountains into many works of metal and of stone, and into many songs and tales. They stand tall in our dreams: Baraz, Zirak, Shathûr.

‘Only once before have I seen them from afar in waking life, but I know them and their names, for under them lies Khazad-dûm, the Dwarrowdelf, that is now called the Black Pit, Moria in the Elvish tongue. Yonder stands Barazinbar, the Redhorn, cruel Caradhras; and beyond him are Silvertine and Cloudyhead: Celebdil the White, and Fanuidhol the Grey, that we call Zirakzigil and Bundushathûr.

‘There the Misty Mountains divide, and between their arms lies the deep-shadowed valley which we cannot forget: Azanulbizar, the Dimrill Dale, which the Elves call Nanduhirion.’

—Tolkien, J.R.R.. The Lord of the Rings: One Volume (p. 283). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.

Deep into their hearts and minds the Dwarves engraved the images and names of these special peaks, the mountains where their fathers worked in days long past, so much so that Gimli didn’t even need a map, though he had only actually seen these lands once from afar. They did this through the arts of metalwork and stonework, as well as oral tradition.

In our world, remembering is something we no longer work very hard to do. We have technology to do our thinking. Google it. Ask Siri. Ask Alexa. We can retrieve information in seconds. To be honest, it’s annoying at times. Anyone can act like an ‘expert’ after reading a detailed online article. (I’ve been guilty of this myself, so I’m not pointing fingers.) But, how quickly that information disappears from our minds! Heck, I’ve even memorized scripts, maps of locations, and pieces of foreign languages, but now I forget them. I guess they weren’t that important.

Where am I going with all this? We remember the things we love, and we find ways to honor them. 

The Dwarves loved their mountains and they stood tall in their dreams. What stands tall in your dreams? Who, what, or where would you never need to ask Siri about? How do you honor those things in your life?

This small portion of The Fellowship of the Ring has reminded me to honor the things I love and to cherish them through the arts. God gave me the desire to draw and write and speak and he has gifted me in those things. Through them, I think I can do more to show honor. So often, I am focused on creating new things or fresh ideas. This has given me a new approach to art: to honor and memorialize what I love and to share them with my family and friends. After all, those will be the remembered things, the mountains that stand tall in our dreams.