love to see it

every now and then I remember that these are real actual books you can buy with your actual money

not gonna QP this dude as he has a smaller account than me, but-- this is suck a weirdly pervasive belief everywhere that doesn't have nationalised health, by people who have clearly not even *tried* to confirm if there's any truth to it

call-back to the time I wrote a fake first page of a book, formatted it, printed it out and photographed it to make it look like an advance copy

i need everyone to stop immediately and look at my NEW SHOES

that odyssey trailer looks crap, they're missing the most important character from the original

And he said that Samwise Gamgee, Frodo's former gardener, devoted servant and fiercely loyal friend, was "indeed a reflexion of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognised as so far superior to myself."

He said that the descriptions of both the Dead Marshes, where Frodo and Sam waded through stagnant pools full of dead bodies, and the blasted land of Mordor itself, "owed something" to his experiences fighting in the Battle of the Somme.

That's far from saying he was unaware of the parallels in the books! He said that Faramir, Boromi's younger, more scholarly brother, resembled him, with his "reverence for the old histories and sacred values that helps him through a bitter war."

Tolkien's distaste came not from the way an allegory would draw on or parallel real-world events, but from the presumption that it had one true interpretation, as intended by the author. He preferred "applicability," in which a story from which each reader might take whatever meaning they wished.

Tolkien, whatever else may be said about him, was very careful about word choice. When he spoke about allegory, he was talking specifically about those stories that serve as a deliberate metaphor or parable (like how Orwell's Animal Farm was a metaphor for the early years of the Soviet Union).

What Tolkien denied - including in his introduction to later editions of Fellowship of the Ring - was that The Lord of the Rings was an "allegory" (in fact, he said, he "cordially dislike[d] allegory in all its manifestations").

Alright, I've come across it again, and seem to see it more and more often, so: a brief thread on the widely repeated wisdom that Tolkien "denied that The Lord of the Rings was influenced by WWI."

my twelve year old designed and made a fucken FUNCTIONAL LOCK out of LEGO it doesn't open without the key, and specifically needs the RIGHT key, because it has FUCKEN TUMBLERS MFERS

I almost forgot! #edballs

me: [touching the soil] There was... a battle... here...

Ah, I see!

if you're not familiar with them, galahs -- or "rose-breasted cockatoos" -- are grey-and-pink parrots found in vast numbers all over Australia. galahs are famous for four things: their lovely plumage, their chirruping song, for being apparently indestructible and for being dumb as a rock.

I've left Eclectic with a bunch of fliers, and with a double handful of copies of the Quick Start Guide if you want one and you're quick (I've also still got a few Quick Starts myself).

Everyone had a great time, and came away excited to share the game with others. Highlights: - The dumb-as-a-brick berserker doing a fake "scrying" to send the rival adventuring party the wrong way.

Daughter (not pictured) and I ran three demos in the end, one of them with a couple of random customers we lured down from the shop floor (they'd never roleplayed before!).

Well, that's the day done. Huge thanks to @eclecticgames.bsky.social for hosting me, and to the folks who came by to try out @rebellionunplugged.bsky.social's Tunnels & Trolls: A New Age!

Then in 2019 Elliott Investment Management (who'd already bought Waterstones off Mamut) bought Barnes & Noble in the US and appointed Daunt to run both chains, and he promptly did the same there. Battle scarred UK editors had to try and reassure our US counterparts.

The solo adventures featured places and sometimes repeated characters, but little in the way of a persistent, fleshed out setting to serve as a backdrop for games.

Forgot to say my favourite thing! The setting was always kinda vague. St. Andre described it as "The Lord of The Rings as it would have been done by Marvel Comics in 1974 with Conan, Elric, the Gray Mouser and a host of badguys thrown in." Later editions included a setting called Trollworld:

And yes, I understand the spell Take That, You Fiend will be in the new edition...

At the same time, the game is fully updated, learning from fifty years of advances in game design. It is, if anything, quicker and easier than ever, but with collaborative and narrative game mechanics building on some of the latest ideas in the current hobby.