I guess people are silent when they get what they like, but when they don't - they start coming up with reasons why the stuff they don't like shouldn't be, like "source material doesn't delve into this directly, and for a reason" (while the only reason it's not delving there is none of the characters being present there physically at the times of the source material events).

All we got were dry, historian-esque factoids about them. The source material doesn't delve into them directly. And for a reason.

That's Tolkien for you. The Appendices are basically a collection of dry, historian-esque factoids about diverse peoples and events, and yet here we are with quests like Ruins of Belegost, Mount Gram, Celebrimbor's Secret, etc etc. The whole point of the game (except for the sagas), is that the designers can take a minuscule account of an event or place not dealt with anywhere else and create a story from it. I see no reason why Belegaer and sea battles are more far fetched than the quests I just named.

I think this really hits the nail on the head. I came to this game really looking at it to be a chance to explore the story lines from The Hobbit and LOTR in a new way. However, as time has gone on I find myself more enthralled with the non-Saga material because it offers a chance to see other parts of the world that we do not already know and experience new events. I have really enjoyed playing through each story and each cycle because it has led me to parts of ME that I am unfamiliar with...kinda like an actual adventure! I am always amazed and amused by the devs' ability to find interesting places and events for us to explore, not to mention their aptitude for marrying these with interesting mechanics that really reflect the theme of these new areas.

I'll also add that the exploration of these new areas has pulled me deeper down the Tolkien rabbit-hole and introduced me to a much wider understanding of the lore.

Source material or not is ridicolous that lotr lcg become a ship fighting where ships have a Will attribute. This is a schematic and simplified reuse of the character template that is insulting.

You're so tunnel-visioned that you can't look past the term of "willpower" and see that it's merely an atribute that represents one's capacity to perform non-combat duties? Do you realize that it would invoke much confusion and a lot of unnecessary complications if they would replace willpower for ship cards with something else? Not to say that would be completely pointless, given the purpose this attribute will be used for.

You're so tunnel-visioned that you can't look past the term of "willpower" and see that it's merely an atribute that represents one's capacity to perform non-combat duties? Do you realize that it would invoke much confusion and a lot of unnecessary complications if they would replace willpower for ship cards with something else? Not to say that would be completely pointless, given the purpose this attribute will be used for.

I wish there was some kind of abstraction dust that I could sprinkle on people - to help them understand abstractions.

Unfortunately, as a giant bear my paws are not dexterous enough for such work.

Ships have a crew...unless you think the heroes are sailing it by themselves. This crew as a collective has a level of morale, courage, skills, and determination. In other words, willpower.

@Raven: Heroes have their Will, the Will of the ship is the total Will of the heroes?

@Danpoage: Abstraction implies also conceive a ship voyage as a place or a research card or a set of contition. A place damageable? Heroes can control place damageable, it could be a smarter solution.

Look at the Spirit Rohan cards from the first cycle. Take something like Astonishing Speed, which gives Rohan peeps +2 willpower. Does this represent the strength of will of the riders? No! It represents their ability to make progress on the quest. Similarly, the wp of the ships represents their ability to make progress on the quest, or in other words, their speed.

That's Tolkien for you. The Appendices are basically a collection of dry, historian-esque factoids about diverse peoples and events, and yet here we are with quests like Ruins of Belegost, Mount Gram, Celebrimbor's Secret, etc etc. The whole point of the game (except for the sagas), is that the designers can take a minuscule account of an event or place not dealt with anywhere else and create a story from it. I see no reason why Belegaer and sea battles are more far fetched than the quests I just named.

Ruins of Belegost, Mount Gram, Celebrimbor's secret, etc. are all in-tune with the style of the active narrative.

That certain places, people, and events weren't actively presented isn't the point. The fact that certain styles of adventure were never presented in active narrative is the point.

The whole Angmar cycle is based also on dry historical facts ... Rhudaur, Carn Dum etc are nearly not mentioned in source material. I did not read any complaints about that and I am glad I did not to be honest. I like exploring areas where there are so scarce information. It is like discovering the middle earth with my heroes

If we want to stick on just the Hobbit, LotR books content and do not take on the appendix part, the other books etc, then the game should be dead already

I'm not saying we only stick to the Hobbit/LotR content. No one complained about Rhudaur, Carn Dum, etc. because their not being in the active narrative wasn't the point. They were still perfectly in line with the themes and style of the active narrative. Ship battles and pirate antics are not. If you want to take things from the Appendices and Histories, etc., all well and good. But if you take something and present it with a style that is found nowhere in Tolkien's works, then don't be surprised if some people find it to be counter to the true spirit.

Tolkien could have put space-traveling unicorns that shoot lasers out of their horns in an Appendix, and it's validity in and of itself would not be questioned. But if you were to then make a derivative work that actively presented space-traveling unicorns shooting lasers out of their horns, would you not be surprised if many people said it wasn't in the spirit of Tolkien?

I guess people are silent when they get what they like, but when they don't - they start coming up with reasons why the stuff they don't like shouldn't be, like "source material doesn't delve into this directly, and for a reason" (while the only reason it's not delving there is none of the characters being present there physically at the times of the source material events).

I'm not saying something should be criticized just because it wasn't in the active narrative. Again, the fact that the places, people, and events are different isn't the issue. The issue is the fact that the theme/feel/style is different.

I think the most likely reason they were not part of the narrative is because they were dramatically different from the common feel of the narrative that he actually wrote. If Tolkien had wanted that type of adventure to be part of the feel, he could have easily had a character involved in such travails. But such adventures would have given the works a completely different tone than what they wound up with.

Again, I'm not saying this cycle or its ideas are bad or won't work. I actually suspect it will be quite cleverly implemented and a lot of fun. I'm just trying to objectively point out why some people may be upset with it. But perhaps a forum dedicated to XYZ is the last place to expect objective discussion related to XYZ.

The fact that the theme/feel/style is different is not an issue, it's the whole point of different cycles that each take you to different, new places and meet you with new people and foes. The most likely reason they were not part of the narrative is because there was enough stuff going on as it was, and there was no sense in throwing in additional stuff for those particular books.

@Raven: Heroes have their Will, the Will of the ship is the total Will of the heroes?

@Danpoage: Abstraction implies also conceive a ship voyage as a place or a research card or a set of contition. A place damageable? Heroes can control place damageable, it could be a smarter solution.

Let me try to be more clear. Willpower, Attack, Defense and Hit Points are all abstractions. We have a tendency to want to make them correspond to physical, measurable, things because it is easier for our minds to conceive of them that way. This does not stop them from being abstractions. Once you accept that 4 represents Eowyn's ability help accomplish her goals, and 3 represents Legolas' ability to defeat his enemies, it doesn't have to be so different to have these same concepts for a Ship. Willpower for a seafaring vessel could easily represent its maneuverability or speed - very important characteristics for navigating a ship to your destination (ie. achieving your goal). Likewise it should not seem so strange that a ship could have weapons, and that these weapons could be represented by a value so that you can compare it to other vessels to determine its relative prowess in naval warfare. Likewise, a stronger hull can withstand more punishment before it breaches and the ship sinks - this is a natural fit to be represented by hit points.

Nitpicking the details is missing the forest for the trees. These are all just abstractions. You might have a greater enjoyment of the game if you just embraced the fact that abstractions are necessary in order to represent something as rich and diverse as Middle-earth in a card game. Then again, you might just really hate ships. Too each their own, I just feel like if the abstraction of willpower/attack/defense/hit points makes no sense, then the game itself doesn't make any sense either. A zero-sum game, so to speak. This very line of argument seems odd and self-defeating to me. Perhaps I am misunderstanding you?

@danpoafe: Let me try to be more clear, abstraction must be used to build a conceptual model of an adventure and the adventure and its components like a ship can be modeled in my opinion in different ways. For me modeling a ship with a character template is ridicolous. The level of abstraction in this particular case is inappropriate.

I'm not saying something should be criticized just because it wasn't in the active narrative. Again, the fact that the places, people, and events are different isn't the issue. The issue is the fact that the theme/feel/style is different.

Again I say, they are not released yet. No-one here has played them. On what are you basing your judgement of their feel or style?

@danpoafe: Let me try to be more clear, abstraction must be used to build a conceptual model of an adventure and the adventure and its components like a ship can be modeled in my opinion in different ways. For me modeling a ship with a character template is ridiculous. The level of abstraction in this particular case is inappropriate.

Why? Why is it so important to model things in different ways, when it's so much simpler (and thus more player-friendly) to model them the same way since the whole thing is an abstraction anyway?

PocketWraith: "Again I say, they are not released yet. No-one here has played them. On what are you basing your judgement of their feel or style?"

I'm not judging the entirety of their feel or style. But we can have an inkling, because style and theme are heavily influenced by the places, people, and events involved. This is a fundamental truth of human communication, regardless of the medium.

...

I'm sure there are philosophers in the Star Wars universe, and some of their lectures and actions have a significant impact upon that world. But a Star Wars movie consisting of philosophical debates and propaganda twists would give a very different feel than anything that's come before, no matter how else they try to dress it up in traditional Star Wars style.

Sure, Tarzan battled wild cats and other predators. But he mostly foraged, staked out territory, and otherwise helped to maintain the community he was a part of. Yet a stage play describing a particularly difficult foraging year, or a wildfire that forced his clan to relocate and deal with finding new resources and resolving interpersonal conflicts, would have a dramatically different feel than anything that came before - no matter how many vines he swung from in the process.

Every war has spies, intrigue, and backroom dealings that guide military intelligence, but a Call of Duty or other first person shooter that took an espionage twist would feel dramatically different than anything that came before, even if the spies were more "James Bond" style with machine guns, bombastic armored vehicles, and other FPS tropes.

...

And so, is it really so hard to see how someone may feel that actively participating in ship battles and fighting pirates gives them a different feel than the usual traveling over land, exploring depths, and battling regimented soldiers or clans or feral beasts? Sure, there are similarities. And certainly, the way things are presented can help keep things significantly in line with the common themes and styles of what has come before. I am not claiming that this cycle will be completely off-the-wall. Indeed, the mechanics, art, and game flow are all likely to still have a "Tolkien-esque" feel and flavor to them.

But you cannot ignore the base fact that the events themselves have a significant impact on tone. The very fact that one is on a ship gives the player a sense of tone and feel immediately, and we clearly know that already without having played the game.

I'm not trying to convince anyone this cycle's themes are "false", nor do I even count myself among those who are concerned in any way. But rather I'm just trying to point out why some people may find ship battles jarring. And after banging my head against the wall so long and hard and only getting misunderstood every step of the way, it's clear that people here are more interested in being defensive of a perceived attack on their precious than they are in understanding.

@danpoafe: Let me try to be more clear, abstraction must be used to build a conceptual model of an adventure and the adventure and its components like a ship can be modeled in my opinion in different ways. For me modeling a ship with a character template is ridicolous. The level of abstraction in this particular case is inappropriate.

Does not make sense.

And you do accept a horse that is an attachment to a character?

Dan made a VERY plausible explanation; more so then I did for myself.

For me I made up the idea that the crew aboard the ship make the skill set template of the ship.

Maybe that will work for you?

@danpoafe: Let me try to be more clear, abstraction must be used to build a conceptual model of an adventure and the adventure and its components like a ship can be modeled in my opinion in different ways. For me modeling a ship with a character template is ridicolous. The level of abstraction in this particular case is inappropriate.

Does not make sense.

And you do accept a horse that is an attachment to a character?

Dan made a VERY plausible explanation; more so then I did for myself.

For me I made up the idea that the crew aboard the ship make the skill set template of the ship.

Maybe that will work for you?

A horse that you can fetch with a card called master of the FORGE, if I may add.

I'm not saying we only stick to the Hobbit/LotR content. No one complained about Rhudaur, Carn Dum, etc. because their not being in the active narrative wasn't the point. They were still perfectly in line with the themes and style of the active narrative. Ship battles and pirate antics are not. If you want to take things from the Appendices and Histories, etc., all well and good. But if you take something and present it with a style that is found nowhere in Tolkien's works, then don't be surprised if some people find it to be counter to the true spirit.

Tolkien could have put space-traveling unicorns that shoot lasers out of their horns in an Appendix, and it's validity in and of itself would not be questioned. But if you were to then make a derivative work that actively presented space-traveling unicorns shooting lasers out of their horns, would you not be surprised if many people said it wasn't in the spirit of Tolkien?

Here's where our perceptions of the source material differs. I consider the appendices part of the source material, so the idea that things found there (or for that matter, in the Silmarillion) are *certainly* in the "spirit of Tolkien". The themes and the style of the "active narrative" are very different between the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, which in turn is very different from Unfinished Tales, but all are set in a consistent world with a rich history and background. It is the world of Middle Earth that is the setting for the game, not just the children-friendly style of the Hobbit or the more serious writing in TLOTR.

A rich history and background that explicitly includes corsairs and mighty fleets! Thorongil's (Aragorn's) raid on Umbar wouldn't be out of place in an Errol Flynn movie, and I don't consider it a dry historical factoid that Thorongil personally slew the Master of the Ships himself before sailing away! I consider it the sort of incident that I *very much* want to recreate in the game.

The Corsairs of Umbar also have a significant role in the text of the LOTR, so it would be a crying shame to leave them out of the card game, and good luck bringing the corsairs in without involving ships and pirates, given what they were and how they travelled.

Now it's fair to say that the battle of Pelrigir did not include ship to ship battles, and ship battles in the raid on Umbar are only implicit. Though I am reminded by your mention of the "space travelling unicorns" of the most famous battle-involving-a-ship in the history of Middle Earth. Earendil in his flying ship Viniglot took down the most powerful of dragons, Ancalagon the Black. So here Tolkien's works has the most incredible ship battle ever conceived of, flying ship versus dragon, and FFG is getting pushback for actually featuring the ship battles that must have happened historically in the very period the game is set in, by the opponents that must have been in them? Really?

Earendil's flying ship isn't just space-travelling unicorns tucked into an obscure corner of the appendices, either. The main text has no less than a nine verse poem written by Bilbo (with a minor assist from the Dunadan) on Earendil and his ship, and the light from it, captured in the Phial of Galadriel, was essential for Frodo and Sam's passage into Mordor. In Tolkien mythology and history are intimately related.

These are all valid points for why the upcoming cycle gives some people no pause. I'm glad you're looking forward to it, and hope you enjoy it. I am looking forward to it myself, and am sure I will enjoy it myself.

But the poem being in the main text or any of your other examples don't counteract the point I've been trying to make. In fact, they actually reinforce my point: Such things never actively happened in the "here and now" of the narrative. If they had, that would have provided a different feel than anything that had been provided before.

There is a reason why Earendil's flying ship was related in a fantastic, dreamy poem, and why the raid on Umbar was described as a legendary tale of inspiring heroism instead of being explicitly shown. This isn't to say that it would have been bad to show such things or experience them, only that doing so would have resulted in a dramatically different tone and feel - again, not bad, just different.

Again, I'm not saying anyone who doesn't question the upcoming themes is "wrong". I'm merely trying to point out that it's reasonable for someone to not find it to be appropriate from their perspective. Why must everyone accept your interpretation as the only correct one? It's perfectly understandable why someone may find this upcoming cycle to be off style.

Agree to disagree. I fully agree with danpoage.

The op was also that ships etc. would be to far-fetched, and that is, as danpoage pointed out, not true.

I guess it's all a matter of taste. Each one of us has a different Middle Earth existing in their minds, which is the cool thing about fiction, you know?

In my Middle Earth there are no ships and oceans and pirates. It's all Orcs and monsters and Gollum.

Again, I'm not saying anyone who doesn't question the upcoming themes is "wrong". I'm merely trying to point out that it's reasonable for someone to not find it to be appropriate from their perspective. Why must everyone accept your interpretation as the only correct one? It's perfectly understandable why someone may find this upcoming cycle to be off style.

I guess what bothers me is the invocation of "style", since Tolkien's style is not consistent between the two major works inspiring the game and does not preclude any particular content. I'm also not sympathetic to the idea that ships/pirates are something unseen in the main narrative when Aragorn & Co. show up to the battle of Pellenor Fields in captured pirate ships. But after giving it some thought, I think what's driving the sense of incongruity is actually genre.

Corsairs and their ships are at home in Tolkien's world, as seen not just in the appendices but also the main text of LOTR. Cycles of the game involving regions and peoples that lie mostly outside the main narrative is the bread and butter of the non-saga packs. Looked at from my narrow Tolkien-focused perspective all seems as it should be -- but if I take a step back and look at it in the tradition of high fantasy *inspired* by Tolkien, then suddenly the idea of pirates and ship battles seems jarring, especially since a separate genre also exists for pirates. Seen as a *Tolkien* game, the Corsairs of Umbar are a natural and even obvious subject. Seen as a generic fantasy game, ship battles and pirates are out of place from the familiar world of dwarves and elves, goblins and dragons. I love both genres, but *outside* Tolkien overlap is slim. The Princess Bride, maybe.

My hope, and I have high confidence that it will be realized, is that this cycle will be consistent with the lore, and not just put a high fantasy skin on "Treasure Island". Ship battles are fine, but they best not be flying the Jolly Roger. It's a good sign that the "Light Cruiser" depicted as a Corsair enemy ship has black sails and oars, as described in the *main text* of the Lord of the Rings.

@JohnGarrison: The reason I kept harping on the point that no-one has played the quests so we don't know the feel/tone is because I interpreted your argument as suggesting that the portrayal did not mesh with Tolkien, which we cannot know in advance. Instead it seems you're suggesting that a seafaring adventure inherently cannot mesh with the usual feeling of Tolkien, which I disagree with for entirely different reasons.

Firstly, I can't agree with your repeated assertion that "there was a reason why events such as these didn't feature in the main narrative, because they would result in a dramatically different tone," etc. I would contend that the only reason such events do not occur iin the main narrative is that Tolkien plotted out how the story was to happen and it happened that the way his ideas ran had it all taking place on land, with the exception of Aragorn leading the army of the Dead to fight the Corsairs - and the reason that takes place 'off-screen' I think is simply to build suspense by having us hear nothing of what's happening to that group between them entering the Paths of the Dead and them reappearing at Pelennor Fields.

Secondly and more importantly, the Tolkien feel is primarily down to the richness of the fantastical world we are exploring in all its wonders. In fact the tidbits of information about making sailing tests, and being on-course or off-course to me fits quite similarly to early parts of Fellowship, with the hobbits and Aragorn getting lost and turned around in the wilderness. This is still the Tolkien world, with Tolkien characters, so I don't see how the fact those characters are sailing a ship across the ocean rather than walking through a forest inherently makes it less Tolkienian - even less so when the whole thing is abstracted into game mechanics anyway.

That's not to say that a sea adventure couldn't mean a move away from the proper Tolkien feel - I could certainly imagine a situation where the sea battles start to feel more Pirates of the Carribbean (for example) than Lord of the Rings, but the previews and FFG's previous track record with representing Arda in this game do not give me reason to expect that to happen.

(Tl;dr - Just because sea battles and the like weren't ever presented in the same Tolkienian style as the rest of the LotR narrative is no reason to think they couldn't be, if done right)

I guess it's all a matter of taste. Each one of us has a different Middle Earth existing in their minds, which is the cool thing about fiction, you know?

In my Middle Earth there are no ships and oceans and pirates. It's all Orcs and monsters and Gollum.

It is a matter of taste. The cool thing about fiction, to me, is the worlds that exist outside my mind, and the joy of discovering them. Tolkien is my favorite precisely because it seems to reveal a fully existing world with real history, mythology, and language that I had never known. Tolkien is merely the historian giving us some small state of this world, which exists in objective form outside my imagination and has so many wonders still unlearnt and undreamed of in my imagination.

Even in less developed fictional worlds, I'm not sure exactly how I can excise "canonical" material I don't like. I'd prefer there be no Jar-Jar Binks, but I don't really believe I have the power to reject Lucas' reality and substitute my own.

In your middle earth, how did Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas get to Minas Tirith?

I guess it's all a matter of taste. Each one of us has a different Middle Earth existing in their minds, which is the cool thing about fiction, you know?

In my Middle Earth there are no ships and oceans and pirates. It's all Orcs and monsters and Gollum.

It is a matter of taste. The cool thing about fiction, to me, is the worlds that exist outside my mind, and the joy of discovering them. Tolkien is my favorite precisely because it seems to reveal a fully existing world with real history, mythology, and language that I had never known. Tolkien is merely the historian giving us some small state of this world, which exists in objective form outside my imagination and has so many wonders still unlearnt and undreamed of in my imagination.

Even in less developed fictional worlds, I'm not sure exactly how I can excise "canonical" material I don't like. I'd prefer there be no Jar-Jar Binks, but I don't really believe I have the power to reject Lucas' reality and substitute my own.

In your middle earth, how did Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas get to Minas Tirith?

No ships envolved!