Toqtamish said:

The answer is simple.You cant add other things you have in your mind in a piece of art,you just can't.Maybe for some people Tolkien's writes are just a story or a fairytale but its not ,its not Hurry Potter or just a random story from forgoten realms.You cant take Mona Liza and draw a mountain on the paint because you want to add somethink, you just can't.If you dont like Tolkien's world as it is then dont make a game based on it and make your own game and add whatever you want.

As for C.Tolkien i am on his side 100%.He gave Lotr rights and what we saw is Witch King brokes Gandlaf's staff in a movie, Boromir as ringbearer in a card game and 10.000 wizards in a video game.Sorry but this is not Tolkien's world but a parody and i don't want somethink like this to huppen to Silmarilion.

I know that many people will say ,what that guy says it is just a story why take a story so serious? But for Tolkien was a work of life and i dont think that he ever wanted to see his work like a Matrix trilogy.

Games are for fun sure but you cant destroy a story like Lotr just to make a game.

ps:its a subject that we can't agree cause we see things from different angles.Fact is that companies can buy the rights and do whatever they want but customers have the right to accept or reject each company's ideas.If ffg's game will be a failure or a big succes only future will tell.

It will be a big success. That's already a given.

servant of the secret fire said:

Servant, I respect your view a lot because this body of work means a lot to me, as well. So I'm not trying to change your mind here, because you're right, people approach this from different angles. But to me there's one big reason why it's ok, and maybe it even would have been ok to John Ronald Reuel himself, to expand the world of Middle Earth: Tolkien's goal was a mythology. I can guarantee that there wasn't one dude back in ancient Greece who sat down and came up with the entire pantheon of gods and all there stories all at once, and nobody ever was allowed to change anything. It's not the way of oral histories. And I think Tolkien himself would have recognized it.

So sure, various re-tellings have gotten details wrong, such as Sam climbing back down the stairs of Cirith Ungol (my personal biggest pet peeve from the movies) but the simple fact is that people have adopted his world as a mythology. I hope he would have embraced things like people adding on to his work. Chris is in the difficult position of wanting to preserve his father's legacy but at the same time keeping it in the public's eye.

In the end I think you've compared it to the wrong kind of art. It's not the Mona Lisa, or any other painting where it's just what it is. It's a song, where different pacing, rhythms, beats, or whatever else you want to change when you cover a song means that a different person can express what it means to them. I can tell you're a huge Gandalf fan from your other posts. But the character that I love the most is Sam, because of his loyalty. The makers of this game probably have their own favorites. In the end, though, they love the source material enough to try their own version of it and see if we love their version.

In the end, you can choose to just have a party of heroes that existed in the original, and that's fine if that's how you want to play. But I can't see why you'd be upset that somebody is basically saying "I love this work so much that it inspires me to create something new." Because that's art, too.

That was brilliant. Well said.

And let's not forget this is going to be a card game . It's per definition not the exact same story as Tolkien told it. But you do get the chance to relive the spirit of it through adventures and scenarios that connect with the universe Tolkien created. It's supposed to be an experience in itself, meant to be shared with other players, just as reading Tolkiens work is an experience.

Your experience and view on the world of Tolkien will be different of mine. Blame it on our different imagination No-one has read the exact same story, eve though the letters and phrases in the book are the same. The fact that some many people connect with his work, can relate to it and enjoy their adventure through Middle Earth is, in my opinion, the real genious of Tolkien.

If the new LCG manages to achieve this, it will always be a success, regardless of FFG adding some characters that weren't in the book (in fact: who didn't imagine commoners walking by in Minas Tirith or The Shire, although they weren't always described and fleshed out in detail, when reading those passages in the book?)

Scoob your reply like Narsil said was excelent and if my English were decent we could have a nice conversation on this matter but....

I realy dont have a promblem with characters like Eleanor and Maniacske said it very well.Sure many of us we create our own characters or commoners with our imagination and Maniacske was right that the experience and the view on the world of Tolkien is very different from people to people even if we all read the same lines.

But as i said before and i am saying this one more time and this is only my personal opinion that adding a commoner or an imaginery character is a lot different from making Gandalf ringbearer or Sam killing the Blarog with his sword.I can't explain this very well but i think you can understand what i want to say.

So many people with a lot of interesting opinions in those forums is a good sign and i am sure that we will have many more conversation like this in the future. My English is the only promblem .

There is an interesting discussion going on in this topic! I think I can understand all the opinions and I also think there is no right or wrong to this, but it is really interesting to hear everyone's opinion on this - and why they feel this way.

I personally played the lotr TCG by decipher and I liked the first block very well (The Fellowship of the Ring + Expansions) and I really thought it to be a very interesting game with having both good and evil in one's deck. The reason I lost interest in the game over time, however, is because Decipher started to (in my opinion) add fictive characters or unknown characters to randomly. It just lost the feel it used to have in the beginning. What I regretted most is that the game was based on the movie and used pictures and names from the movies. This limited the game too much already before it started. They were predestined to run out of material eventually.

And that is why I already love ffgs lotr card game so much: It is not restricted by the movie, but it draws directly from Tolkien's vast universe he creaated. And as Scoopb put it so nicely, I also believe that Middle Earth was supposed to live. Like a song or a tale that is retoled many times over and over again until nobody knows the original story anymore and nobody can tell what was and what wasn't. We can see this also as recurring theme in Tolkien's work, obviously he was a big admirer of folklore and myths. Since he left us his legacy it is our job to stick to the guideline that Tolkien presented to us and should be able to explore and expand it. Now, of course there will always be people that don't quite managed to catch the spirit of the original in their work, but there are also people who manage to do so very well. I do have faith in ffg that if they create new characters, they give enough background and ties to these characters to make them believable and lovable and I would welcome this option. I would be put off by having to play a "Random Gondor Swordsman #5" because only he fits my combo, though. Let's wait and see how it turns out. I am sure that ffg know what they're doing and that they are aware that they tread on quite light water when dealing with material that has such a vast fan community as Lotr. There is a lot of potential for sure...and I realy love ffg for turning purposely away from the movies!

servant of the secret fire said:

Well, it is hard to imagine that ffg will go that far, isn't it ;-)

Look at Legolas card, sure don't look like Orladon frikkin Bloom to me.

Speaking of which: It keeps freaking me out, but the Aragorn artwork keeps reminding me of Prof. Snape (Alan Rickman) from the Harry Potter movie...please tell me I' wrong!!

faith_star83 said:

That surprises you that Decipher was trying to make money ?

Toqtamish said:

No thats the mane goal of all companies.No one makes a game just to please people or because they are so good and they want to give pleasure to humanity.

But some companies take your money and they give you back a nice and a worth play game and you feel that you give your money to somethink good and you don't just throw your money from the window.That does not count for Desipher.They used a big name like Lotr just to take your money and they gave you back a piece of s***t.People at that time realised that they don't even bother to test their game and their new cards and thats why this game is a memory.

It totally looks like Alan Rickman (Snape)!!! Dead on!

I'd be all over a Lord of the Rings movie with Alan Rickman as Aragorn.