1. He also believed that the Industrial Age was removing the magic from the world. Saurman is diminished in his magic at the end because he poured it all into making terror machines.
Everything in Middle Earth is magic if you go by the Author, who also believed that, to one degree or another, about the world we live in.BTW, I Think the "Magic" cited in the thread title is more about the Feel of magic items being lost due to the focus and playstyle of the game.
In my opinion, his biggest mistake. If the world is magical, and the forces governing it are magical, it would take deliberate effort to make something from the world, in accordance with said forces, that is not magical. I have never heard "laws of nature" refer to anything other than those rules of which our understanding was laid down by Newton et.al.
** spoiler omitted **...
And again you misunderstand. You're also taking a viewpoint from the modern relatively clean world of modern industrialisation. The industrial world that Tolkien grew up was the transition of pastoral land to an environment that was filled with smoky dank air that would have seemed a hellish environment to someone used to the cleaner airs of a generation prior. To Tolkien the Industrial world trades away a healthy green world for mere material gain and a ruined sky and landscape.
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Again, why does everyone assume that Tolkien was writing anything near the conventions of a war game that would not be invented until forty years into the future?
There is also, by the same argument, nothing magical about the mithril coat. It's not enchanted, it's just a really well made mithril coat.
It gives more or less 100% protection from Piercing damage. Likely slashing as well.
'Mithril! All folk desired it. It could be beaten like copper, and polished like glass; and the Dwarves could make of it a metal, light and yet harder than tempered steel. Its beauty was like to that of common silver, but the beauty of mithril did not tarnish or grow dim.... Bilbo had a corslet of mithril-rings that Thorin gave him. I wonder what has become of it? Gathering dust still in Michel Delving Mathom-house, I suppose.'
'What? ' cried Gimli, startled out of his silence. 'A corslet of Moria-silver? That was a kingly gift!'
'Yes,' said Gandalf. 'I never told him, but its worth was greater than the value of the whole Shire and everything in it.'
But even as they retreated... a huge orc-chieftain... leaped into the chamber... he wielded a great spear.... Diving under Aragorn's blow with the speed of a striking snake he charged into the Company and thrust with his spear straight at Frodo. The blow caught him on the right side, and Frodo was hurled against the wall and pinned.... But even as the orc... swept out his scimitar, Andúril came down upon his helm....
[Said Frodo,] 'I am alive, and whole I think. I am bruised and in pain, but it is not too bad.'
'Well,' said Aragorn, 'I can only say that hobbits are made of a stuff so tough that I have never met the like of it.... That spear-thrust would have skewered a wild boar!'
'Well, it did not skewer me, I am glad to say... though I feel as if I had been caught between a hammer and an anvil.' He said no more. He found breathing painful.
Look, my friends!' he called. 'Here's a pretty hobbit-skin to wrap an elven-princeling in! If it were known that hobbits had such hides, all the hunters of Middle-earth would be riding to the Shire.'
'And all the arrows of all the hunters in the world would be in vain,' said Gimli, gazing at the mail in wonder. 'It is a mithril-coat. Mithril! I have never seen or heard tell of one so fair. Is this the coat that Gandalf spoke of? Then he undervalued it. But it was well given!'....
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There is also, by the same argument, nothing magical about the mithril coat. It's not enchanted, it's just a really well made mithril coat.
It gives more or less 100% protection from Piercing damage. Likely slashing as well.
'Mithril! All folk desired it. It could be beaten like copper, and polished like glass; and the Dwarves could make of it a metal, light and yet harder than tempered steel. Its beauty was like to that of common silver, but the beauty of mithril did not tarnish or grow dim.... Bilbo had a corslet of mithril-rings that Thorin gave him. I wonder what has become of it? Gathering dust still in Michel Delving Mathom-house, I suppose.'
'What? ' cried Gimli, startled out of his silence. 'A corslet of Moria-silver? That was a kingly gift!'
'Yes,' said Gandalf. 'I never told him, but its worth was greater than the value of the whole Shire and everything in it.'
But even as they retreated... a huge orc-chieftain... leaped into the chamber... he wielded a great spear.... Diving under Aragorn's blow with the speed of a striking snake he charged into the Company and thrust with his spear straight at Frodo. The blow caught him on the right side, and Frodo was hurled against the wall and pinned.... But even as the orc... swept out his scimitar, Andúril came down upon his helm....
[Said Frodo,] 'I am alive, and whole I think. I am bruised and in pain, but it is not too bad.'
'Well,' said Aragorn, 'I can only say that hobbits are made of a stuff so tough that I have never met the like of it.... That spear-thrust would have skewered a wild boar!'
'Well, it did not skewer me, I am glad to say... though I feel as if I had been caught between a hammer and an anvil.' He said no more. He found breathing painful.
Look, my friends!' he called. 'Here's a pretty hobbit-skin to wrap an elven-princeling in! If it were known that hobbits had such hides, all the hunters of Middle-earth would be riding to the Shire.'
'And all the arrows of all the hunters in...
Not 100%, he was still injured (just relatively mildly so). More like high-to-middling DR of some sort
Mithril in D20/Pathfinder isn't the super rare awesome sauce artifact level protection it is in Lord of the Rings.
It's definitely true that kickstarter now has a larger share of the sales of TTRPG products than it used to. That doesn't imply that sales in other channels would have been higher if it didn't exist though.Yes, your first sentence is exactly what I was calling attention to.
I see. I didn't fully appreciate that, but thought you were saying something more.
As for your second sentence, it does indeed "imply" if you make certain reasonable assumptions about how people buy things. The key to my question is, are my assumptions borne out?
What else are you assuming? The numbers show that the market has continued expanding as kickstarter and other crowdsourcing options came onto the scene - this is true of TTRPG sales overall and sales through brick-and-mortar stores. I don't understand how you can get from there to concluding that the other channels would have been higher without kickstarter.
Quibble on Bard's Black Arrow not being magic.Find me the hint in the original book that Blargs arrow was in some way supernatural."Arrow!" said [Bard]. "Black arrow! I have saved you to the last. You have never failed me and always I have recovered you. I had you from my father and from he of old. If ever you came from the forges of the true king under the Mountain, go now and speed well!"Arrow that has been passed down in his family as an heirloom, has never missed a target he's shot it at, has always been recovered whenever he's shot it, and may very well have been created during a now-mythical golden age by dwarves at the height of their crafting prowess?
No way to interpret that as supernatural or magic at all, I guess.
Yeah, not really. It's his lucky arrow. When you assign that superstition to something, you use it less and are more careful to retrieve it, meaning it's not that remarkable he's always recovered for it. And Bard is just a really good shot, so it's not that remarkable that he has an arrow he's never missed with.
There is no indication the arrow is magic. It does nothing a normal arrow couldn't do.
Of course a +5 arrow does nothing a normal arrow couldn't do, barring something having DR magic or the like, which we don't see him fire it at. How would you identify such a magic arrow, assuming no detect magic existed?
There is also, by the same argument, nothing magical about the mithril coat. It's not enchanted, it's just a really well made mithril coat.I point again at the magic of craft that Isonaroc mentions and that I've brought up before.
But there's no grounds to invoke the "magic of craft" here. The mithril coat has demonstrable differences from what is possible in reality—an impalement from a troll is reduced to slight bruises by a coat that weighs as much as cloth. The arrow is...an arrow. That Bard likes.
And in the movie of course the Black Arrow is the last of it's kind, a specially made greater master craft long arrow specifically designed to kill dragons.
The Movie Is Not Very Good.
Yeah, I'm confusing sometimes. But hey! we communicated eventually. :)
I like talking about this stuff without getting bogged down in arguments about which system is better (or which is a capitalist plot). So thanks. :)
What more could I assume?
One way would be to look at Kickstarter projects and see if they lead the increase in the latest hot thing or follow the increase. If the latter then they are likely taking their share from the more traditional sources and not so much growing the pie.
There's gotta be other ways to slice up the data to get useful answers. Getting good data is always the hard part.
I sympathise, but to return to where I disagree with you (I think). My gut feel is that crowdsourcing is a net-positive for the TTRPG market in terms of sales and even more pertinently for sales of 'industry leaders' but that's based mainly on anecdotal evidence. (I've spent a lot of money on kickstarters and similar over the last five years and doing so has increased my expenditure via other channels - I'd be lying to pretend that experience doesn't colour my impressions).
When you replied to this comment of mine:
"It's definitely true that kickstarter now has a larger share of the sales of TTRPG products than it used to. That doesn't imply that sales in other channels would have been higher if it didn't exist though."
Your follow-up doesn't really address the bolded. I agree that those kickstarter sales might have come from money which would otherwise have been spent on more traditional distribution channels (which is kind of what you're alluding to in your most recent post - the possibility). However, I don't see any evidence of that. Your last post suggests places to look (though I'm skeptical it would be as definitive as you suggest) but doesn't really say what the reality is.
I think it's likely that the presence of more opportunities to spend money will result in more money being spent (and I think the ICv2 report you linked to supports this viewpoint). Your argument above seemed to be that people who buy in to these 'fringe games' will do so by diverting money from more mainstream purchases and that sales lost in this way will be greater than sales gained by the fringe game attracting new players who then go on to buy mainstream stuff too.
As anyone considered just casting speak with dead and asking?