While I disagree with the idea of closing the forums, I have to admit that most recent posts have been fairly, well... useless! People have either: come up with silly proposals without reading older posts (+ resulting angry replies); dissed(& praised?) MEO (and that includes Yours Truly...); showed off their supposed knowledge of Tolkien's sources of inspiration; and other more silly things I cannot remember.

So why not try to start a more constructive thread? I actually found that the few interesting posts have been those in which people proposed ideas for possible future projects for the team to pursue.

I know Surian wrote that the team might split and work on separate projects (don't do that!), and I know that in any case they will choose whatever is of their likings. But perhaps if we could all contribute with our ideas and preferences we might help them understand what their fans really want and perhaps someone will come up with a spark of creativity that might inspire them to stick together...

So far, reading older threads, some proposals have already been made. Let me try to make some sense out of them:

Historical/mythological mod: since the team was so obsessed with realism when developing MEMod, this might make the most logical transition. Various subproposals have been:

- The Norse world with its mythology that insipired Tolkien himself (don't know much about it myself so someone fill me in! Pros? Cons?)

- The Arthurian English Dark Ages. This was my idea so let me expand it a bit further. If we skip the silly recent film, and all other cliches attached to it (including Monty Python... I know it's brilliant but that's not what we want, is it?), I think this setting has been retold so many times that it leaves plenty of scope for creativity and imagination. The Team could want to choose to retell the story alltogether or just add a side-plot that was never told before... it doesn't even have to involve Arthur & Co. In general, I think a setting featuring the same technological setting as Tolkiens' ME, just a hint of magic, Viking invasions, civil warfare and the possible extra (at the Devs discreetion) of the quest for the grail (with its relative mysticism... could even make a dark version of it.... ), has significant potential as a transition from ME. So as I see it - Pros: well known (plus no copyrights involved!); potentially beautiful setting (if one can get over the cliches); reasonably smooth transition from ME. Cons: well, not everyone might be capable of getting over the cliches... ; no Orcs, Elves, Hobbits & Co. around.

- The Middle-Ages. Not much has actually been said about this but, as I see it, the Mod could be set in feudal Europe with you starting a commoner and, say, working yourself up the feudal ladder to become some local lord... or something like that, perhaps it might even involve the Crusades... Pros: about the right technological setting; makes for a good historical setting Cons: I don't know, doesn't really convince me, lacks of imagination. Besides, if you keep it historical, no room for ANY magic of any sort (perhaps just some mysticism, if you believe in the power of prayer...). Also it would be a human-only setting.

- New proposal! Just writing the Middle-Ages paragraph above, I thought it would be much more "spicy" to have a scenario resembling Vampire: the Masquerade (I guess though for copyright reason you'd have to dissociate from that name). While this wouldn't be strictly historical, I think it would be way more exciting to have vampire clans involved.

Create a new world altogether: this would indeed grant the Devs the biggest artistic license of all as they could do exactly what they want. Some suggestions have been:

- Fantasy-style world. This would really allow the team to keep most of the MEMod material and the result world would probably bear a lot of similarities to ME. Pros: just said them! Cons: the team originally wanted MEMod to be a tribute to Tolkien and doing a bastardised world, would probably be against their credo (just like the changing names idea was). I guess they could do a very different fantasy setting, but I imagine the temptation to stick to Tolkien's way would be strong...

- Star Wars Mod.... Pros: (almost) everyone loves SW Cons: I do think there are way too many SW games around already and besides, it probably is neigh-on-impossible to convert

- Post-holocaust with elves&co.: Well, that describes it really.... Pros: ehmm.... sorry DMKW, but I am not really a fan of this idea... original I guess! Cons: I think it would involve a LOT of work from the Team to adapt (especially if you mean post-nuclear holocaust!)

Any more suggestions? Oh yeah, before I forget, DMKW had the interesting idea of perhaps having the Mod released in chapters. I think this might make sense as instead of having one single huge Mod that would take ages to finish, it could be split in chapters (of the same story presumably) released regularly as the team works. I am not sure how practical this might be though as in any case all the scripting would have to be done before any chapter is released and I don't know what proportion of the work world modelling takes. Still, there's an interesting proposal.... any more?

NOOO!!! It's MY brain cell!! Give it back!

Another genius, original idea by the MEMod team [well, at least a member of it.] GASP! How do they do it?

Seriously, how do they? I wasn't being sarcastic/cynical, etc... I can't think of anything original....

Creating a custom-made world is not as easy as you would think - not if you want to have a believable, consistent gameworld.

You want to have mountains in your invented gameworld..... mountains are formed by certain geological processes. Which process created your mountains? How old are those mountains? How have they been affected by erosion? Was there glaciation? All these questions will affect how your mountains look in the gameworld - and these processes will also affect the area surrounding the mountains.

What kind of rock do your mountains consist of? Are there cavern systems or not? What mineral resources would you find in that kind of rock?


Then you want forests.... what's the climate like in the area to be forested? What soil conditions are there? This will determine the vegetation, which in turn will affect the fauna. Do people live in that forest, and if so, why?


Then you create the different races and cultures for your world.... why do they settle where you want them? What do they live on? What do they trade? Who do they trade with? How have their superstitions and belief systems shaped their culture? How has their history shaped their society?

All the various factors - geology, climate, economy, history, culture just a few among them - need to be taken into account if you want to create a believable gameworld, a gameworld which is consistent within itself, and so allows the suspension of disbelief on the part of the player.

Designing a world which just places a mountain range here, a river there and a town somewhere in between is, IMO, poor design.


It is actually far easier to design a gameworld when you can reference it against the real world. For the mountains above Moria, for instance, we were looking at alpine massifs for reference - the actual shape of the mountains, of the valleys between them etc. A real mountain will give you a far more realistic heightmap for your gameworld than a heightmap you create yourself.

The design of Middle-earth didn't only require extensive research of Tolkien's works - the information found in the books was frequently just a starting point. Take just one aspect of dwarven society for instance - how would they extract, transport and process ores? Tolkien gives us little detail - so we had to look to 'real world' antique mining techniques for references.


Designing a fantasy setting is very hard work indeed - if you want to design it well.

Good point, but it was always my wish to create a dynamic, living world to which everyone could contribute with their own imagination. I wanted a world so complex that not even I could understand it in its fullness. I made a kind of testrun of this on a German website and had some success. One person developed a full language with alphabeth for one of the unhuman races and some other persons invented strange weapons and animals.

Interesting is that I acctually created my world from the wish of creating something with more depth than all those fantasy worlds existing. I always thought those were just too easy, too simple to be true. Reality is not so simple as described in most fantasy books. I wanted a world with a huge complexity, so that not even I could understand it full or know everything about it. I wanted my world to live, not only on the paper, but almost real. A changable world with its own dynamic. That's one reason why chance plays such a great role inside everything I have written about it.

I almost curse myself now that I didn't take the time to translate anything. This is mostly due to the fact that I had a time limit until I had to finish the first version of the novel, perhaps I will now find more time to do some translations.

OK, to give you at least an impression what exactly is already created:

- Complete geography with complete maps of the whole world
- Complete Calendar, Metrics, Currencies
- Titles and Ranks in military and politic
- Complete History and Chronicles
- Complete Religions
- Various pieces of literature (I wanted other persons to contribute to the literature, so I didn't do much there myself). Parts of religious books, philosophical books and some novels exist.
- Parts of some of the languages, especially the two major languages Sargaubonian and Kuldian
- Essays about inhuman beings, ancient civilizations and the history of my world


Most material I have posted on my website and already (as I had planned) some persons added to it.

http://18960.rapidforum.com/


Of course I ask myself now what exactly you understand under a world with depth. For myself, a world has depth as soon as it has becomen relative (no black and white but shades of grey), with complex and dynamic history, philosophy and religions. Change must be a very important element in any world with depth, a world in which everything stays the same for millenia is a just too simplified and unrealistic.

By these criterias, almost all Fantasy worlds do not possess any depth, since they are mostly too simplified.

The problem with Tolkien's Middle-Earth isn't lacking depth, but what I like to call "Papyrus-World-Syndrom". Meaning a world which only exists on old scrolls, being banned forever into ancient texts which have been discussed over and over again until all dynamics have vanished from the world forever, since everything has a pupose attached to. Of course this is exactly what Tolkien wanted, so I can't blame him there.

Things just happen, mostly without any reason. Reason is only a fiction of our human mind, reason does not rule in reality. The world is too complex that it's mechanics can be understood by human beings. And that is exactly the point where I started with my world.

The hero was shot because he went for a piss and didn't pay attention. The evil overlord's plan failed because of a variable he didn't count into his plan and which destroyed his beautiful plan. The king was quite annoyed the morning he insulted his duke and later on was sorry for it, but it was enough to start a war. The emperor slipped on the ground and broke his neck as he lead his army into battle. Because the burglar was a little clumsy when he tried to light the candle, the palace of the dictator burned down and foreign spies were blamed, so a war started.

And of course: Failure rules the world.

A great idea i think. You could choose to become an Asha'man for a male magic user or Aes Sedai for female. Be a Warder trained soldier (couldn't really BE a warder because of the bond and that) or just a soldier or whatever. Then theres the chances of meeting the main people from the books. Not sure how it'd all go but I reckon its an option

OR theres the option of re creating Osten Ard (the world of the Memory, Sorrow and Thorn books)

I agree that a new world could potentially be vary fascinating, however I would have to agree with Theta that this would be the case only if said world would be properly researched and developed (plus possibly feature a spark of originality as well, I personally don't really want any more ME/D&D world clones)...

But that would be an absolute immense task! Don't forget that it took Tolkien his whole life to develop ME, and while no one would ever expect the team to go anywhere close to that level of detail, even creating a small believable scenario would probably take years!

And you couldn't make it too small in any case... even a place the size of Vvandervell (sp?), which if I remember correctly is just an island off the main continent where Daggerfall was set, wouldn't be credible as a stand alone world. So either recreate something huge (approaching ME in size) or the team would just have to say that their plot is set in a part of world X.... but knowing their almost maniacal obsession for detail, they would (and should) still want to create enough background for the remaining out-of-game world to make the scenario credible... plus all the history, cultural backgrounds, languages.... which would probably take ages to do!

And after all let's not forget that, at least IMO, the main attraction of MEMod was the possibility to immerse ourselves in something we are all familiar with and love, Middle Earth. If this had been just another fantasy world mod, I probably wouldn't have had a second look at these forums, even considering all the featured extras...

So if we can no longer walk through ME, I would probably still prefer a chance to experience something I am familiar with and of which I know the background of. Or at least of something I could find out more about without needing the Devs to write dozens and dozens of pages...

And I think real events/places also make for much more powerful settings... I don't know, imagine for example sailing across the Bosphorous to assault Costantinople... or walking through a plague-striken London... or hiding in the Roman catacombs to escape the Inquisition.....

So to conclude, unless the Devs have a truly original & feasible idea to develop their own world on, I think it will not only be easier for them to stick to an historical scenario (or "pseudo-historical" for the matter) from which there would be a wealth of sources to draw from, but the final result would also probably be much more powerful as well. And there is still scope for originality and creativity, no doubt about that!

When in my original post I wrote Vampire the Masquerade, I actually meant Vampire the Dark Ages.... (it's been way too long since I've rpged those games!)

(You know, the more I think about it, the more I think I like this sort of setting... )

Not quite. You see, if you really would like to create a world which is exactly as complex as our own world, one lifetime wouldn't be enough, probably several generations wouldn't be. There are so much details involved: History, sociology, geography, biology, chemistry, physics, art, music, literature, linguistics, geology, medicine... and that is only scratching on the surface, since all those areas are split in several sub-areas.

So the great work of art is not how to create a world which is absolutely realistic as our own world, but rather a world which appears to be complex as our own world.


Tolkien's world isn't a realistic world. Not even his languages, into which Tolkien has put his major effort. Since if Middle Earth was a real place, the languages would be far more varieted than they are in Tolkien's work. Every village would have its own dialect and accents. But Tolkien had the great gift of creating a world which appears to be real by at least creating the image of depth.

And that is exactly the problem with most writers of fantasy or science fiction. Their worlds are over-simplified to the point that no one can take them serious anymore. They do not seem real at all, because things aren't just as simple as described in most books of this genre.

For example most writers underestimate the importance of chance in their creations and how difficult it acctually is to make a plan work in his fullness. In our world a plan can fail because of a minor detail which was overlooked. The problem of most writers is that in their worlds success is too great to be real. Such a kind of success does not exist in our world, at least not in that way. Success is mostly not coming because of a good plan which had all details included, but rather because of a plan which could adapt itself to different situations or just because of mere chance.

And that is the other point which makes most fiction looking so unreal: change. Change is everywhere and determines everything. Pan tarei. Everything flows. A human being can hold change perhaps for a lifetime, if this human being is mighty enough. But mostly not even this is possible. The world has its own rules which cannot be controlled by any human being whatsoever powerful. And that is exaclty the point: most works of fiction are based on a world which almost is like a picture without change or movement or at least only minimal change or movement.


Take for example Tolkien who is a rather good example, since change acctually is to some degree in his world. But he seemed to have overlooked Numenor. The Numenorians with their longer than normal lifes and their flourishing would have certainly developed a higher level of technology during the course of their realm. At least they would have certainly left middle age technolgy behind and reached the technological level of the beginning modern age or even more. In their later years when wars became more frequent, the Numenorians would have certainly developed higher technology of warfare.

That is acctually a good idea, since here you can work with something already given (like Middle Earth was) and it will only take research (hopefully good research, but I don't doubt that the team will not dissapoint in this area) to create a mod based on historic events.

Hmm... Where did i put it... Ah! Here it is!


*Reloads the Crossbow*


Run Theta! Soon you will have a bolt in your groin!

... *Hides the spice*...



Now you all have to serve me! I controll the spice!

I concur.





EDIT: Please dont post useless oneliner(two words?)- posts anymore. Read the rules.

The guys stopped working on the mod since it was an adaption of a copyrighted book, something which would inevitably have been illegal...

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Hopefully in the time it took you to read these dots, you'll have come to understand what I'm implying.

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(A few extra, just incase you hadn't).

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