Late Night Light Snark Open Thread: J.R.R. Tolkien, Dungeon Master
The confusing parts of Lord of the Rings start to make a lot more sense when you realize it's actually just a transcribed #DnD campaign. THREAD:
— Brennan Lee Mulligan (@BrennanLM) January 28, 2019
All due respect to the learned Professor Tolkien, for the great joy he has given us and the myriad tales he inspired, but rereading Lord of the Rings after forty years *does* make it obvious how lightly his original worldbuilding was edited.
Showed this thread to the Spousal Unit, who was a locally renowned DM back in the hex-paper days, and he LOL’d too, so…
1) Starts with a long, low-level adventure of just getting out of The Shire and getting the ring to Rivendell. DM originally prepped a low-level hobbit campaign for their roommates who had never played before.
— Brennan Lee Mulligan (@BrennanLM) January 28, 2019
3) Steve is clearly a touring musician IRL, because Gandalf is constantly dipping out of sessions for extremely weak in-game reasons. Steve also keeps writing original songs for the campaign world, which is why there's a goddamn new elf-song on every other page.
— Brennan Lee Mulligan (@BrennanLM) January 28, 2019
4) Word gets out that a fun campaign is going on. DM agrees to let Rachel play a badass ranger, she's so amped that she immediately writes 40 pages of backstory. DM reads it and thinks "This is honestly more compelling than what I had planned. Is this the campaign now?"
— Brennan Lee Mulligan (@BrennanLM) January 28, 2019
7) Everyone very psyched. Boromir's player Kevin tries to stir up trouble "because that's what his character would do." Fuckin' Kevin.
— Brennan Lee Mulligan (@BrennanLM) January 28, 2019
9) Dungeon is awesome. Great encounters. Pippin rolls a Nat 1 on Stealth. Drums in the Deep. And right before the final Boss Battle… Steve books a gig in another city that's gonna take him out of town indefinitely. Everyone SUPER BUMMED!
— Brennan Lee Mulligan (@BrennanLM) January 28, 2019
Click on any tweet above to read the rest of the thread.