They all look the same to me
I have begun a new campaign with a new group, playing The One Ring. This is Cubicle 7’s Middle Earth role playing game, which seems to have been broadly well-received and is certainly a thoughtful and beautiful work. We’re playing on Wednesday nights for about 3 hours, and so far we’ve only managed to complete character creation, so I can’t say anything about game play, but I can give a brief description of character creation.
Basically in this game you make three choices: your culture (i.e. race); your “calling” which is some kind of aspect of your character determining things like what skills will advance fastest and (from memory) your vulnerability to the shadow; and your background, which is effectively your character class and further refines some aspects of your character. After this you get 10 points to spend on skills (advancing at 1 point per rank, cumulative), weapon skills (2 points per rank, cumulative) or a few other things. Characters have a bunch of traits that determine aspects of how their personality will affect play (e.g. brave, foolhardy etc) and also some special properties that are determined at one of these three stages. Character creation is relatively quick and involves no dice rolling: in fact nothing about it is random at all.
This character creation system has made some interesting decisions that clearly break with standard RPG character creation practice. In particular:
- All your starting skill and weapon choices are determined by your race. Your skills are fixed and immutable – every elf or woodman starts with the same set of skills – and you have a choice of just two weapon sets, with no variation. You can use those 10 points to modify these but these 10 points are a tiny portion of the total skill allocation. You start with at least one skill at rank 3, for example, which would require almost all the 10 points to acquire. Effectively your starting abilities are entirely determined by your race
- Your starting attributes are determined by a combination of race and background. Most backgrounds appear to be similar across the races (I didn’t get a chance to look in detail but e.g. Woodmen and Dwarves both get “Slayer” as a choice) but the attributes will be distributed differently for two races with the same background. For example I have 2/4/7 in the three attributes, while a dwarf might get 4/5/4, for example. You get to add “favour to these” but this favour amounts to just 6 points spread over the three attributes, and is only used under specific conditions, so it’s not the main determinant of your attributes
- The majority of your starting personality traits are determined by your race. There is a list of perhaps 12, and you can choose two from a sub list of 6 that are specified for your race
Because of the combination of calling and background it is possible for two characters of the same race to differ slightly from each other in outlook, wealth and attributes, but they will essentially have exactly the same skills and almost the same attributes at the start of play. It’s not like D&D where you slightly modify the base random distribution of attributes, and skills are entirely class-based; it’s not like warhammer where attributes have a slightly different base and level of randomness and there are some additional talents. Everything is determined by your race.
What a remarkable coincidence! How amazing that a game that attempts to faithfully recreate the world of Lord of the Rings should choose a character creation system in which your race determines everything that we normally accept as mutable about a character. I have said before that Tolkien’s work is heavy with racial determinism and the race-as-destiny theories of the era in which he wrote, and I have received considerable pushback for it. I have previously adduced as evidence of this Tolkien’s attractiveness to fascists. I’ve also said that his work has undue influence on other fantasy writers and casts a shadow of racialism across the whole hobby. Well, what a surprise then to discover that a game attempting to recreate the world puts this aspect of it at the centre. And in case one were inclined to suspect that this is just a coincidence, here is the creator of the game on this issue:
The main reason behind the majority of the design choices in The One Ring is faithfulness to the sources. In Middle-earth, culture is the main defining element in an individual, and by limiting the choices in that regard help us attain a genuine ‘in-world’ perspective
Notice what that blog post adds: culture determines one’s virtues and rewards. And in this comment, “culture” is simply code for race. In attempting to recreate the world faithfully, anyone who delves into it immediately notices that they need to privilege race over all other aspects of background as a determinant of not just physical attributes but also psychological and moral attributes.
I have skimmed a few reviews of this game and the completely non-random aspect of character creation doesn’t seem to come out as a big issue for anyone. I have a suspicion that if someone tried such a tactic in any other setting their game would be viewed the worse for it, but in this case the game gets a pass. These reviews have generally also talked about how this game really is an immersive Tolkien experience, to the extent that they can’t imagine the system being used for anything else. I can’t give my opinion on that yet, since we haven’t started playing, but it certainly looks like there are many aspects beyond the character creation that imbue the game with a strong Tolkienesque flavour – the special rules for travel and fellowship and the Hope/Shadow mechanic, for example. I’m not sure if I’m going to like the system, but it looks intriguing and possibly very very good (the reviews suggest that people who play it really like it). I’ll review that when I have had a chance to test it.
I guess it’s not obvious from my critical review of Tolkien’s work but I am a real sucker for his world – I love it and have gamed in it extensively using MERP. I think The One Ring could be a vast improvement on MERP and offer exactly the right flavour of gaming that I have been looking for in Tolkien’s rich, detailed and beautiful world. But I go into that world with a clear understanding of what it is – a scientific racist, authoritarian conservative fantasy of a dead past that we can all hope will never come back to life. This game is another example of just how powerful the racial underpinnings of the world are, and how hard it is to genuinely appreciate the world without accepting that aspect of its creation. And I present this game as further evidence of my claim that whether anyone wants to admit it or not, no one can conceive of Tolkien’s world without accepting the deterministic and moralistic nature of his racial heirarchy.
While we enjoy this world and all its descendants, we should also remember that fantasy needs to be about so much more than this, and that while its creative, lyrical and mythical influences on fantasy have been huge and beneficial, the overarching influence of its scientific racism and conservatism have not done this genre – or our gaming world – any favours.
Compromise and Conceit 
September 13, 2016 at 2:43 pm
I played this at PAX Australia last year and enjoyed it despite the GM. We didn’t roll characters, it being a con game and all, so I didn’t notice these elements of it. I found the system didn’t really get in the way so with a good GM all things should be possible although if you’re not a Tolkien fan I’m not sure it would work for you – perhaps you should try to subvert the dominant paradigm in the world? A dwarf looking to farm and live the poor life of a friar?
Interestingly there’s now a D&D 5e version of the rules which I believe has classes and races as separate.
Anyway, I recently read LotR to my kids and was struck far more by the way class relations were presented as inherent and natural (until reading it aloud I’d never really noticed the entirely different voices for each chapter – epic near poetry when talking about Aragon, plain language when talking about Sam). I appreciated it as a fairly monumental writing task even if I (and my kids) found the more epic parts a little frustrating. And the man could really, really write a battle scene.
Not to say you’re wrong about the racial essentialism but in some senses LotR is about overcoming racism – despite plainly stated prejudice a mismash of almost all the races on Middle Earth come together and end up not just defeating the bad guys but coming to love and respect each other as equals. And then he gets to Swarthy Southrons and throws it all out the window. In almost all aspects it is a vastly more complex vision than most of his critics or fans allow for.
Regardless, within fantasy there’s now plenty of alternative visions to the Class and Race narratives of the good Professor, both good and bad. And we may not have had some of them if they weren’t reacting to the worldview of Tolkien.
September 13, 2016 at 3:34 pm
Nick, I’d never thought about the different narrative styles for the different characters and their class relationship, that’s really interesting. I might have to dig around in that. Certainly some of the mythic and race elements of the story mean that the strong class prejudices tend to be overlooked – to the point where the American right were trying to sell The Return of the King as some kind of story about democratic victory over the swarthy hordes, even though it’s a story about the restoration of monarchy. In many ways I think LoTR is a kind of beautifully preserved expression of conservative inter-war revanchism, and as a museum piece in that regard quite amazing. Also it’s worth bearing in mind that at the time of writing democracy was new and kind of fragile and maybe not entirely desirable – women didn’t yet have the vote in every country and the franchise had only been extended to all men a few generations ago, and democracy was really struggling in e.g. Germany and Japan. So as a monarchist text for its time and place that makes it very interesting.
REgarding the multi-racial aspect of the fellowship, I wrote a piece about this and how it isn’t really a model of multiculturalism. I can see how lots of people like to interpret it that way, but I think the interpretation is at odds with the fundamental structure of the world. And as you say, Southrons don’t get to be part of it…
September 14, 2016 at 11:28 am
Ok, point well made on the multiculturalism – diverse may be a better way to put it. Although the strong impression I get is that post-LotR Gondor is more diverse than it was before but again not multicultural in a true sense and I may be making that up through wishful thinking.
I wasn’t aware of the US Right selling LotR as a triumph of the West over the east in a democratic sense, but then again, most of the US right aren’t democratic in the way us Antipodeans see it but fairly monarchical in the way the office of the Presidency is perceived (as long as it’s a president they agree with of course)
My current game is set in a (by no means authentic) fantasy analogue of the Caliphate of Cordoba during the Reconquista. In the town the PCs are based in (modelled on Rhonda in Andalusia) there is a diverse population living alongside each other of a variety of humans and other demihuman races in relative harmony. The noble class are of one ethnic group and there is a minor tax on heathens but the administration is ethnically mixed and worship of other gods is free. It’s a good fit for a D&D campaign because it allows you to have a Norse style fantasy barbarian alongside halflings and elves and rangers etc. without an epic quest narrative bringing them all together.
September 14, 2016 at 2:05 pm
Remember this is the same US right movement that held up 300 as a model of US resistance to Islamic terrorism, completely missing the rampant homoeroticism of that movie and the fact that half the population of the model America couldn’t vote. I guess they aren’t so great at allegory.
Your campaign setting sounds pretty cool. I guess that this mixed-race living is something that D&D and the other early games added onto their Tolkienesque heritage – most of the societies in Tolkien are pretty unmixed but the fundamental assumption of D&D is that you will be in a mixed-race group, and there’s nothing anywhere to suggest that the communities don’t meet in melting pot cities – which is what we all assumed in actual gameplay. I think D&D stripped out some of this political superstructure from LoTR when it imported many of its racial structures. Which is a good thing…
September 16, 2016 at 10:08 am
It’s a good thing for a fun game. Is it a good thing to ignore that political superstructure rather than critiquing it for fantasy as a whole? I don’t think anyone would say that Gygax was a political progressive!
September 16, 2016 at 2:57 pm
I’m probably weird, because I like to critique the things I enjoy, whether positively or negatively – I enjoy trying to work out what was bubbling beneath the surface, and how different backgrounds and cultural assumptions affect the work, or are visible through it. This applies as much to authors and games I like, like China Mieville or this, as it does to things I really don’t like (like the Turner Diaries). Sometimes it’s surprising how people can try to do one thing and end up doing completely the opposite, as in the complete right wing fail-fest that is 300, and it’s possible to enjoy really joyous books like for example Jerusalem Fire, that have pretty execrable politics. So I think it’s always good to understand the political superstructure, and to think about how you can change it or what effect it might be having not just on the genre but on you personally – and on people who might be more sensitive to that superstructure than you are yourself.
September 18, 2016 at 6:28 pm
I think that’s reasonably common in nerd circles and in academic circles and if you cross over into both (which you do and I do to a certain extent) then it’s almost impossible to avoid