Board Thread:General Mod Discussion/@comment-30303386-20171104212518/@comment-32865299-20171106204933

High King Ithilion wrote: Kickratgames wrote: ElenionoftheFirmament wrote: I have a proposition: Cease talking about factions being "inspired" by historical cultures at once. I cannot even fathom why people are so comvinced that there must be some parallel between the world of Middle-Earth and our world. Tolkien's fantasy is full of wonderful, unique, and incredibly detailed cultures. Stop making them a parallel to the cultures of our world. We are not saying they are carbon copies of real life factions. A faction has similarities to a real life one, and we're just trying to find them out. We are not saying they are exact copies, we're saying they have similarities to real life factions. If no real life faction has atleast some similarity to real life ones some things won't exist: the fact that Dalish like vodka, russians like vodka and so according to you they can't like vodka, Lossoth have igloos, inuits have igloos so lossoth can't have igloos. Wainriders, rohirrim, and Balcoth all like horses mongols like horses to so that shouldn't exist. Dwarves have viking/celtic names, so all of their names should be changed. Do you see how stupid the idea that all these factions have no similarities to real life ones? Dale does not have vodka. And the name languages don't matter in the slightest: all it does is to show how that language relates to Westron.

Factions can have certain similarities to real-life factions. However, as Tolkien himself said, just because they have translated names or certain similarities does not mean they are carbon-copies. Rohirrim are not Anglo-Saxons. The Bardings are not Slavs or Vikings. The Wainriders are not Mongols. Their art, fighting, and gear are not copied off these groups.

Ithilion, Discussions Moderator (Auta i lómë) That is what I was trying to tell Elien, a faction can have a similarity, we are not saying they are exact copies we are saying they have similarities to real life factions and we are trying to find those similarities.

we are not saying Rohrrim are Anglo-saxons and goths, we are saying Rohirrim have similarities to Anglo-Saxons and goths but which are they more similiar to. (if I had to choose what real life culture wain riders are most closely related to, I would say Scythians not mongols btw)