Thread:LOTRMod/@comment-26149161-20170428015210/@comment-25101089-20170428040638

Right. Well, I don't think lore accuracy is a bad thing. Far from it. At the very least, I have always intended that the mod should be lore-accurate, no matter how that turned out.

I suppose it is easy to look at what we've done, from a perspective like yours, and be dissatisfied. But overall, considering the full spectrum of Middle -earth adaptations, I think what we've done is quite satisfying. Some may disagree with our decisions regarding Harad and Rhun - but within the area covered by the story, how much have we actually made up? How much have we actually deviated from the lore? Not a great deal. And we're always looking for new obscure aspects of the lore that can be incorporated, like new waypoints, lore and history, aboveground Hobbit houses, certain quotes...

People have proposed adding Caragors and Graugs to the mod before, even members of the mod team, because it would be 'cool'. Which of course I shot down. People have proposed adding Warhammer-inspired 'Chaos Factions'. People have proposed adding the Farsi and the Hawaiians, for goodness' sake.

And just because people have asked for those things, it doesn't mean that adding a Mallorn Ent is suddenly lore-accurate. But anyway.

These are the main mistakes that people make when looking at the mod: They think that everything is intended to be complete in its current form; and they think that everything in its current form is exactly as I intended it. But those things aren't true, because everything, literally everything, is a work in progress, and all sorts of imperfections creep in along the road from thoughts through friends and co-workers and community to programming and implementation.

Another 'mistake' is that everyone wants the mod to be their own way. Some people desire perfect lore-accuracy, with no compromises made. Some people want a gritty and fully realistic survival RPG. Some people want an adaptation of the movies - or rather, an adaptation including things that they've come to expect from the movies. Some people don't even care about LOTR and just want to play another Minecraft mod like they're used to. Who are we to listen to? The answer is: to try to listen to all of them at once (except the last one) without upsetting the others too much. Then everyone gets a bit upset, but hopefully not a lot.

Except for the odd crazy fellow, but they can't be helped.

But I'm sure you would like to hear what I think about some specific examples of questions of lore accuracy.

'''Mail armour. '''The reason I don't want to jump up and change all the armours in the mod to chainmail is primarily that I feel it would lessen interest. If all the armour sets look similar, there is less range for people to find things that they like and dislike, there is less to attract people to certain factions. And yes, I know that mail suits can look nice, and they can have surcoats and colours and plate elements. That's not my point - the basic pattern is the same, so there would be a greater degree of similarity. It would be like, I don't know, changing every faction banner so they're all emblazoned with a tree, in different colours and styles, but still they're all just trees? Does that make sense? I can't say what will happen in the future. It may well be that we end up revising some armours to include more mail elements, where it would look good, but I don't think we're ever going to make everything strict mail and scale and leather only.

Rohan. I will admit that years ago when I first defined a Rohan biome and laid down those numbers which would determine its terrain, the image I had in mind was that scene from the movie where Aragorn first meets the Rohirrim. Sparse hills and rocky boulders. Now, recently, I reread Lord of the Rings and discovered that Rohan was in fact supposed to be a wide and flat green grassland, for the most part. I mention this in particular because soon afterwards I saw your suggestion post which presented the same ideas. So, would I like to change the Rohan biome to be flatter, and greener, and with fewer trees and boulders? Yes, of course! Why haven't I? Because there are more important things to work on at the moment, and I haven't felt like doing it yet. There are hundreds of ideas floating around in the back of my mind, and which one I choose to do next can be very whimsical.

And there are lots and lots of other things like that, but that was just one example.

Moria dungeon. We do actually have plans for this, and it probably would have been a better idea to add Moria first. But that's just the way it turned out, and Utumno is good too. Why not both?

Moredain. Of all our 'invented factions', the Moredain are the ones I'm most pleased with. I'm not sure quite what it is, but they genuinely seem to me like something that could actually have existed in Middle-earth - not as Tolkien described it, mind you, but as if he actually had been writing the history of a real world, a world which existed in full outside of what he wrote, of which he were only capturing a part. Does it bother me that their name contains edain, which should rightly only be used to denote Men of the West? Yes, it does bother me a bit, but it sounds good, certainly much better than something like Morwaith or Rhawrim, and unless we can find an accurate name that also sounds good I imagine they will stay as Moredain. (Besides, even canonically, Men often made mistakes when naming things in the Eldarin tongues.)

'''Tauredain. '''I recently found an old table of my plans for Far Harad factions from 2014. It was quite a surprise. The Moredain were described as 'the wealthiest and most advanced faction due to trade with Near Harad and Mordor', while the Tauredain were supposed to be some kind of primitive jungle-dweller stereotype with face paint and grass skirts living in huts. Just 'Forest-men', nothing too egregious. So why did that change? Where did all the weird Mesoamerican stuff and 'muh empire' come from? I honestly don't remember, but I suppose it was a product of whoever in the mod team was excited about them at the time, and who was discussing them, and who built the structures and who suggested what the textures should look like. It's not all bad, and we are working to integrate it more with the lore and have it make more sense. (Look for upcoming SmileBC videos.) But I wouldn't be surprised if, sooner or later, we carry out a significant redesign of the Tauredain.

Rhúdel. Does it bother me that we had to invent a name because Tolkien never created names for any Rhunic kingdoms? Yes, a little bit. But certainly not enough to avoid adding them altogether, or to give them a bland name like 'Men of Rhúnaer'. Does it bother me that the golden warriors' look is inspired by something from the movies? Not really, if I'm honest, because I don't think it matters if we take inspiration from the movies on something that was never described in the books. And it looks good. And - crucially - it's what people are expecting. And there was huge pressure on me to make the Easterlings look like that, both from the community and from actual members of the mod team, my friends, some of whom nonetheless got very unduly emotional over it - uncomfortably so. That wasn't fun at all. Some people wanted me to draw nonsense names straight from MERP and the Loke-Khan facebook page. I wasn't having any of that.

Basically, there is a lot in the mod that we do feel needs changing, believe it or not. Especially with regards to lore accuracy. Too much for me to list right now. And your suggestions and others' are always making us aware of more. But we do actively consider these things.

I'd also like to say that during the 4+ years of creating this mod I have become much more familiar with the lore than I was at the start, not merely with facts and knowledge, but in having gained an understanding of what Tolkien actually meant with all his writings. The whole 'mythology for the Old World', and the linguistic inspiration, and the theological considerations, and everything else. Again, there is a lot more that I could say here: suffice to say that even less than a year ago I would have been fine with adding Oriental-based factions in Far Rhun, whereas now I think that would be missing the point quite badly, and also that the emphasis on killing in the alignment system now grates on me a lot more than it did at the start. There's a fair amount that I would do differently if I started developing the mod at this point in time.

So when will we get around to changing all those things we want to change? Who knows. Changing things isn't all that satisfying, and much of the community seems to consider it a waste of time, missing the point, if not actively resisting changes, which makes it unrewarding for us. But if I could let every mod fan know one thing, it would be that nothing at all is intended as complete; everything may change at some point.

And I will be honest, when I come onto these forums and see long lists of people pointing out inaccuracies in the mod, it often feels like nitpicking. It's depressing. I want people to enjoy what we've done, to visibly appreciate it, but it seems like it's far more common for people to take the good parts for granted and fixate on small things to criticise. Am I saying it's wrong to point out inaccuracies and hope they will be corrected? Of course not; I hope that too. But it's fair to say there is a disproportionate amount of such criticism compared to genuine appreciation of the mod's good parts. And people often assume that we've never thought about what they're saying, which is in most cases not true... and sometimes it goes beyond criticism and seems to become outright anger! I see in this community a widespread sense of 'taking things for granted': as if people feel somehow entitled to a Middle-earth Minecraft mod, as if one should just exist because it does, and it should be perfect, exactly how I want it.. I think that's probably due to it being an adaptation of something that already exists, so that anyone who has an interest in Tolkien feels they should be able to come along and take part in what we're doing. And I do realise that we humans have a natural tendency to overlook the good and fixate on the bad, and that people probably appreciate our efforts a lot more than I realise, but it doesn't always feel like that. Reading these forums is often more frustrating than rewarding for me.

If I had the power to bring back one person from the dead, then without a doubt I would choose J.R.R. Tolkien. But my objective with making this mod is not to create something that, were he around today, he could go through part-by-part and say, "yes! That's exactly how I described it." That's what the books are for.

Our objective is something more subtle and complex than that. I like to imagine if all that about the Red Book were true, if Tolkien had actually been a translator of real ancient records - then take the world of Middle-earth as if it had actually existed in full, as a full and living breathing world extrapolated from what he wrote - take that thought in its entirety, and transform it, transmute it, as if through a clouded lens, into something that exists inside the confines of Minecraft - then take that, and modify it such as to create the best possible combination of gameplay experience and lore accuracy - which is of course subjective - and build that up, slowly, imperfectly, through years of creative work, to an unfinished representation of itself.

So yes, the mod is supposed to be accurate to the lore. But it's also supposed to be a fun and rewarding gameplay experience, and it's also suppposed to be what people expect from a game. With bosses and dungeons and fun and exciting things that captivate people's interest and maintain it. And it can't be all those things at once in every aspect.

Middle-earth still exists, perfectly accurate to the lore, and always will - but it's not here. It's over there, in the books. And nothing that we do will ever change that.

And people are welcome to point out what they think we should do differently. We will listen. But please - can they also have some confidence in us, appreciate what we have done well, and be grateful that the mod even exists to be discussed?



That was a lot longer than it was supposed to be, and I don't really want to start a discussion on every point I brought up there, but I hope that explains our thought processes somewhat. Maybe someone else will come along and find it an interesting read.