Posted: Sun Apr 05, 2020 12:13 am
Joseph Campbell's monomyth is, was, and always will be bullshit. It is terrible and his whole "Hero's Journey" should be left on the scrap heap of history with eugenics and The Golden Bough and Carl Jung's archetypes. They're all bullshit. But sometimes in his mystical fucking dodderings, Campbell occasionally manages to fall ass-backwards into a useful concept or turn of phrase.
I know I say this a lot in these OSSRs, but every game needs more than just a setting and a bunch of rules. It needs a premise. In D&D, you are adventurers and you go on an adventure. In Shadowrun, you are a shadowrunner and go on a shadowrun. It is not enough to say, "I want to be an Elf in Middle-Earth." You still need to have something to fucking do. There has to be some goal to obtain, and the goal should in some way relate to who you are and why you're playing the fucking game. The problem with The One Ring is that they are assuming D&D-style adventuring shenanigans and tropes, but the setting of Middle-Earth is actually not suited to D&D-style adventuring shenanigans and tropes. It isn't Lankhmar where you can just wander into an inn and get offered an adventure, but it also isn't like Lankhmar where stealing shit and living like lords guzzling wine and keeping the local Seamstresses Guild gainfully employed is par for the course and even expected.
They haven't made a case for why and how you are expected to be an adventurer in Middle-Earth. And that is terrible.
I know I say this a lot in these OSSRs, but every game needs more than just a setting and a bunch of rules. It needs a premise. In D&D, you are adventurers and you go on an adventure. In Shadowrun, you are a shadowrunner and go on a shadowrun. It is not enough to say, "I want to be an Elf in Middle-Earth." You still need to have something to fucking do. There has to be some goal to obtain, and the goal should in some way relate to who you are and why you're playing the fucking game. The problem with The One Ring is that they are assuming D&D-style adventuring shenanigans and tropes, but the setting of Middle-Earth is actually not suited to D&D-style adventuring shenanigans and tropes. It isn't Lankhmar where you can just wander into an inn and get offered an adventure, but it also isn't like Lankhmar where stealing shit and living like lords guzzling wine and keeping the local Seamstresses Guild gainfully employed is par for the course and even expected.
They haven't made a case for why and how you are expected to be an adventurer in Middle-Earth. And that is terrible.