I know that TLA is intended to be very easy to mod. The question is: if I mod it, how restricted is the modding?

The thing I am thinking about amounts to this: Each civilization exists in an Age. There are some civilizations (e.g. Dwarves, Woses) that have the same name in each Age, but from the sound of it (unless the showcase civilization descriptions on the website are out of date to the point of being just plain wrong), each Age is different enough that the Dwarves and Woses are essentially different civs from one Age to the next, even if they have the same symbol. I notice that there five major civs for each Age, although the Third Age has six (the sixth being the Rohirrim). There are also a handful of minor civilizations, more in some Ages (the Third) than in others (the Second).

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that I wanted to make a campaign detailing the story of the Hobbits from their origins with the first rising of the Sun up into the Third Age. To do this, I would need to add the Hobbits to the First Age scenarios. If I were to do this, would I have to rotate out an existing First Age civilization, or could I simply move the Hobbits (or even duplicate them)? Suppose I wanted to do the same for one of the major civilizations, e.g. have a Morgoth Returns in the Fourth Age game (of course, the Fourth Age is not in our list, but the Third would generally do well enough for the early Fourth). Could I do this?

There has been some debate on this in the past. If I recall correctly, there wasn't a decisive decision made yet.

Personally, I vote for not letting civs mix up when selecting a random scenario (for the sake of gameplay balance alone), but the scenario editor should have this ability inherently, for exactly the reason Beren points out (in this case: showing the player the 'roots' of the Hobbits).

Good point. In some cases, civilizations may need to be moved around. Though I doubt a 'Morgoth Returns' campaign would be greated with any warmth.

as has been mention before in this thread there hasn't been any decision yet, but we, iirc, are leaning towards freedom in the editor but random maps wil be age-restricted.

Ah. Good idea. Will units (in the ditor) be at all customizable?

In this case: would it be possible to have the random map generator load up some sort of boundary conditions script that would allow us to alter the rules by which it would generate maps?


Also, how independent are units of their civilizations? Could, for instance, a Sindar player be given Edain units? I would assume so, since a Sindar player can get units from minor civs. Could a script give a Sindar player Númenorean units (thus mixing up the Ages)? If a Sindar player were given Dwarven villagers, would this allow the Sindar player to build and develop the Dwarven technology tree?

Whoa! I very much doubt he Game Guide is that much finished!

Not that I wouldn't want to know the answer .

A small off topic question: why are these different:
"This thread has been improved by Rinion: Today, 12:35 AM"
"This post has been edited by Caedus: Today, 12:28 AM"

The first one makes my one look more negative...

we haven't really started developing the editor - save for TLA's game engine itself. but from our current plan anyone who uses the editor can mix and match different units from different timespans into a custom scenario ... i mean if it makes sense to you to have a hero-duel between say Aragorn II and Sauron in Werewolf-form ... so be it

Sauron is gonna have a Werewolf-form?!

Joy oh joy, I'm gonna wet my pants!

Well, some of the things that Tolkien did do in the Sil, the way he handled the fate of Beren and Lúthien in particular, gives me suspension of disbelief problems. I could easily see myself having them crop up in the Third Age in some sort of "alternate history" campaign.

About what Caedus said; It's part of my signature, I thought it might be funny! ! By the way, does anyone know whether the game will feature Ogres? Tolkien mentioned them once, but didn't say if they were real. The reason I ask this is because, in the smilies section, there is an Ogre smilie.

i very much doubt we will features ogres. We have no description of them so we don't know how to model them. A less pure game *cough* BfME *cough* would probably invent some things for the ogres, while we as a puritan game cannot do that.

Now that you've said so, I clearly see it. I could kick myself for not seeing it sooner !

About Ogres: where would Tolkien have mentioned them? Can't remember it myself anyway.

And would Giants be a difficult topic too? Because they are mentioned in the Hobbit once, as the party travels through the Misty Mountains, but apart from that never again. I thought it was debating if they would really fit into Middle-Earth?

In the Book of Lost Tales I, Gothmog the Lord of Balrogs was the @#$% son of Melko via an Ogress.

That's the only reference I know of, and it has obvious consistency problems with the later ideas about the Ainur.

very true Beren

we in TLA are considering Tolkien's revision of his old material that happened post-publication of LotR to be the 'canonical' source for TLA (as featured in HoME vol. X to XII) since back then he made a huge effort on rewriting his 'old' mythologies he assembled back in the pre-Hobbit days.

Ok, thanks for the info Beren! Never would've guesed that !

Actually, I was wrong; there is another reference (and it's actually canon!). In the riddle game in The Hobbit, Bilbo wracks his mind trying to think of some of the monsters that Gollum might be riddling at, and Ogres are among the things that he thinks of. Of course, just because they're in stories that Bilbo heard doesn't mean that they're real, and of course The Hobbit was written before Tolkien really concieved that it was going to become part of his legendarium some day, but there it is.

You're right, I've found it after the riddle of 'Time'. On a quite curious note: in the Dutch version of The Hobbit, 'Ogre' is in fact translated as 'Werewolf'. That's not so odd though, because there isn't specific word in Dutch for 'Ogre'. We would use 'Giant' in stead.

Giants are another problem indeed. They are mentioned as the stone giants that live at the Misty Mountains.

But to the first post of the topic: weren't the origins of the Hobbits in the third age, and directly from men?

The LotR only says that Hobbits are more closely related to Men than either Elf or Dwarf. Well, that's not too difficult, because technically, Dwarves and Elves aren't related to Men at all. In fact, the only relation is that Eru created Elves and Men, and Eru breathed life into Dwarves after they were created by Aulë.