new sub-forum?

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by Formendacil

After all, isn't the Movies for a "subforum for the use of non-canon stuff"? Granted, you leave yourself plenty of wiggle-room with "new sub-forum" and "legitimate adaptations," but I wonder where we make the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate adaptations? There's always been willingness to discuss the Bakshi and Rankin-Bass movies and those are... to be charitable, not exactly in the mainstream of adaptation these days.

I suspect you are too recent a member to remember the major overhauls made to the RPG forum. The precise reason was to ensure that rpgs remained within reasonable grounds of Middle-earth canonicity and demonstrated some creativity and uniqueness. piosenniel and Child of the 7th Age worked tirelessly to help new gamers develop game ideas and characters that were consistent with Middle-earth. This included keeping the tone and action of the games consistent with Tolkien's work--eschewing graphic violence, gore, exploitation of sex--and avoiding Mary and Gary Sues and writing good quality English and not chatese. Conan the Barbarian characters were disallowed. I'm not sure that video games reflect these values. I don't think it can successfully be argued that Tolkien represented revenge and hatred as just.


The distinction between the "Books" and "Novices and Newcomers" forums was to accommodate the new members who were not as versed in Tolkien's work as other members. Both are supposed to refer to Tolkien's literary works and not off topic matters. The 'movies' forum was designed to allow members to discuss the very popular movies without swamping the literary discussion. It became a bit of a game and part of the fun to see how we could relate topics to Tolkien in the Barrow Downs forum and "Mirth" of course speaks for itself.

Like that of Nerwen and Morth, my experience of other Tolkien forums that allowed OT discussion is mixed if not negative. Almost all of them left off Tolkien discussion and were overwhelmed with massive arguments over the other topics.

Why ruin the uniqueness of the Barrow Downs now?