Copyediting Angband

[myshkin]

Calling all Tolkien experts, writing enthusiasts, and other interested parties...

I've been working on copyediting and revising Angband descriptions, and have finished with the artifacts. My goals are to fix spelling errors, some of which have existed since the beginning of the game; to make descriptions clearer while preserving the general style (e.g. by rewriting dangling modifiers); and to fix descriptions inconsistent with the source text (e.g. Elendil is the Star of the North, not the Star of the West). Please take a look at the changes on github, and post any comments or suggestions you may have. Some of the descriptions are still more clumsy than I would like, and I could use more epic descriptions for the Rings of Power. Having both Mormegil and Gurthang in the artifact list is a separate problem; do you have a better name for one of those swords?

[Antoine]

Calling all Tolkien experts, writing enthusiasts, and other interested parties...

This is great work.

Do you think you will get the chance to run your pen over the helpfiles as well?

A.

[Timo Pietilä]

Calling all Tolkien experts, writing enthusiasts, and other interested parties...

I've been working on copyediting and revising Angband descriptions, and have finished with the artifacts. My goals are to fix spelling errors, some of which have existed since the beginning of the game; to make descriptions clearer while preserving the general style (e.g. by rewriting dangling modifiers); and to fix descriptions inconsistent with the source text

I have a peeve with The Amulet of Carlammas, if it is Nauglamir it should be somewhere close to the One Ring in power scale. Silmaril is the one thing giving light to Phial, power to Carcharoth, and two of those are in Morgoths crown. Whole wars were fought after them, and the North Star is one of them. Definitely it should be way way more powerful than it is now.

Either change Carlammas to something else, or make it more powerful.

Which version this is? I noticed that there is RES_CONFU in some of the items, shouldn't that flag be something else now that it it only protection, not resistance?

[Nick]

I have a peeve with The Amulet of Carlammas, if it is Nauglamir it should be somewhere close to the One Ring in power scale. Silmaril is the one thing giving light to Phial, power to Carcharoth, and two of those are in Morgoths crown. Whole wars were fought after them, and the North Star is one of them. Definitely it should be way way more powerful than it is now.

It's the Necklace of the Dwarves which is the Nauglamir, not Carlammas.

In FA it is super-powerful (+3 all stats, all sustains, FA, SI, ESP, HL, Light, Regen, RConf, RBlind, RFear, RLight, RDark).

[myshkin]

I have a peeve with The Amulet of Carlammas, if it is Nauglamir it should be somewhere close to the One Ring in power scale. Silmaril is the one thing giving light to Phial, power to Carcharoth, and two of those are in Morgoths crown. Whole wars were fought after them, and the North Star is one of them. Definitely it should be way way more powerful than it is now.

Either change Carlammas to something else, or make it more powerful.

The diff is misleading. That description is actually from the Necklace of the Dwarves, and has been there since 3.0.0.

Which version this is? I noticed that there is RES_CONFU in some of the items, shouldn't that flag be something else now that it it only protection, not resistance?

It is branched off the latest development version. We haven't renamed the flags in the source code yet.

[myshkin]

This is great work.

Do you think you will get the chance to run your pen over the helpfiles as well?

A.

At some point.

[SSK]

Hi Myshkin

See my comments on the other thread:

1) Craban singular, Crebain plural
2) Mumak singular Mumakil plural

3) I have a consistency issue with place names/people:

We have some items with names (e.g. 'Sting'); cool. We have some items of a specific person (e.g. "Of Fingolfin"); great.
Then we have items of places or regions: weapons "of Westernesse", "of Gondolin, "slings "of buckland", Bow "Of Umbar", pick "of Erebor". But then we have other items of a group of people that could really be of a place: an artifact armor "Of the Rohirrim", lance "Of the Eorlingas", shield "Of the Haradrim". Why don't we stick with places for these--so armor "Of Rohan", shield "Of Harad". The one issue would be "of the Eorlingas", which are really the same as the Rohirrim (the people of Eorl), so you could leave that one, but then there are two things "Of Westernesse" so we could have two things "Of Rohan". The Necklace of the Dwarves should be renamed to the Nauglamir--after all whether it was the Dwarves' or Elwé Singollo's was the origin of a war...

4) I don't see how "Half-Orcs" and "Half-Trolls" (as characters or monsters) fit into the universe. My understanding is that Orcs are creations of Sauron that have no real will of their own and really can't be bred to other creatures of free will, even if those creatures would want to mate with Orcs. Trolls are a bit more mysterious, being around in the wars of Beleriand they are old for sure, but some say they were created by Morgoth to be parodies of Ents. As such not sure how they could be bred to the other species. We don't hear of half-Dwarves (Dwarves originally had no free will when created by Aule, but were later given free will by The One), but clearly Elves and Humans can be mated, and even certain Maiar and Elves: see Elwé Singollo and Mélian to produce Lúthien.

5) If we are going Tolkien, not sure where Angels (including Uniques), knights Templar, Ninjas, Dagashi, and the like fit into all this. Similarly Uniques Like Ariel, Quaker, Waldern. I remember seeing on another thread certain people felt there were too many uniques already anyway... In any event, there must be characters not represented that could be included as uniques if replacements were needed. Of course these might not be natural but evil (whcih is why we are fighting them, but could be a game balance issue).

[myshkin]

See my comments on the other thread:

1) Craban singular, Crebain plural
2) Mumak singular Mumakil plural

I did indeed see and note those in the other thread. It will be a little while before we rationalize the handling of monster pluralization, but it is on my to-do list.

Why don't we stick with places for these--so armor "Of Rohan", shield "Of Harad". The one issue would be "of the Eorlingas", which are really the same as the Rohirrim (the people of Eorl), so you could leave that one, but then there are two things "Of Westernesse" so we could have two things "Of Rohan".

I don't see any great consistency problem with having some items named after places and others named after groups of people; as you note, we already have two other kinds of names in the game. I am certainly willing to be convinced otherwise, though.

The Necklace of the Dwarves should be renamed to the Nauglamir--after all whether it was the Dwarves' or Elwé Singollo's was the origin of a war...

We are generally not consistent as to which people's name we prefer. "The Necklace of the Dwarves" does have the advantage of fitting our current name generation model well, and is slightly more elegant than, "The Necklace 'Nauglamír'." (There are plans to decouple artifacts from base items, at which point we could just call it "The Nauglamír.")

I would prefer to keep this thread specifically to the issues of editing text messages and descriptions in V, and so I won't comment on the other two points in too much detail. I will note that V has always been a mix of Tolkien and other universes, and I'm happy with that. Some variants have specifically aimed at greater thematic consistency. Any game where the two big bads are Sauron and Morgoth at the end of a dungeon together is going to have some problems with the Tolkien timeline, though. For what it's worth, Jeff of NPP fame has lobbied for Ainur to replace the Angels, and I'm on board with that.

[Nick]

4) I don't see how "Half-Orcs" and "Half-Trolls" (as characters or monsters) fit into the universe.

I created FAangband partly to address things like this. I don't believe Vanilla will (or even should) ever become completely Tolkienian.

5) If we are going Tolkien, not sure where Angels (including Uniques), knights Templar, Ninjas, Dagashi, and the like fit into all this. Similarly Uniques Like Ariel, Quaker, Waldern. I remember seeing on another thread certain people felt there were too many uniques already anyway... In any event, there must be characters not represented that could be included as uniques if replacements were needed. Of course these might not be natural but evil (whcih is why we are fighting them, but could be a game balance issue).

My feeling on this is that if you were making a list of monsters for potential removal, the highest up should be things from other Mythologies/Religions - the obvious ones being the classical stuff (Atlas, Medusa, etc) and angels. Things that are completely made up (like Waldern) seem fine to me - there are hints in Tolkien's works of all sorts of other creatures which just don't happen to come into any of the main storylines.

Also, that's a pretty big if

[Antoine]

Any game where the two big bads are Sauron and Morgoth at the end of a dungeon together is going to have some problems with the Tolkien timeline, though.

Hm? Those two dudes loved to hang out in the First Age!

A.

[Timo Pietilä]

4) I don't see how "Half-Orcs" and "Half-Trolls" (as characters or monsters) fit into the universe. My understanding is that Orcs are creations of Sauron that have no real will of their own and really can't be bred to other creatures of free will, even if those creatures would want to mate with Orcs.

Orcs are "creation" of Melkor. He used elves and corrupted them (not extremely solid point, Tolkien might have changed that to humans at some point, but consensus is that they are basically corrupted elves). They are living in real sense and breed just like any other humanoid do. In theory they are immortals like elves, but because of their nature average lifespan is not very high.

In LoTR Saruman created half-orcs by cross-breeding humans with orcs. Those orcs that captured Merry and Pippin and could tolerate sunlight were half-orcs, and that sneaky person in the Branching Pony was probably a one quarter orc, so they are supported by source.

Half-trolls OTOH are not. There is no mention whatsoever about half-trolls, just that there are different kinds of trolls.

[SSK]

I created FAangband partly to address things like this. I don't believe Vanilla will (or even should) ever become completely Tolkienian.

My feeling on this is that if you were making a list of monsters for potential removal, the highest up should be things from other Mythologies/Religions - the obvious ones being the classical stuff (Atlas, Medusa, etc) and angels. Things that are completely made up (like Waldern) seem fine to me - there are hints in Tolkien's works of all sorts of other creatures which just don't happen to come into any of the main storylines.

Also, that's a pretty big if

Sorry to have opened that can of worms then. I did it because I thought the thread suggested a Tolkienization of V. Whatever--it's cool, you are right there are too many things from other mythologies to clean up which would create the need for major revision I suppose--but a few things might be easily merely name-substituted (such as Ainur for certain things like Angels as suggested above by Myshkin).

As for Melkor and Sauron--I totally agree it makes sense for them to hang because of their relationship in the 1st age. What makes less sense is things purely from the 3rd age and things only in the 1st age coexisting, e.g. Morgoth himself was not around into the late ages while we have Nazgúl and items like Anduril and Evenstar which would not have existed in the 1st age (but again, too much trouble to clean this up). Sorry.

Will stick to issues of language, typos, grammar, description, etc.

[Spacebux]

On Uniques..

Hi Myshkin
5) If we are going Tolkien, not sure where Angels (including Uniques), knights Templar, Ninjas, Dagashi, and the like fit into all this. Similarly Uniques Like Ariel, Quaker, Waldern. I remember seeing on another thread certain people felt there were too many uniques already anyway... In any event, there must be characters not represented that could be included as uniques if replacements were needed. Of course these might not be natural but evil (whcih is why we are fighting them, but could be a game balance issue).

I would agree that the letter 'A' could be re-assigned entirely to a new breed of dungeon-loving creature. In the least, if you want to follow Tolkien-esque naming, you could resort the "Ainur" (Before the Creation, God made the Ainur or "Holy Ones". ) They would be the equivalent of the angel concept in Tolkien's realm.... as they were the ones to overthrow Morgoth originally. And, indeed, you could pull from them uniques, if really needed. But, I think you could reclassify the whole 'A'ngel class with something more akin to dungeon creatures.

As is, I have had games where demons U's and A's were in the same room, both teaming up on that '@' symbol. If Angels were truly there to seek out/destroy evil, one would think a war of great magnitude would occur with both in the same room.

If one could conceive a D&D type mob, there are several plausible candidates there. Just peruse the Monster Manual.

[Spacebux]

Was just pondering if you could use 'A' to represent those wild-men Sauron was calling up from the south.. the Haradrim and such...

[myshkin]

Hm? Those two dudes loved to hang out in the First Age!

Oops. My impression was that they never holed up together, but it does seem that they spent some time in Angband after the return of Morgoth. As noted elsewhere, though, if we're constrained to that time, then the Second and Third Age people and items become problematic.