205 points by adrian_mrd 18 days ago | 116 comments
Discworld Rules(venkateshrao.com) The Lord of the Rings is a great story, but I have to say, I’ve never understood the strange hold it seems to have on the imagination of a particular breed of technologists.
The Annotated Lord of the Rings (2004)(archive.org) While The Annotated LOTR is a work in progress, in order to assist more efficient reference and annotation, an Index for the Annotation Threads has been created.
6 points by BerislavLopac 55 days ago | 0 comments
The Language Construction Kit (1996, 2012)(zompist.com) This set of webpages (what’s a set of webpages? a webchapter?) is intended for anyone who wants to create artificial languages— for a fantasy or an alien world, as a hobby, as an interlanguage. It presents linguistically sound methods for creating naturalistic languages— which can be reversed to create non-naturalistic languages. It suggests further reading for those who want to know more, and shortcuts for those who want to know less.
Coinage and the Tyranny of Fantasy 'Gold'(acoup.blog) This week on the blog I want to take a brief detour into discussing historical coinage, particularly in the context of modern fantasy and roleplaying settings. In particular, the notions I want to tackle are first how did ancient currency systems work in terms of value (what could you buy with how much) and then second how often were people likely to use physical currency at all?
21 points by JumpCrisscross 85 days ago | 4 comments
Coinage and the Tyranny of Fantasy 'Gold'(acoup.blog) This week on the blog I want to take a brief detour into discussing historical coinage, particularly in the context of modern fantasy and roleplaying settings. In particular, the notions I want to tackle are first how did ancient currency systems work in terms of value (what could you buy with how much) and then second how often were people likely to use physical currency at all?
What Were the Powers of the Great Rings?(xenite.org) J.R.R. Tolkien wrote very little about the specific powers of the Great Rings, but he did provide some details. And yet fans disagree about the actual powers of the Rings. Here is what we know.