Final MERPcon Video

As long as I'm posting links, I might as well include Michael Martinez's Guest of Honor speech from the same event (MERPcon IV, 2008): mostly about dwarves as a wandering people, but ranging far and wide, particularly in the question period. No video or audio problems at all, making this one the easiest of the three to watch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Xs82zgZmjM&feature=relmfu

In case I didn't say it before, many thanks to Hawke for arranging the event and inviting me to take part.

And, just because it seems apropos, here's the interview I did with Michael M. for his site, back in October; it was an honor to be included among such interesting people as Jn Garth, Jason Fisher, Douglas Kane, Michael Drout, Wayne & Christina, & Janet Croft; I hope he'll do many more in months to come.

Here's the link:

http://middle-earth.xenite.org/2011/10/21/an-interview-with-john-rateliff/

--John R.

More MERPcon Video

As long as I'm posting links to footage of me talking, I might as well include this video, also from MERPcon IV (Spokane, 2008), in which Michael Martinez and I do a Question & Answer session that runs 1hr 14 minute & 58 seconds. While I have a clear memory of my 'Brief, Sad History' piece -- having written it, practiced delivering it, and then later posted the text online -- I had only vaguer memories of the Q&A, since it was unscripted and I didn't have any record of its contents.

Until now. And, even though there are some technical glitches with the audio track, I found it interesting to watch an event I took part in but which I didn't remember in any detail. The theme of the conference was Tolkien's dwarves: hence a number of naur-centric questions. Among the topics Michael and I tackled were Egyptian and Hebrew analogues to Tolkien's dwarves, the sudden (circa 1930) shift of dwarves from an evil to a (mostly) good people in the legendarium, my naming Feanor as the most evil of all Tolkien's elves, any sources of mithril outside Moria, the Hobbit/Silmarillion connection, Thor analogues in the mythology, Orcs (and the names "orc" vs. "goblin"), King Bladorthin, the location and population of Dorwinion, the 1960 Hobbit, and our (then-)current projects. I'm glad to say I'd pretty much give the same answers again, though given the chance I'd look up various points rather than have to remember them on the fly. And I found the precision of Michael's knowledge on a wide array of points impressive, as well as enjoyed his ideas (the Egyptian/dwarves connection was interesting and new to me).

It's true the wayward audio track does make for some difficulties: the sound cuts out altogether perhaps a dozen times, but rarely for more than a minute at a time, and many for about fifteen seconds (especially the latter ones); the main exception I noted occurs at 13.45 and lasts until 19.30, or for almost six minutes. These skips cause the sound track to get ahead of the video track but don't affect the comprehensibility of the thing much. If you find the skips bothering you, I advise opening a second window with something browsable but not of absorbing interest which you can click on when the sound cuts out on the Q&A, then go back to the MerpCon video when the sound comes back. That's what I did anyway, and found it worked pretty well (a strategy I borrowed from my wife, who plays solitaire or Carcassone while listening to NPR on her Ipad).

Here's the link to the video of the Q&A:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzBsSi-8mAo

--John R.

A Brief Sad History, Revisited

So, I found out yesterday that my MERP.Con IV guest of honor talk, "A Brief, Sad History of Tolkien Roleplaying Games", is now available online in the form of a one-hour video (actually 67 minute, 58 seconds):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnzZhCDU_Ew

While the text of this has been available online for a long time -- I posted it here in the early days of this blog* -- the actual delivery included many asides and back-and-forths answering questions from the audience. Plus, of course, here you can see something of my show-and-tell, a part of my talk that didn't translate well into the text-only format.

Be warned that there are some technical glitches in the tape, as in a few places where the audio and visual tracks get out of sync, or a few words drop out of the audio track, but these shdn't affect anyone's watching the piece.

Just to clarify one such place: early on there's a place where I talk about Arneson and Gygax that doesn't quite come across: what I said was along the lines that Dave Arneson came up with the idea (for D&D) and then Gary Gygax figured out how to make a game out of it, in the sense of writing rules so that other people could figure out how to play: some skips in the audio track at that point make the sentence a little hard to follow.

Now that we're four years closer to the event of the next Tolkien-based movie, I was interested to see how close my predictions nr the end turned out; close, but not altogether on the mark.

Other than that, I had a great time attending the con, and thoroughly enjoyed writing up the piece; I'm glad to see it made available for those who cdn't be there in Spokane on that hot summer day in 2008.

. . . .

*Here the essay itself, broken into four pieces for easier posting:

(1) http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2008/11/brief-history-of-tolkien-rpgs.html

(2) http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2008/11/brief-history-of-tolkien-rpgs-part-two.html

(3) http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2008/11/brief-history-of-tolkien-rpgs-part.html

(4) http://sacnoths.blogspot.com/2008/11/brief-history-of-tolkien-rpgs-part-four.html

Also available is the question and answer