Has a real focus on servants of the Shadow, contrasting with the bright vivid colors of Middle-earth. He pulls on threads of details (like the crown of the Witch King) and evokes them in other scenes
Like, I love the mace of the Witch King here. It's not just a shapeless ball - it's the face of a grim old king. Perhaps himself in life?
Finnstark's art makes Middle-earth feel larger than life. You feel the terror of being the small character contrasted with the huge evil because he places you right behind the protagonist, looking up into the face of darkness.
Denis Gordeev's art is exactly the opposite.
He's probably most famous for doing the Russian covers of the Witcher books.
All pictures from his Livejournal (which is in Russian), which link to this folder: disk.yandex.com/a/x5lrJ8DG3VVt…
Gordeev's art is all about grounding Middle-earth and making it feel more concrete, more tactile. Look how the Hobbits duck under tree branches, stretch on a picnic break, can't fit into the gravegoods of the barrow...
I love the scenes Gordeev chooses to illustrate. A lot of Tolkien illustrators choose sort of the "big" scenes. Gordeev chooses a lot of smaller beats that I don't know that I've seen illustrated before, like this crossing of the Celebrant
Gordeev's Gollum is a nasty little freak. I love how they highlight the similarities - and differences - between Gollum and the Hobbits.
Gordeev nails Strider's big, muddy boots in the Prancing Pony. He illustrates Aragorn a lot like he illustrates Geralt of Rivia, too.
An example of a scene I don't see illustrated a lot - the parting of the Fellowship from Lothlorien, with Galadriel's mead.
It's funny to me how he illustrates Gimli - barely shorter than Aragorn or Legolas. "Dwarf" in the Russian context must be different than our conception.
LOOK at those MF ENTS!
I love how their height and size in this picture.
The practical details about how the Rangers of Ithilien would wear their masks when resting is an example of the simple, physical considerations Gordeev thinks about.
I very much the Renaissance-esque garb that Denethor wears. I love his look of cold calculation contrasted with the fiery madness.
The three-faced idols at Minas Morgul do NOT get the love they deserve - what scary things! I like how the helms of the Morgul orcs are beaked almost in reverence/reference to these dark statues.
Lastly, I just really like the way Hobbits style/fashion is illustrated. Frodo got drip during the Scouring of the Shire.
/thread
I guess this is my Soundcloud plug:
If you like Hobbits _not_ having adventures, check out my TTRPG Under Hill, By Water.
Have a picnic, hide from your annoying relatives, go on a pub crawl instead of a dungeon crawl.
I have muted the reposted "D&D is Mid" joke from yesterday.
Something I was surprised about, being so long in my RPG bubble, was how many people legitimately didn't know where else to *go*.
"I want to play an indie game, but what even is the name of ONE?!"
A 🧵of my faves:
Caveat: This is an incomplete and arbitrary list.
Lots of good games I like a lot are not here.
All of these games are made by deranged online game designers. You can find them on Twitter and yell at them/with them.
"I like D&D because I like fantasy. I wish it was a bit more like Tolkien and less like Monty Python."
Beyond the Wall is inspired by LeGuin and Lloyd Alexander. It's designed to be played by real people with real lives. 0 prep adventures. Lifepath character creation is a blast.
Rulings Not Rules means you can come up with quick subsystems to represent weird random table events that feel notably different than the rest of the game.
An example, from recent play: A 🧵
(Rules given in HIS MAJESTY THE WORM format, but lessons adaptable to any game.)
+
In my game this week, a random city event was "War horns ring out as crookhorns attack pilgrims on the road"
I described a militia raised to fight the attack.
We aren't playing a skirmish army game, but I wanted the players to be able to participate in this sort of thing.
+
Because I wanted this sort of event (larger scale warfare) to feel different than normal tete-a-tete combat, I established a few new rules for this combat at the start. I explained my reasoning for doing so, and asked if there were any questions.
In honor of Halloween, a spooky Middle-earth🧵Tolkien used two words for magic: sorcery and enchantment. Though neither was inherently "evil," sorcery is the word exclusively used for the magical works of the Enemy. The Witch King and the Mouth of Sauron were both "sorcerers."
+
Tolkien associated Sorcery with the practice of "Goetia." If you look up Goetia, you'll probably find the Lesser Key of Solomon - a sequence of magickal sigils to summon an array of demons.
We can infer that sorcery deals with summoning and commanding spirits.
+
One of the primary ways sorcery was used was to create illusions to befuddle and mislead. Spirits used for this purpose are called "phantoms" in the text.
Elves were immune to this, being able to see through illusions, but it was a powerful asset against Men.
+
It's a real shame that the flaming sword has been reduced to a vanilla, boring, stock magic item. In a random Pathfinder game, I might actually be disappointed if the GM gave me one.
A flaming sword has the potential to be *so cool.*
Here's how I'd put the magic back in:
🧵
First, I mean, just think about how it'd *feel* to wield one.
"The fire roils off of the blade. As you test the blade, the flames trail along the arc of your swing. It's so bright it almost hurts to look at. Your companions have become detail-less shadows in its brightness."
+
"The scent is so different than a bonfire. There's no wood being consumed. The closest smell that you can place is that of a thunderstorm - an ozone smell."
"The flames hiss, a constant shhh shhh sound coming off the blade, like a mother shushing her infant."
+
It's lame when you can choose X additional starting languages and the choices don't matter. "I can speak Elven and Goblin," doesn't mean anything if you never see elves and goblins.
I'm a big fan of languages that have broad uses. Here's some I've come up with. Looking for more
Common can be understood by everyone. Literally everyone. It's a magical language that forces its meaning into your brain. If you don't speak Common, this is very uncomfortable.
Dwarvish is untranslatable. Spells like Comprehend Languages/Tongues automatically fail. If you don't speak Dwarvish, it's an untranslatable code.