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]

Originally Posted by myshkin

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]

Originally Posted by 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

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]

Originally Posted by Timo Pietilä

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]

Originally Posted by Timo Pietilä

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.

Originally Posted by Timo Pietilä

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]

Originally Posted by Antoine

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]

Originally Posted by SSK

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.

Originally Posted by SSK

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.

Originally Posted by SSK

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]

Originally Posted by SSK

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]

Originally Posted by myshkin

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.