Lord of the Rings Fanatics Plaza

Could have been mine, though I am not sure. At any rate these versions seem to be bigger, though no idea of the original sources. Could be that I borrowed from someone else.
Also added a couple other random images that I had saved for some reason or other.

Ah, also there is this - no idea of the source.

Man, all these images :smiley8: Looks like whatever we pick, is gonna look great!

@Mor Toast , I have this one which I used at some point:

I'm sad to say I don't remember the source either. May have posted it in the threads but I was never very great with these things... *blushes*

*huff puff* I've been so busy up to now that I JUST had a chance to have a wee gander at the Minas Tirith, Pelennor, The Northern Fiefdoms (Free RP). Ooooh!! It was like a stroll down memory lane or a look through a photo album (a really THICK photo album)! So many fun places, so little time! @Mor Toast, and am very impressed at your comprehensive listing of all of the places & potential adventures looming to the edges of Gondor's horizon. I'm sure I've taken Findy to many of these places over the years, but there are still more to explore. I just wanted to say thanks for your hard work & diligence, Mor! I look forward to tossing Findy into the fray some time (or perhaps some unsuspecting NPC).

Have fun, everyone! Boy, I hope this place doesn't break under the weight of all the smarts of our awesome members!

@Finduilas Faelivrin Thank you! I had excellent ground to build on, building off of old materials from members, especially Naith.

I hope it doesn't break, either-- best enjoy it while we can!

In regards to the dungeons, would it be ok to use the free rp thread for that? I mean the dungeons doesnt necessarily warrant its own thread if no one wants to make one?

@Winddancer Uhh post it and see if the Rulers delete it, they may not like your spam in their kingdom.

Since this isn't Mordor, I'll be a little more respectful and not spam the place up. That being said, I have a question for ye nasty neighbors. The IK Poetry Competitions. Is this something any of you would like to see come back in this Plaza 2.0 world? Do you think that the idea is, in fact, a foolish endeavor that I'd be mad to restart? Do you even like poetry? Also, this is all Winddancer's fault for encouraging me.

viewtopic.php?f=15&p=3571#p3571

Greetings everybody!

Khazaddum has recently started their own Newsletter, The Mirromere. We would love everyone from each kingdom to contribute to it. It can be anything. Poetry, prose, a pencil sketch, a painting, a short story. Literally anything creative. If this is something that would interest you, pop on over to our Editor's Office (link above) and put your name down.

Thanks!
Thorin

Hey, everybody. It's good to be back! I am hope everyone is doing well. Looking forward to get back into the swing of things.

Welcome back Arothir! Good to see your name show up. Long time no see. :)

Winddancer wrote: ↑Tue May 19, 2020 2:18 pm In regards to the dungeons, would it be ok to use the free rp thread for that? I mean the dungeons doesnt necessarily warrant its own thread if no one wants to make one?

I think it'd be fine to use free rp for that. I meant it as a catch all .. and then whatever I didn't think of.

That said, I could potentially add it to the Army complex of buildings thread that I'm making now. Thoughts?

@Arnyn Such sass. I'll have you know I did 6 hours of driving and two loads of moving yesterday, including moving a piano. I'm feeling pretty accomplished. But today is dedicated to thread making! Wheee!

Welcome back, Arothir! Your name is familiar, we probably crossed paths at some point. (I have existed under the name Morwen Daegomir, as well as variations of Toasty.)

EDIT: I keep getting the MT OOC and Ranger OOC confused. This was apparently a response to both threads... simultaneously.

@Mor Toast it's love sass.
I think maybe dungeons in free rp since it wouldn't be this combat unit that takes care of that stuff!

@Arnyn Of course it is. I live for it.

Sounds good on the thread! I think free rp works great-- but if people want a thread for it, I can dig something out after I'm finished with the Army threads.

Yup, a separate thread works too! Someone who's really into it and wants to have a darker character, could be the dungeon master, like in the good ol' days. (?)

Yes, who wants to be a dungeon master? XD

I also found this old banner, if we're still looking for one in the meantime, while a new one is being created:

Awesome find on the banner Toasty! That is a lot of moving. Having done many moves of my own, I wish you well. Sorry I am no longer anywhere near to help carry things, or I would offer.

As a semi-random side note, the colors in the Marketplace make my eyes bleed. I cannot read the bright colors without pain, so just not going there. In all honesty, one of the reasons I came to Gondor in the first place instead of Rohan was first that they didn't post about Dr. Pepper all the time, and two because they only allowed colored text to rulers . Made it so much easier to read. Then I fell in love with Gondor and stayed even after the place turned pink.

Well to be fair, it is only 2 posts in that whole thread. Also you can highlight the text, that way it isn't bright when reading it (tip I learned when people post in pink or orange) Seems a shame to avoid a thread just for that ;)

Thanks for the well wishes, Karis!

Does anyone mind if I toss this into the banner thread for Narv to put up in the meantime? I have absolutely no issue with someone making a new one; I just figure that might be a while, and it might be nice to have something up.

Thoughts?

Go for it

Well, I went for it-- posted in the banner thread, so hopefully shortly we'll have a wee decoration about the place!

Love it, Mor Toast! It fits the kingdom :smiley8:

Now all your soldiery characters need to report to the RPG

*watches all the threads pop up like mushrooms after rain, and also keeps the distance from the whip*

Oof I so easily forget how long it takes to write a decent post. It looked way longer until I posted it in the text box! Your wish is my command Arnyn...well, sometimes.

The banner looks great Toasty! As does the Ranger Commons. Did I say that yet? I shouldn't post in the wee hours of the morning. The memory fails.

Yay, excellent! I'm glad y'all like it! It's so good to see all the threads going up again; Gondor is looking great.

Aye aye, cap'n Arnyn. Be right over. XD

It’s lovely to see the banner @Mor Toast ! And so many pretty threads ! :smiley8:

Welcome back @Arothir ! Were you also an Ehtyar at some point ? The name is giving me deja-vu ..

Indeed, though I do admit that brings back some memories. Pointed sticks for life!

Y'all are posting fast enough I am having trouble keeping up. It is fun to read though! Welcome back Arothir.

Yes, it's all coming back together quite nicely, isn't it. Feels just like old times. The Way Back Machine has been wonderful; I've been able to dig up a ton of old stuff from it.
Welcome back, @Arothir !

Almost simul-- speaking of; but the handy post preview caught me-- yes, indeed, the posts are coming fast and furious.

I was going through my old photobucket, and I saw I had boards from the old Word Sleuth games. And from the few games I officiated, I have all 26 letter tiles too. I have made a blank tile as well, just because.

The Word Sleuth Tiles are Here
The Word Sleuth Boards are Here

This is amazing. :D I can't remember the last time on old plaza I went to bed and when I got up there were so many posts waiting to be read! *bounces*

Turin, you should organise a match, or two! ;)

Oh indeed, Arnyn! Also, I would lose count of how many times a day I check for new posts.

It's alive! It's great to see so many posts, and things happening.

It was a never ending excitement when i saw new posts, and it hasn't changed... but now there are so many lol This guy is happy

When did we last have anything like this Ranger RPG? And other threads are active too. At least there is always something to look forward to every morning.

I'll move this from the Ranger HQ OOC because I would prefer rangers not throwing daggers at me for going (slightly, erm massively) off topic

Galastel wrote: ↑Sun May 31, 2020 12:17 pm Hmm, schools are actually sort of interesting. Medieval schools were tied to religious institutions: there where the Christian schools and universities, open only to upper-class Christian boys, and there were the cheders and yeshivas for Jewish boys, regardless of social class. (There wasn't a Jewish boy who wasn't sent to a cheder, so we were by far the better-educated. )
Now Middle-earth has no religious institutions and no organised religion, thankfully. ('Thankfully' because it's extremely rare for an RP setting to be built with religious minorities in mind.) So what institution would be founding schools? The guilds? Those would start out as professional schools then, wouldn't they? For RP purposes, those aren't very useful, as they wouldn't be bringing people together. I suppose Minas Tirith could have had a military academy, what with needing skilled soldiers to fight Mordor. But it doesn't make sense to have a military academy while dismantling the standing army.

Honestly the course at uni about everyday life in the Middle Ages focused mostly on the Eastern Adriatic communes (city states) that were heavily influenced by what was going on on the other side of the Adriatic in Italy. They tended to imitate Italy's city states, Venice predominately. However, there was a lot of regional specific variations. I'll have to look at the literature and ask my colleagues about it, but according to the notes I have from the end of the 12th c. (developed Middle Ages) the city communes at the Eastern Adriatic founded their own schools. As far as I'm aware of at the moment, they would learn to read and write there, and if I remember correctly then they would move on to the trivium (grammar, rhetoric and logic).

I was thinking that if we would like to have some sort of formal and regulated education in Minas Tirith the school(s) could be opened under the patronage of King & Queen, since we're in the 4th age. Of course we'd need to figure out what to teach besides basic literacy, mathematics... If the schools were founded by the King & Queen they could be connected to the guilds, at a certain point in time a child or the child's parents would decide what vocation they would pursue so there's a possibility of connecting the guilds with the school, or if someone has the funds or receives the funds to go into higher education the library can be connected. Additionally a city of Minas Tirith's size needs scribes and notaries. I know neither scribe nor notary are fun to RP :D but I'm just throwing out ideas as they come to mind (powered by the 2nd cup of coffee :D )

Before I forget, a military academy does make sense regardless of the army's status. We might have a smaller force now, because Gondor is at peace now, but still the future generations of officers would need to be taught skills that the current generation learned or perfected during the War.

Ha! I wasn't even thinking that women might not be educated, duh. I wrote that Thea stopped schooling, like that was something that was fact rofl. Didnt even enter my mind that it was different back then :P (And would be in ME too)

Well then we would have no female soldiers either.. we always made our version of ME a wholelot more women-friendly!

True! <3

Windy, Arnyn - although the Middle Ages do look grim at first, as every historian is found of saying it's not that simple. :D Speaking specifically about Europe and the European Middle Ages, not all regions developed at the same pace, I know from several sources that women in Byzantium of all classes got an education, some were learned (Anna Komnena comes to mind), they owned property and I know of a case from Byzantine Sicily where a woman took her son-in-law or son (not sure now, this is from memory) to court and won the suit because he mismanaged her funds. But even if women didn't formally go to school during the Middle Ages they were taught at home, because when you think about it they had to manage their household expenses. Budgets for food, clothes, firewood and other things needed to be set and managed. You have to know basic maths and writing to be able to do this. And of course upper-class women fared better in that regard. There's a great book about all of this by Raffaella Sarti, it's called Europe at Home, I really learned a lot from it and it's an enjoyable read.

I guess I always saw MT as a little more progressive than say some of the smaller towns, though of course it would be on Plaza, but did always think of them as a bit more learned. Afterall didnt Gandalf come to MT to go through the libraries?

Nessa, well, Byzantium was quite advanced compared to Western Europe. They preserved stuff from Rome that got lost in the West, and they were in touch with the Muslims, who were having a golden age right when Western Europe was having Dark Ages. (I'm currently doing research for a novel set in the Sasanian Empire, they leave me quite surprised by where they were, culturally and technologically, compared to Europe.)
As for women, yeh, I know not going to school didn't necessarily mean they didn't get educated. There's record of some noblemen's wives being far more educated than their husbands. And I'm a huge fan of Doña Gracia (albeit she's a renaissance figure, not a medieval one).

Winddancer Gandalf also complained that much of what was kept in Minas Tirith's libraries was not being read, and was getting forgotten. :smiley10:

Well that is often how it is, often there arent many who truly want to sit and study all day long. At least it was still all there to be read :P

In case anyone wonders what happened to the Word Sleuth thread that I made, I followed Narv’s suggestion in the Inter-Kingdom planning thread to postpone the MT game and let the game in Imladris work out the kinks, so I deleted the thread.

I have everything saved so it’ll be a simple thing to open it back up when ready to host/play game here.

Galastel - Byzantium is a fascinating place, I'm kind of sad that at school and at uni it was always among the last topic we learned, so by the time we got to it no one could remember which dynasty was at the throne However, I got interested when I was writing a paper about women in the Middle Ages and stumbled upon Judit Herrin's writings and got hooked. Oh re education I just remembered an article by Sandy Bardsley The Invisible Peasantry which was published in Whose Middle Ages? in which she gave examples how the peasantry had the knowledge to manipulated the legal system in England in order to appear at those courts who were more likely to rule in their favour. The whole book is awesome for breaking medieval stereotypes and really pushes the reader to observe the period globally.

Sorry for the info dump folks, once you get me going about anything history related all restraint goes out the window.

Well, you know the punishment for infodumping interesting stuff: give us MOAR! :smiley10:

Thank you for sharing those tidbits Nessa. I am a history geek myself, but tend to keep that somewhat seperate from plaza since the plaza is fantasy and grounded in what Tolkien wrote.
If you want to dream up what kind of schooling your characters went through, great. Most of us have considered that at some point if developing full characters with good backstories.
Just to clarify, when you say we should create some sort of formal schooling and curriculum and so forth, is this something you want to actually RP and have others RP with you?

Karis - I hadn't really thought about schooling in as an RP setting in Gondor, the idea just grew out of from the suggestion that teens should practice archery and a couple of coffee cups later I'm doing a info dump on education in the Middle Ages Then again if this is something that folks find interesting we could start something, maybe not in a separate thread, but as a part of an already existing thread (the Free RP comes to mind). But so far this is just a theoretical exercise :D for us to keep our brains active :-)

Okay cool. To be clear, I am not interested in writing out schooling, as I have done enough schooling for over 30 years that I don't particularly feel any desire to have to write out and research being edjumakated. But if that floats your rock, great.