Dwelling of the Lossoth image - Age of the Ring mod for Battle for Middle-earth II: Rise of the Witch King

Look at those mammoth tusks surrounding the building. I think that looks pretty fantasy enough.

There's no denying that Tolkien's legendarium draws heavily from actual medieval art, but igloos just feel lore-hostile, mainly because (I believe) there's no mention of something remotely similar in the works. I like the mammoth tusks though, just not the igloos. :)

Portal.tolkienianos.pt page 8

Houses in the snow, or snow-huts more specifically but not igloos. You're free to interpret what a snow-hut would look like but if you adapt much of what Tolkien wrote about, to exactly fit our world, it won't feel like fantasy anymore. It's a different world, after all. ;)

The key to adapting Tolkien's legendarium is to understand that he was crafting his world around earth, specifically mythologies in human culture. The preconception of the "fantasy feel" has only come around as a consequence of Tolkien's popularity and the ensuing content "inspired" by his work; specifically the portrayal of Elves and Dwarves was permanently changed by Middle Earth.

The cultures of Middle Earth are themselves transpositions of human cultures. The tundra of Rohan is simply a horse based form of Anglo-Saxon England. Gondor bears many similarities to the Roman Empire at its fall in the 5th and 6th century. Simiarly, Arnor bears some resemblance to Europe under the successor states, with petty realms rising from the ashes of a great civilisation. Isengard is itself the embodiment of industrialisation in Birmingham and represents the dangers of the rise of technology.

Middle Earth is not fantasy. It would be a risk to call it allegory (primarily as Tolkien hated that word), but it would not be a stretch to say it was intended to resemble our earth.

Concerning these forodwaith models (which are fantastic btw), it is certainly not inconceivable that they would be like this; buildings from ice, and living as eskimoes, is how one would develop a culture in a land of ice and snow. We simply don't know that Forodwaith is like this ONLY because Tolkien did not explore that far north. That he didn't means that taking historical examples to create Forodwaith is very logical.

You're mostly right (except for Middle Earth not being fantasy), thank you for your thought-out comment. I just don't think that because the civilisations in Arda ressembles Earth's in various ways the game should reflect that in many aspects. There's a variety of reasons we'd rather play BFME as opposed to Age of Empires and I believe this is one of them.

Sorry, this is very late to your reply Ulomagyar. Briefly concerning Middle Earth as a fantasy, this isn't a question of what is (mostly) right or wrong as we are discussing variance of opinions. I disagree with your perspective, but my main idea here is to clarify my argument; namely that Tolkien's work is so often bundled into "fantasy" when his work is clearly more tilted towards history than modern fantasy.

An example that best explains this is Rohan, which I cited briefly above. Rohan plays a central role in the LotR story, being the prime setting for the second book and arriving to the timely aid of Gondor in the third. Many of the most interesting characters of the books are from Rohan, and yet it conforms to none of the fantasy tropes that follow Tolkien.

The culture of Rohan, focused around horses, uses as its language Old English. "Westu Theoden Hal" is Tolkien's own variant on "Westu Hrothgar Hal", a greeting in Mercian dialect. This indicates the Old English influence, but this is further reinforced by the names of Rohirrim, which are all in Old English. Eomer translates into "famous warhorse", and Erkenbrand into "precious sword". There are also such titles in Rohan as Thanes and Reeves (named after the similar Anglo-Saxon Thegn and Reeve).

We can further extend this analysis into the make up of Rohan's military, which is divided between Theoden's household guard and those called up into service, which mirrors the Anglo-Saxon military division of the Huscarls and Fyrd. Tolkien scholars also confirm this, as we have such writers as Brian Sibley and Thomas Shippey who confirm the Anglo-Saxon influence.

The horse aspect comes from the battle of Hastings, as Tolkien personally saw this event as a tragedy that prevented a full flowering of Anglo-Saxon culture. He personally believed that a little more horse culture in Saxon England would have countered the Norman cavalry and won the battle. Perhaps a simplistic historiographical view, but the main result of this was the prominence of horses in Rohan (which also comes from his breaking out of horses in WW1).

The point I am making here is the prominence of historical influence behind such a key nation as Rohan. The historical influences took pride of place in Tolkien's work, and this is demonstratively shown in other realms too. I don't have the space to address Gondor, Arnor, the Dwarves, or Elven kingdoms here but I hope you catch my drift now.

The attraction of LotR is that Tolkien added a mythological twist to an overwhelmingly historically inspired world. D&D and other follow-ups unfortunately focused far more on being influenced by Tolkien than taking his cue from history. This is essentially why Game of Thrones is so refreshing to most; Martin went back to history for his inspiration, which enabled him to provide a deeply layered world that differed from the D&D saturated high fantasy genre.

This is why I contest your view Ulomagyar, because I have not seen you take into account the context of Tolkien's writings, preferring to see his work through an exclusively modern lense. That is not to say this is necessarily a bad thing, because Tolkien is the source of most modern fantasy works. Film, game or written work he is still the original inspiration behind much of the fantasy genre that came after him. However, it is a lense and I believe it a misleading one to view Tolkien's work with.

Edit: sorry about the length. I was feeling a little rambly. Hope this helps explain my view point a little better though :)

This is the third time I read this comment and I didn't even replied, shame. I have no point of disagreement with your contestation (partly because I'm not as knowledgeable as you are) and I thank you for having expressed your thorough and insightful point of view.

LotR is has many non-fantastical designs. That's why it's so good.