December 24, 2023

 

 

Here we are! It's Yule Eve, and time for the last Yule calendar surprise: The Laurelin hobbit Yule video by Lina. Each year, she makes a festive Yule video with the help of other LOTRO players (mainly hobbits, but the videos might also feature dwarves, snowbeasts and oinkers). Below, you can watch the video and learn more about its background. If this looks like fun to you, you are most welcome to join our little hobbit roleplaying community on the Laurelin server. Maybe you can join in the making of the next Yule video as well!

This is the 7th Hobbity Yule Calendar that I have organized so far. Each year, I am a bit anxious if folks are still interested in taking part in it and sending entries. And each year, year after year, people still amaze me with their wonderful contributions. The LOTRO community is simply amazing. Master Tolkien would be really proud of you all: you bring the light to dark places when all other lights go out. I wish you all a merry Yule and happy new year!

Also, if you need some like-minded company today and tomorrow, feel free to join us in a special Yule party at a virtual Green Dragon inn on a Discord server. There are channels for general chatter, posting food pictures, Yule songs, Yule videos etc. There is also a voice channel for Yule music and chatting with others. There is also a text chat available, if you don't want to speak in voice. I (Pycella) am hosting the Discord event, so please contact me if you have any questions. (Edit: event is over for now.)

But without further ado, here's the Laurelin hobbit Yule video 2023, with a short introduction by Lina! For the full post, please take a look at Lina's biscuity burrow.

The 2023 Yule video

Every year since 2012, I have made Yule videos where the hobbit players on Laurelin are invited to take part. And they do! Lots attend the video shoots, send in screenshots and offer up ideas. Many thanks to all who helped out! Yer assistance and good cheer was absolutely vital for the making of this video! I really hope I didn’t forget to add pictures yer sent in…

If you think this all looks fun, please join us hobbits on Laurelin. There are lots of things happening here. You can read about the events in my own hobbit calendar or in the Bramblebury Gazette, the local hobbit newspaper.

So here it is: The 2023 Laurelin hobbit Yule video. Full-screen and high-definition very much recommended! More on the making-of it below.

 

“Oinklins” – the 2023 Laurelin hobbit Yule video

 

Oinklins

The last year has been challenging. Many of the hobbit roleplayers on Laurelin have struggled… with economic worries, health, loss of loved ones, and the ever-increasing uncertainty over what the future will bring.

That weighed a bit on my mind when planning this year’s Yule video. Should I let real-life troubles reflect on the storylines in the video? Perhaps I’d better go for a more sober approach this time?

Nah. Not a chance.

I firmly believe that it is good to take some time off from the real world when playing online games. Embrace lighter themes, explore the fantastic, and have fun along with others. And that’s the approach I took with the Yule video this year too: Go for the usual light stuff. If anything, the stories in this video are sillier than usual.

As always, the video has two main segments. This time, both are inspired by real Yule movies. The first one should be pretty self-explanatory for anyone who has seen Gremlins, Joe Dante’s classic Yule-monster horror adventure from 1984. Sadly (?), there are no Mogwai in Middle-Earth. So instead, I chose a pig as the creature which should not be exposed to bright lights, water and late-night feeding. A Hogwai, so to speak.

Of course, in the movie, the gremlins create havoc in a small snow-decked city. Finding a suitable place in LOTRO for lots of scary oinklins was challenging. Frostbluff would have been perfect, but since the video was shot in early December and well before the Yule festival started, that area was not yet available to the public. In the end, I went with eternal Yule video favourite place Kauppa-Kohta, in south-eastern Forochel. That gave some challenges too, including avoiding lots of wandering tall NPCs, dealing with constant “zone texts” displayed in the middle of the screen when crossing boundaries, and the seemingly unfixable jankiness of the LOTRO servers which ruined many fine shots in both segments.

Ultimately, you can’t really do much property damage in LOTRO’s static game world. Instead, I turned the segment into a chase sequence, having the oinklins chase two hobbits all the way from the top of the valley and down through the village. That meant a lot of start and stop sequences, where the actors had to run for 10 seconds before stopping and coming back, so I could reposition the camera for the next step. Intersped through the chase are small re-enactments of scenes from the movie, with the oinklins playing tricks on the villagers. And just to reassure everyone, no hobbit got stuck in a chimney for several days during the making of the video…

The second segment was inspired by Love, Actually. I considered making a full-scale Yule video based on this movie, with working title Pie, Actually, if for no other reason to rile up all those curmudgeons who think that hobbit roleplaying is only ever about pie. In the end, though, I went with one of the long-running in-jokes on Laurelin that everyone wants to play the drums, but the local shirriff Nimelia won’t let them. Thus, this story from the movie gets a somewhat different resolution than in the movie.

And no, you won’t get Will Whitfoot snogging with his secretary behind the stage. Instead, another in-joke character from Laurelin’s Shire makes a guest appearance. You also get lots of Yule screenshots sent in by hobbits. I am still amazed that so many spend their time helping make these videos, it really wouldn’t be possible without yer all.

Thank you again, and a happy Yule to everyone!