A Brief History of Tolkien RPGs

freyar · Dec 1, 2008

I'm a bit surprised no one's posted these links yet, but they would seem to be of interest. 4 parts of an essay by John Rateliff on, as the title says, the history of Tolkien-based RPGs:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

I found TSR/WotC's attitude as presented here to be quite interesting.

(Found through the Monkey King's blog.)

billd91 · Dec 1, 2008

Wow. You just can't see the name Saul Zaentz anywhere without it having negative connotations these days.

jdsivyer · Dec 1, 2008

Good and interesting read, thanks

Mark · Dec 1, 2008

Less detail than I expected but certainly worth reading if only to ensure clearing up some common misconceptions. Thanks!

jeffh · Dec 1, 2008

Does anybody know what the "wrong kind of money" remark in section VIII (near the end of part 3) is about?

NN · Dec 1, 2008

Interesting, but I cant agree with much of it.

The elephant in the room, is that while Lotr and the Hobbit are brilliant fantasy stories, Middle Earth is not a very suitable setting for any kind of roleplaying game.

billd91 · Dec 1, 2008

NN said:
Interesting, but I cant agree with much of it.

The elephant in the room, is that while Lotr and the Hobbit are brilliant fantasy stories, Middle Earth is not a very suitable setting for any kind of roleplaying game.

I don't think so. The stories aren't great settings to role play within because they're already set and either PCs playing in them have to be the main characters and have to stick to the plot, or they have to be secondary characters and play second fiddle to the NPCs. But the setting itself has plenty of opportunity for interesting things to do and, more importantly, has plenty of interesting races easily transported to other campaigns.

Tyler Do'Urden · Dec 1, 2008

Middle Earth suffers from the same problem of all literary fantasy settings (Wheel of Time and Dragonlance included)- there just isn't enough room for the PC's to do anything very interesting- they're completely overshadowed by the plot of the main stories.

Sure, you can go to an earlier or later era- but you can't create a greater enemy than Sauron or Melkor. You can't create a greater dragon than Glaurung or Smaug. If great and terrible events happen during the halcyon of the Second Age, it's not the same anymore. There just isn't really enough of a canvas to work with, when it comes down to it, without making it no longer really feel like Middle Earth. Which makes Middle Earth a great place to steal flavor and ideas from (and have I ever!)... but not such a great place to play.

Star Wars is different, because Star Wars is a vast universe to work with- a million worlds (so you can easily insert your own), 100,000 years of history, and only a few basic concepts that need to be hewed to to "keep it Star Wars"- Jedi, the Force, the Dark Side, spaceships, aliens. Done. You could set it 10,000 years before the movies and have the heroes perform feats undreamed of by the Jedi we saw in official materials- and it would still be Star Wars, and hardly touch canon.

Fantasy settings, bound to a much smaller canvas, aren't so malleable, without "losing the plot".

(This, too, is what killed Dragonlance for me. I always liked reading the modules and pilfering material from the setting- but actually play there? Check, please. The Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk, while they have some pretty epic novels connected to them, are much easier to play with. A big part of this is because, in general, your players probably haven't read them (and if they have, it's typically the Salvatore novels- Cadderly and Drizz't- which are minor enough not to have much impact on the setting itself. They're not world-shaking epics.).)

So I don't think there ever will be a really good Middle Earth RPG, and I don't think there can be.

xechnao · Dec 1, 2008

What comes to head now as a reply here...
The problem, I think, lies in the existance of certain prominent roles and relations of a setting that can stagnate the desire for action in the long term. D&D OTOH is an action focused toolset, nonsensical in its wholeness that begs people to customize and improvize the material it provides, to grab and cut and modify to their need. It has been successful because it has managed till now this to be done without too much pain.

dm4hire · Dec 1, 2008

Tyler Do'Urden said:
Middle Earth suffers from the same problem of all literary fantasy settings (Wheel of Time and Dragonlance included)- there just isn't enough room for the PC's to do anything very interesting- they're completely overshadowed by the plot of the main stories.

I can agree to some extent with most of this but not Wheel of Time. Its escape from the flaw is that everything repeats itself to some extent. Effectively you could play WoT as if it is almost an exact replica of a previous age long since past. Not to mention you can play during, after, or before an age ends due to the Dragon. I concur with another poster in a different thread in that WoT should be revamped, but after the final book releases and not till then. We're looking around 2009-2011 time period give or take a couple of months.

As for LotR I think most of the problem with any IP is that they tend to focus on the events of the story instead of mining the world. There is so much that could be mined from the stories to flush out and create an effective RPG surrounding the world of Middle Earth. I think another flaw in the past has been the systems used. I think the best system would actually be a modified M&M in that the heroes in LotR really don't advance in power as much as they develop in personality and character.