Are you interested in Middle-earth setting or supermodule?

[Son_of_Thunder]

Sorry, I know that many, many people find Tolkien very fun and interesting to read... Me, not so much. I really don't have an interest in Middle Earth, per se, but in the derivatives that spring from that fertile well. I just love seeing where people will take the idea next.

I agree with the good Doc on this one.

 

[Mighty Veil]

Be neat but hard to do if the setting is forced to have all core rules. POL rules is simple to do up till the 5th Age.

Would halflings have to be rewritten to be hobbits or would they still be river rafting Jamacan kenders? Would I be expected to actually still play one??

Men, elves, Eldar(ans), and dwarves would be have a place. Tieflings could be evil Maiar and aasimars could be Istari, but what of dragonborn? Would Valinor have to be renamed to something silly to meet 4e names: ValarFey, Astral Realm of Valinor Peace. Could the game writers currently at Wizards be able to accept that there may not be dwarven women or would they just decide that all dwarves are actually ruled by Dwarf Queens and in fact Gimli was a girl. Would there be a wizard class or would a wizard be a race? Would elves have huge modifiers? Could I see what Turin's stats would (see he's destined to kill Melkor)?

 

[Mighty Veil]

I already played LotR-styled campaign worlds. Don't bore me with them anymore. I don't want Pseudo-Europe with elves and dwarves.

I do! Most game worlds and fantasy RPGs seem to go in another direction. I want a Pseudo-Europe with elves and dwarves!http://www.enworld.org/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=4185751#
Six

 

[Mallus]

to revisit them many years later with the rpg he inspired could be epic, imo.

Until the Inn of the Prancing Pony is threatened by Fiendish Gelatinous Cube Monks and the patrons are rescued by Warforged Ninjae and a saucy Warlock in fetish-lite garb.

Wait, you said 4e... never mind.

 

[Umbran]

I don't see how. It would be cool to go to moria and mirkwood, drink ent juice, defend minas tirith, etc. who cares if you have to bend things around? to stay perfectly true to it would be to read the books aloud together.

On the other hand, if you twist things around enough, it ceases to be Moria and Mirkwood in any meaningful way. And that's the issue at hand.

The D&D rules (certainly 3e and apparently 4e) are... highly fantastic. The characters very quickly gain the ability to do things that are miraculous by real-world standards. But in LotR, there's only a couple such characters, and they avoid blatant use of those powers, and are pretty clearly more like NPCs than PCs.

Consider - the Fellowship does not defeat the balrog in a fight. They have trouble with one cave troll and a few orcs! They do not come down to a straight-up fight with Sauron himself. The stories are of low-power characters managing to deal with situations dominated by high-power individuals. That isn't the D&D ruleset at all.

Basically, drinking entwine isn't so big a deal when you've already gone through seventeen magic potions before breakfast.

 

[Mkhaiwati]

Who else read this as "Are you interested in Middle-earth setting or supermodel"?

My mind went straight to Miranda Otto.

I would've dumped Liv Tyler and taken Miranda Otto if I was Aragorn (and I usually prefer brunettes)...


uhhh... anyway, there are a lot of Tolkein-esque stuff there. The Midnight setting is a huge take-off of the 1st Age Middle Earth ;The evil god walks around in the North, the other (good) gods cannot/will not communicate to the peoples, the dwarves and elves are holed up in a few strongholds, the only way the dark lord can be defeated is if the gods come back to the world, etc,etc.

MERP does a good job of not interfering with the book storylines, as most of the sourcebooks are done well before the timeline. So the pcs can still do very heroic actions and not really alter the course of the books, or feel railroaded into following a set path. Except taking on the balrog/Shelob/Witch King will be beyond them, still.

 

[Zaruthustran]

I played some MERPS in high school and college. It always sort of felt like playing in someone else's backyard. We knew that we as players weren't the heroes of the story. It was sort of similar to playing Star Wars during a time period covered by the movies.

I've played Star Wars in the Legacy era (~ 100 years after A New Hope) and it was a blast. I bet playing in Middle Earth before or after the events of LOTR would be pretty fun. Before, and you'd be driving out the Necromancer, or dungeon-delving in the Misty Mountains, or clearing (or retreating from) Moria. After, and you'd be expanding the borders of Gondor, or driving bandits from the Shire, or exploring Mordor, or chasing haradrim and orcs back to their lands.

 

[Zaruthustran]

I don't see how. It would be cool to go to moria and mirkwood, drink ent juice, defend minas tirith, etc. who cares if you have to bend things around? to stay perfectly true to it would be to read the books aloud together.

Rumor has it, this is sort of like how George Lucas perceives Star Wars. It's an account of history, sure, and like all accounts each telling is slightly different. Each *medium* is slightly different. He's fine with the particulars Star Wars differing in ways that best suit the medium, so long as the core elements stay consistent.

So yeah, in the books Bard kills Smaug, but in your game maybe it's Bob's character that does the deed. It's still an accurate account of the history of Middle Earth: Smaug dies.

When reading LOTR didnt any of you want to be there? I read it when i was at the perfect age of impressionability and when it ended I was like "wow am i really just back here in life? thats it?"

This was my exact experience.