I want to be able to emulate the feel of Tolkien's work in an RPG and have had, at best, fleeting success doing so. By "feel" I mean the tone of the work that balances the mundane, the wondrous, and the horrific all at once; the sense of a deep history reaching up to produce the drama of the Now; the archetypes and ideals that yet hold on to humanity and even grittiness to some extent; and, most of all, the tug-of-war between hope and despair.
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If you look at Tolkien's work and see it as a thing you would want to emulate in play, have you ever managed it? Did it require a ME/LotR game or campaign? What elements were hard? Which seemed to come easily? What do you think makes game "feel" like Tolkien?
Tolkien takes time to revel and reflect in the mundane, pastoral, and everyday of the world instead of constantly bombarding you with the fantastical. Even some of the most fantastical elements - i.e., Tom Bombadil - exist as moments of reflection, calm, and/or whimsy.
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Tolkien largely operated from a perspective of "hope" in the world and its people, even those that succumbed to evil, who were viewed with pity. So IMHO, an important part of emulating Tolkienesque play would be to frame the fiction in terms of how hope exists and people rising to that hope through their deeds.
I think these two posts do a nice job of capturing what is important to Tolkien-esque feel: history, magic intermingled with the everyday (think even Frodo in his mithril coat), and above all the importance of hope.
I think it's hard to get this feel in a game without willing participation - that is, I doubt that mechanics/system can force it per se. But some mechanics can help.
For romantic fantasy my group has been playing and enjoying Prince Valiant. It would need a little bit of tweaking to incorporate the more magical/fairy tale aspects of JRRT, but probabl not a lot. It certainly allows for hope to matter (because the PC's emotional investment affects the number of dice in the pool)
Buring Wheel provides emotional intensity and forces emotional honesty, which is important to Tolkienesque feel. In my experience it easily pushes towars S&S and so some steps would need to be taken to avoid that - eg maybe use simple combat resolution rather than Fight!; and drop most if not all non-natural magic.
I think a properly-curated heroic to low paragon 4e D&D might also do the job. Psychic damage, as a marker of despair, would be important - and healing surge recovery would be emotional as much as physical. You would need to work out how Diplomacy checks can help heal. (But not so well as to trample on the Healing skill.)
I've been working on
a Cortex+ Heroic LotR game. The Doom Pool fits well. History/lore works by having the players establish relevant assets, so that depends heavily on player investment of that part of the system. In the one session that we played I ran an action scene in which one of the Scene Distinctions was Uncertain Of What to do Next, and as the scene unfolded the player of the ranger declared actions that succeeded in eliminating that Distinction, meaning that he was then able to dictate to the table what the next step was. That was a nice alternative to (say) a BW Duel of Wits - the uncertainy being more about the situation than a disagreement between two characters - and I felt it emulated some of those parts of LotR where Aragorn in particular can see the range of options but is unsure what is the right choice of next action.
