Are you interested in Middle-earth setting or supermodule?

[phil500]

I think this would be a great setting, starting about 20 years before the lord of the rings thing. The timing of LOTR would have to be fudged with a bit.

Characters would start at level 1, adventure in iconic areas like mirkwood and moria, etc. Around level cap there would be a battle with sauron which would be the fulfillment of their "epic destinies".

Sound interesting? I know its kinda cliche but who doesnt want to kill shelob around level 13, or the balrog/smaug around level 25?

 

[Doc_Klueless]

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.

 

[Enkhidu]

I think a better (and less fleshed out) campaign seed would be to set it much earlier in the heydey of the WitchKing of Angmar. Have the culmination of the fight be against one of the Nine serving as the WitchKing's seconds, possibly the "ruler" of Cardolan.

That era is not nearly as well know, has a lot more wiggle room in the Northern Kingdoms, etc.

 

[Wormwood]

Speaking for myself, I'll have to vote no.

That territory has been too well travelled to hold much interest for me anymore.

 

[sunrisekid]

The MERP rule books are pretty nice. What I like most about them is that the campaign material is presented in such a way that the episodic moments from the LotR trilogy are largely ignored, leaving people to use the historical/cultural material as they wish.

Personally I don't like using campaign material that pre-defines the future (or over-defines the present) as it just feels like the only room left for the imagination lies in the interstices between the events covered in the novels. I would level this charge against the Star Wars universe, Forgotten Realms as it stands over the last decade, and to a lesser extent the Dark Sun campaign (though the PC are assumed to be of lesser stature than the heroes described in the initial trilogy).

I enjoy reading Tolkien but playing in that setting feels too scripted; fighting Shelob is either just going through motions or breaking expectations by altering the plot line (eg, TPK). In my experience reliving those moments occurs best by simply reading the novel again

 

[Carnivorous_Bean]

I'm an absolute Tolkien fan and I marked "No Way" -- turning the books into some sort of glorified dungeon crawl would destroy their magic completely. I might consider a campaign based on earlier parts of Middle-Earth "history" .... for example, the Angmar campaign that Enkhidu describes.

 

[DandD]

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

 

[TerraDave]

A 4E treatment of Middle Earth could be interesting. I wouldn't really be interested in an "adventure path", and I would probably never actually use much of it in play. But I might buy it.

 

[Fifth Element]

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

My mind went straight to Miranda Otto.

 

[Voss]

Not me. Middle Earth is a bit dull, and you'd have to rip roughly 80% out of 4e to make it fit. D&D doesn't really handle the relatively low fantasy of the setting well.
When magic is the sole province of semi-divine beings and healing is an art that requires specific herbs and days or even weeks of time, it starts butting heads with D&D's assumptions.