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<blockquote data-quote="Jer" data-source="post: 7776015" data-attributes="member: 19857"><p>There end up being a number of problems with this, though:</p><p></p><p>* If you want to play in the actual history of Middle Earth, your characters can never do anything about the dark god that wants to enslave you all. Because we all know how that story turns out. Also we all know that the dark god eventually gets defeated, by someone else. This can make playing in that world feel somewhat pointless to a lot of players.</p><p>* Almost nobody views "The Hobbit" as a horror novel. It just isn't - it's an adventure story for children. Arguments can be made that the trilogy, which skews to an older audience, has horror elements to it, but the game is set in the period "in between" The Hobbit and the trilogy, and so the expectations kind of bounce back and forth between "fun adventure" and "dark portents". And the trilogy, while dark, have characters who are actively doing something to fight against the horror at its source and so it has a less oppressive feel than what you're describing above, so players will come to the game with one expectation (a feel like the books or the movie) and get something else. (Something which I agree is interesting, but not likely what my players who say "sure I want to play in Middle Earth" have in mind when we talk about a game set there).</p><p>* And while the characters know very little about Middle Earth, it has the "problem" a lot of licensed properties have, which is that it attracts the kind of players who know a lot about Middle Earth. And that can lead to DM paralysis as the DM tries to figure out if their adventure that is set in 2948 conflicts with anything in the timeline, or worse, DMs and players who have conflicting ideas of what it means to game in Middle Earth and how faithful you have to be to the adaptation.</p><p></p><p>I can see how this would be hard to juggle. Personally I don't like constraining myself as a DM that much - even when I run a published setting like FR I tell the players "we're using [insert FR rulebook of your choice] as a jumping off point, but ignore literally everything else about the setting because we're not tying ourselves to the canon like that". I don't think I could run a Middle Earth game, even though I love the idea and I like what C7 has done with the rules, because I would be so torn between trying to keep the world faithful to the vision from the novels and my more natural impulse acquired over years of running games to let the game just go where it takes us as we play, which very likely would be something completely unfaithful to the novels. That tension would drive me nuts.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Jer, post: 7776015, member: 19857"] There end up being a number of problems with this, though: * If you want to play in the actual history of Middle Earth, your characters can never do anything about the dark god that wants to enslave you all. Because we all know how that story turns out. Also we all know that the dark god eventually gets defeated, by someone else. This can make playing in that world feel somewhat pointless to a lot of players. * Almost nobody views "The Hobbit" as a horror novel. It just isn't - it's an adventure story for children. Arguments can be made that the trilogy, which skews to an older audience, has horror elements to it, but the game is set in the period "in between" The Hobbit and the trilogy, and so the expectations kind of bounce back and forth between "fun adventure" and "dark portents". And the trilogy, while dark, have characters who are actively doing something to fight against the horror at its source and so it has a less oppressive feel than what you're describing above, so players will come to the game with one expectation (a feel like the books or the movie) and get something else. (Something which I agree is interesting, but not likely what my players who say "sure I want to play in Middle Earth" have in mind when we talk about a game set there). * And while the characters know very little about Middle Earth, it has the "problem" a lot of licensed properties have, which is that it attracts the kind of players who know a lot about Middle Earth. And that can lead to DM paralysis as the DM tries to figure out if their adventure that is set in 2948 conflicts with anything in the timeline, or worse, DMs and players who have conflicting ideas of what it means to game in Middle Earth and how faithful you have to be to the adaptation. I can see how this would be hard to juggle. Personally I don't like constraining myself as a DM that much - even when I run a published setting like FR I tell the players "we're using [insert FR rulebook of your choice] as a jumping off point, but ignore literally everything else about the setting because we're not tying ourselves to the canon like that". I don't think I could run a Middle Earth game, even though I love the idea and I like what C7 has done with the rules, because I would be so torn between trying to keep the world faithful to the vision from the novels and my more natural impulse acquired over years of running games to let the game just go where it takes us as we play, which very likely would be something completely unfaithful to the novels. That tension would drive me nuts. [/QUOTE]
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