Middle-Earth: Too easy or too hard?

[Darknight]

I used to use the map, some of the history, and a few of the races and personalities (heavily modified) as inspiration for my old T&T world of Terra del Pimarch. I still have the Dunedain kingdoms and Fornost, but they are really nothing like the Tolkien world. I even had PCs called Aragorn, Arwen, Legolas etc.

[mahrundl]

Some good and interesting ideas there, ydars.

[zanshin]

Sounds like a very cool campaign Ydars. I would like to have played in that.

[ishtar]

My husband is in the process of setting up a ME campaign using Pathfinder. His basic take on it is to not tell most of the players what the inspiration is (except me, of course). He'll stick us in at the beginning of The Hobbit as an adventuring party hired to reclaim something from the hoard of the dragon, and off we go! We'll probably only have a party of four, and a couple of NPCs, and get sidetracked by going after the Necromancer and so on. In the middle of it somewhere, we will acquire a tremendously useful but low-key magical item, and go from there. We'll skip the gap of years between Bilbo and Frodo, filling that in with a minor story arc, and then lo and behold! our item turns out to be important after all, and we've got elves and dwarves and orcs all after it ... it may go completely south from there, but at that point it will be our story, not Frodo's. Trying to recreate Tolkien's story with our own characters won't work - at some point it has to become ours and not his. That's the problem with a lot of fanfiction I've read - if you stick Harry Potter into Star Wars or LotR, you can't stay with the canon for either story. Things must change. And that's the whole point of writing (or playing) it - to see "what happens next?"

[ydars]

Your husband's campaign sounds great Ishtar.

As for my game in ME, well I can confess to being a complete Tolkien nut and I just HAD to use it as a setting at least once. It was one of my best campaigns.

[Hogscape]

I wonder what Cubical 7 will do with the setting (and rules)?

[mahrundl]

Sounds like it should be a great game, ishtar.

[gaptooth]

This post by Ishtar got me thinking of an interesting way to simulate the Istari magic of Middle Earth. Apart from their staves, the most powerful feature of the Wise was their voices, with which they could make potent commands:

"Saruman, your staff is broken!" There was a crack, and the staff split asunder in Saruman's hand, and the head of it fell down at Gandalf's feet.

Usually, the wizard's voice wasn't accompanied by cinematic effects (although fire and lightning weren't unheard of)— it's power was usually limited to strengthening or weakening the nature of things, and exercising influence over the minds of sentient beings.

Anyway, I'd like to experiment with the idea, especially if I were planning a Middle Earth campaign.

Using commands instead of "spells" would make for a very flexible magic system, but I think the current game provides some guidelines: Harm spells could be based on TTYF and others in terms of the tradeoff between cost and damage. Healing magic and other blessings that affect attributes could be based on Poor Baby, et al. Commands that affect living, sentient beings could be patterned after Oh Go Away! What other common commands would be needed? Since the Istari seldom overthrow the elements, I'm not sure if much would be required.

[gaptooth]

Two of Gandalf's most memorable commands: "You cannot pass!" and "Fly you fools!"

[machfront]

Indeed. The spells could be viewed as per their mechanical effects. Change the 'trimmings' and it could serve Middle-Earth right out of the box, perhaps.
As many folks view the magic system in MERP as wrong for the setting, I've often read of folks who took this sort of view with regards to that system's spells.
Change the common rpg perception/assumption about what the spells seem to be about, and it could be made to fit.

Mar 17, 2010 22:57:41 GMT -5 gaptooth said:

Two of Gandalf's most memorable commands: "You cannot pass!" and "Fly you fools!"

Indeed. I've long considered his insistence to be allowed to keep his staff when entering Theoden's hall to be some sort of spell of influence.

[ishtar]

Mar 18, 2010 5:10:10 GMT -5 machfront said:

Indeed. I've long considered his insistence to be allowed to keep his staff when entering Theoden's hall to be some sort of spell of influence.

Clearly. I believe he tries it on Denethor, too, but it doesn't work - Denethor's too canny, and too much under the influence of Mordor. In game terms, something like Power Words or Words of Command? Gandalf didn't use it often, and was subtle when he did, but Saruman was much more blatant about it.

Speaking of Gandalf, has anyone other than me wondered how he kept getting his staff back? He was separated from it at least twice in the first book, once when Saruman took him prisoner and again when he fought the Balrog, but the next time he shows up, he's got the staff again with no explanation given.

[ProfGremlin]

Mar 18, 2010 9:24:29 GMT -5 ishtar said:

Speaking of Gandalf, has anyone other than me wondered how he kept getting his staff back?

I simply assumed it was some innate connection between Gandalf and the staff that allowed him to re-acquire it once he broke free from Sauraman's imprisonment. As for his new staff after returning as Gandalf the White I thought that was simply part of his 'resurrection'. In the movies it's pretty clear that as Gandalf the Grey his staff was more natural. The staff of Gandalf the White has a more fabricated look to it as if someone had bent their will upon it.

Then again, it could simply be that he found himself without a staff each time and simply created a new one.

[ishtar]

Mar 18, 2010 9:43:35 GMT -5 ProfGremlin said:

Then again, it could simply be that he found himself without a staff each time and simply created a new one.

If he could do that, why did he need a staff at all? Why was Saruman's power clearly broken when his staff was broken, and he was apparently unable to simply create a new one?

[ProfGremlin]

Mar 18, 2010 10:54:47 GMT -5 ishtar said:

If he could do that, why did he need a staff at all? Why was Saruman's power clearly broken when his staff was broken, and he was apparently unable to simply create a new one?

Possible, but I've always wondered about the rank of 'The White'. It was supposed to be the head of the wizards conclave as I understood it. When Sauraman gave that up to become Sauraman of All Colors and Gandalf resurrected as The White I get the feeling that any wizard power Sauraman may have had from his former rank was lost to Gandalf. Sauraman's staff may have only been a prop at that point.

Now, I am dredging this up from more years back than I care to admit so I may be missing a telling detail or two but it's something I've wondered about when Tolkien's stories come up.

[feldrik]

Sauruman could not make a new staff because he was not allowed to.
The staff was broken and so was his covenant with the Almighty, his access to otherworldly power cut off. All he had left was what he retained from his life in this world.

Remember that Tolkien was writing about angelic beings and heavenly vs. demonic forces, not some guys that graduated from a school and learned 'cheap tricks'.