Tolkien afficionados may tremble at the prospect of yet another role-playing game, with all its modules and histories, being unleashed on an unsuspecting fandom. Iron Crown Enterprises did a good job in producing a game, but through the years they made many departures from Tolkien. Some of the departures were dictated by lack of access to the original material. But some of the departures were also necessary in order to remain consistent with previously published materials.

I think my first introduction to the Middle-earth Role-playing Game was an exquisite map a friend of mine showed me back when we were playing Rolemaster. I.C.E. produced Rolemaster, too, and MERP's rules were very similar to Rolemaster's. A lot of the sourcebooks allowed players and Gamemasters to carry ideas over from one game system to the other.

The map in question was game designer Peter Fenlon's interpretation of the details of the entire continent (which most people inappropriately call "Middle-earth", though that name refers to the entire world) on which The Lord of the Rings is set. As maps go it's an impressive work, and I'm sure I still have a copy buried in a box somewhere. Unfortunately, it wasn't all that long before Christopher Tolkien published The Shaping of Middle-earth, and all of Fenlon's hard work was immediately invalidated. Many gamers insisted the Fenlon map was the "official" map because it was "authorized", whereas the Tolkien purists insisted that only JRRT's maps were "official", even if they only depicted a world from an earlier phase of Tolkien's writing career.

Karen Wynn Fonstad provided us with her interpretation of the early Tolkien maps, ignoring the gaming system's map completely. And many people today regard Fonstad's book as authoritative, even though its geography is in some cases deplorable (for example, she trimmed about 100 miles off the width of Eriador). And as far as internal consistency goes, Fonstad gives us two locations for Rhosgobel (Radagast's home in southern Mirkwood).

Nonetheless, maps are vital to extended role-playing adventures. A good game can last for years, and the players don't like being cooped up in the same dungeon (or old castle or cave) for too long. Eventually they want to take all their treasure and cash out, buying magical items, weapons, armor, slave girls, whatever. So the game master has to give the players a landscape for their imaginary world. If a game is set in Middle-earth, it's hard to explain that the players can't go past the Sea of Rhun because the map ends there. They'll quickly point to the histories Tolkien published and say, "Yeah, but the Easterlings came from off the map, so there must be something there."

I have created a fantasy world. It was even loosely based on Tolkien. And many years later, when it became my turn to run a role-playing game, I adapted that fantasy world to the Rolemaster system. I had maps, lots of them, and yet I found I always needed more. I was still drawing maps as the game progressed. One of the best, in terms of usability for the game, was a fairly crude map of a city where I allowed the players to make some allies, learn about the world, and unravel some ancient mysteries. By this time, the fantasy world bore little resemblance to Tolkien, of course.

But that brings us to the question of how much any future game will resemble Tolkien's work. The gaming rage for now is the new LOTR board game which, despite its multi-board layout and dependence upon John Howe's artwork, little resembles Tolkien's masterpiece. Board games can be interesting and have an adventurous feel to them (I remember playing one in college where we picked characters, acquired spells and items for them in the form of cards, and built up alliances with other players). But is there really any point to replaying the adventure in The Lord of the Rings?

We know how the story is supposed to turn out Frodo gets the Ring to Mount Doom, Gollum steals it and falls into the fire, and Sauron is vanquished. Then a couple years later Frodo leaves the world forever. The challenge in adapting the Quest of the Ringbearers to a game is to keep it from being predictable. And there you have basically two choices either Sauron wins, or someone other than Frodo gets the Ring to Mount Doom.

But that's pretty simplistic. There aren't many possible outcomes to the game, and it's unlikely anyone will devote their life to developing strategies and writing books about it. Or, rather, it's not likely people will be playing the game thirty years from now. A game which provides for a great deal of variety, like Monopoly, stands a better chance of surviving the decades, than one with only a few possible resolutions. How many people are actually playing The Battle of Five Armies any more, for example?

Of course, there are games and there are games. For example, a strategy-based game doesn't rely upon characters or individualistic pursuits. The pawns in the game of chess (probably invented by the Chinese more than 2,000 years ago, despite what R. Murray wrote almost 100 years ago) have the same goal as the queen and the knights checkmate the other side's king. A role-playing game can be a multi-player experience or a single-player event. Role-playing games can be run by a human with the players sitting together in a room, using pencil and paper to keep track of character items and statistics. Or the games can be handled by computer, either running alone on a single computer or over a network.

Tolkien fans and gamers alike were disappointed when Sierra Online announced the (apparently permanent) postponement of its Middle-earth Online game. The game, as conceived by the original development team, was to be a real-time simulation of Middle-earth (well, the northwest of the old continent) in the Fourth Age. Up to 10,000 players would have been accommodated on each server (each server running its own game). People would have played Hobbits, Elves, Men, or Dwarves. There was even talk of people getting to play Orcs.

MEO wasn't going to concern itself with reliving the adventures of Frodo and company. It was going to be set in the Fourth Age, and allow the player communities to deal with new situations in familiar environments. Of course, there were going to be limitations to the pseudo-realism. With 10,000 adventurers running around the map, you would soon run out of Orcs and Trolls for everyone to kill. The designers were going to have to allow for old dungeons to respawn evil creatures (basically, just create them out of nothing) for new encounters.

Game time still would have been compressed. I think one proposal was for a day to pass in about 30 minutes of real time. Depending on your connection and the power of your PC, 30 minutes would be a lot of time to accomplish things. But unlike pencil-and-paper role-playing games, the MEO servers would not shut down when it came time for people to go home (and actually do some work).

MEO was also going to be confined to the map published with The Lord of the Rings. Legally, no one, not even Iron Crown Enterprises (which no longer exists, and which lost its MERP license a year before they went out of business), can use the maps published in The Shaping of Middle-earth or even The Silmarillion for devising a game. Karen Fonstad and other cartographers can make new works based on the published maps, but they cannot create games based on the books without getting permission.

And there is the rub. To do a Tolkien game right you have to have permission from the Tolkien Estate, and they don't seem to be inclined to let anyone try. All the games which have been published have gotten permission from Tolkien Enterprises, which is a wholly separate entity from the Tolkien Estate. The Estate manages the rights to all of J.R.R. Tolkien's works, except for the film and merchandising rights to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. JRRT himself sold these rights to United Artists in 1966 or thereabouts. Eventually, Saul Zaentz acquired the rights from United Artists, and he formed Tolkien Enterprises, a division of The Saul Zaentz Company.

So, if you get permission to make a game, it comes only from Tolkien Enterprises, and they only have rights pertaining to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Although there is a tremendous amount of material in these books about Hobbits, Elves, etc., there are only vague references to many items which really intrigue Tolkien fans. For example, how much do we actually learn about the First Age from these books? Very little. Too little, in fact, to warrant making any extrapolations. J.E.A. Tyler tried to document the First Age in the first edition of his Tolkien Companion; when The Silmarillion was published Tyler had to extensively revise his book to correct all the errors of fact (or fiction) he had introduced.

Games aren't the only area of creativity affected by the licensing situation. Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" movies are limited in what they can actually portray of Tolkien's Middle-earth. No matter how faithful Peter might try to be to Tolkien, he can't legally be faithful enough. In a way, the limitations on the rights to Tolkien's material inspire and incubate the creativity of artists and writers. If one is for any reason attempting to interpret Tolkien's imaginary history, one must fill in many details which Tolkien himself provided but which cannot legally be used. So departures from Tolkien are necessitated by the very policy intended to preserve the integrity of Tolkien's works.

And that brings us to whatever game New Line Cinema may eventually contract out to some lucky game designing company (and there don't seem to be many left). Whatever that game turns out to be, it probably won't be any more faithful to Tolkien than Iron Crown Enterprises' MERP was. Furthermore, many long-time MERP gamers may compare the new game unfavorably to the old one. And hardcore Tolkien Purists will be dreading the inevitable intrusions into their online discussions by fans who draw upon the gaming material as an authoritative reference for answering questions about the Tolkien books. For example, MERP gamers know the names of the nine Nazgul. Tolkien purists know that only one of them was actually named by Tolkien Khamul.

Being based directly on the Peter Jackson movies may hurt a role-playing game in other ways. There may be a contractual expectation of faithfulness to the movies. One would hope not, but the merchandising machines are more sophisticated these days than they were 25 years ago. Saul Zaentz just wanted people to pay him money for the licenses. Although some matters may have had to be cleared with Tolkien Enterprises, fundamental game design was pretty much left in the designers' hands. That may not be the case with whatever game eventually comes out based on the movies. The new game may have to push the movie through use of images and source material. If Tolkien wrote that Sauron attacked Gil-galad on Orodruin, and Peter Jackson says that Gil-galad gave Sauron a formal challenge, the new game may have to echo the movie and not Tolkien.

Which is not to say that reference to the books cannot be made. But how much reference will be made? If the movies disagree with the books (for example, in describing the Uruk-hai as plate armor-clad monsters which emerge from pods), will the game be able to be true to the books, or will it have to keep the armor-plated Uruk-hai? Jackson's Uruk-hai may not prove to be much of an embarrassment to him, but a role-playing game isn't going to be judged by the movies. It will be judged by the books. And Saruman's Orcs wore chain-mail, not plate armor, and they don't emerge from pods. I pity the first person who makes the statement that they do in a news group, or on a mailing list where there is no moderator. People take no prisoners on the Internet.

The Rohirrim are another source of potential embarrassment for people. I've too often heard people associated with the movies call them "the Rohans". I dread hearing this term in the movies. It won't ruin the movies for me, but the long-term effect could be devastating to the politics of Tolkien discussions. People are going to be dragged through the mud and humiliated if they insist on saying "The Rohans" when they try to discuss Rohirric history. A game which uses this Kiwi name for the Rohirrim would just make matters worse. But maybe the actors won't actually say "the Rohans" in the movies.

A movie-based role-playing game doesn't have to be a disaster. In fact, it might prove to be a lot of fun. But there is more to a role-playing system than a single module. If all there is to play in the game is the journey of the Ringbearers during the War of the Ring, I don't think many players are going to hang around. That adventure has been played out in both the book and the movies. Gamers like to go on and do new things.

1. C.E. actually provided background material for playing out adventures in different parts of Middle-earth, and at different time periods. Some of their material was well-thought out. Some of it left me shaking my head. But gamers have certain expectations, too, and that market has to be addressed either through raising new expectations, or meeting the old ones. One of the greatest travesties ever effected upon Tolkien's creation was the stereotyping of Hobbits as ideal thieves. Smeagol may have been capable of murder, and Bilbo may have eventually become a passable burglar, but these were exceptions to the rule. Hobbits were generally stay-at-home characters. Except for the Fallohides, there weren't many among them who really cared for adventures. It would be nice to see a gaming system that didn't turn Hobbits into thieves and deceptive little imps, a concept which owes nothing to Tolkien.

A few years ago, while a new generation of module writers were working to revise the I.C.E. interpretation of Middle-earth to be more faithful to Tolkien, I was persuaded to join a Middle-earth role-playing game mailing list. The players on the list were enthusiastic about a proposed Tharbad module. And they were chock-full of ideas about how Tharbad should be portrayed. Naturally, it would have to have a thieves guild (why? Because that is what cities have in role-playing games). The streets of Tharbad would have to be dangerous. It would be a dark city or town. A dangerous place to live and work.

In fact, I had to wonder why anyone would live in such a city at all. It was a far cry from what Tolkien told us about Tharbad. After Elendil and his sons founded the Realms-in-Exile, Tharbad was jointly garrisoned by both kingdoms. There were a lot of soldiers and mariners there. The city had the facilities to accomodate sea-faring ships which sailed up the Gwathlo river. In the early years, Tharbad was the primary connection between Arnor and Gondor (although the palantiri were used for communication).

Centuries later, Tharbad didn't begin to decline until after the Great Plague. Then it became a haven for people from the ruined land of Cardolan, which was largely deserted. There weren't many people left, so there wasn't much wealth for thieves to steal. The old garrisons were gone, but the great forts would have remained (or their ruins, if the Dunedain destroyed the old works). No more sea-faring ships would be coming up the Gwathlo, or relatively few of them. The economy would have shifted to basic subsistence fishing, farming, and simple trading. At best, Tharbad might have maintained contacts with Arnor (and with Bree and the Shire after the fall of Arnor), and a few families in Dunland. Maybe there would also have been contact with Imladris and Lindon, and possibly Khazad-dum.

But Tharbad's fortunes could only continue to decline. With less and less wealth to distribute, there would be nothing there for thieves to live on. Hence, no thieves guild could have existed in Tharbad. Furthermore, as the principal community left in the region, Tharbad would have been a bastion of civilization and culture in a wilderland. It should have seemed more like a bright oasis in an otherwise dark and dreary desert.

Travelers would welcome the chance to rest at Tharbad's inn (or inns), and perhaps dine on fresh fish instead of salted meats. If someone had asked, "Frodo Baggins, you've just defeated the Dark Lord. What are you going to do now?" it's not like his reply would have been, "I'm going to Tharbad!" But Tharbad should have been a relatively safe haven for adventurers, a place where they could reflect on their adventures and get some supplies.

A role-playing game needs monsters for the player-characters to combat. Tolkien seems to have left plenty of them wandering through Eriador, the Misty Mountains, and Mirkwood. But a role-playing game also needs new horizons and vistas. If the players have plumbed the depths of the dungeon, they need a new dungeon. If they have visited every nook and cranny on The Map, they need a new map.

But a Tolkien-based role-playing game also needs a credible villain. In the Third Age that villain was Sauron. He was not overthrown until the end of the age. But he was also remote and distant. It should not be plausible for player-characters to invade Sauron's fortress, kill him, and get away. In fact, they can't (technically) even know that the master bad guy is Sauron until near the end of the Third Age. If the role-playing game is going to allow people to run adventures in, say, the 15th century, then there are two apparent dark powers the Witch-king of Angmar and the Necromancer of Dol Guldur. And no one knows much about the Necromancer.

If the player-characters have to take out a major bad guy, then he should still be an underling of one of these two established characters. For example, why did Angmar destroy Rhudaur in the war of 1409? The hill-men who had taken control of the kingdom were supposedly in league with Angmar. Unless they had proved to be disloyal, getting rid of them wouldn't make much strategic sense. But if an adventuring party had taken out the chief sorceror of the hill-men, rendering them ineffective, then maybe there would be no further need for Rhudaur. It would serve better as just another wasteland.

An inevitable consequence of letting people run adventures in a documented world (or historical period) is that they can second-guess the outcomes of their decisions. They know how the actual events transpired. What can they do to change matters, to balance the game in their favor? Players will look at a role-playing game in this fashion. On the one hand, everyone knows that Sauron is the bad guy and that he posed as the Necromancer in Dol Guldur. On the other hand, why was the Necromancer so unassailable?

We know that Sauron was vulnerable. He died twice in the Second Age. He died at the end of the Third Age. And if he was slowly recovering his strength throughout the Third Age, it must follow that he was considerably weaker earlier in the age. Hence, he should have been easier to kill before he had gotten most of his power back. Logic like that is hard to oppose. You can't just say, "Well, your characters haven't heard enough about the Necromancer to think he's a worthy target"; the players can just say their characters are curious about him.

Nor can you impose Massive Overwhelming Superior Force (tm) upon the adventurers when they show up at this relatively unknown sorceror's fortress. Either they'll all die, or they'll run over to Lorien and tell Amroth (or Celeborn and Galadriel) about the huge army massing across the river.

On the other hand, if you say, "Well, everyone knows the Necromancer is very powerful, and there is just no way to beat him", the players may make you prove your point. So a pen-and-paper game system has to be flexible enough to give the game master the means to keep the players from totally wrecking the timeline. There have to be balancing forces which keep the non-player characters from following the player characters on the ultimate quest a thousand years too soon. And a military victory has to be out of the question. Furthermore, it's not fair to the players to let them put the pieces of the puzzle together before the timeline allows people to do that.

That is, Gandalf didn't find out that Sauron was the Necromancer until the 29th century. Arnor and Gondor didn't figure out that some dark power was working to isolate and destroy them until the 19th century. As frustrating as it might seem, the players cannot have their characters go charging into every court in the 17th century saying, "The Great Plague was started by Sauron so that Mordor would be left unguarded! We've got to do something!"

Why is it unfair to the players? Because they are being cheated of adventuring in Tolkien's world. To stay faithful to Tolkien, a game has to keep the play at a level where, no matter how powerful the characters become or whom they topple from power in their adventures, Sauron's plans remain intact. And Sauron himself has to remain unassailable. Otherwise, what you end up with is just a pale shadow of Tolkien.

There is a lot of room for filling in details. And the adventures don't even have to fit into the various wars that Tolkien documented throughout Appendix B. Who is to say there weren't other, less significant wars? For example, how did King Valandur of Arnor die a violent death in T.A. 652? Tolkien doesn't say. Something must have happened. And who were all those valiant men and women sung about in the songs of Rohan? If people want to play female warriors, they certainly don't have to depart from Tolkien (as long as they take shieldmaidens from a northman community).

And then there are the dragons. There are lots of dragons in Tolkien. It's just that most of them aren't named. So who is to say that some intrepid party of adventurers didn't drive back the dragons early in the Third Age?

And if thieves' guilds are an absolute necessity, they can show up in the larger cities (Annumninas, Fornost Erain, Osgiliath, etc.) without too much trouble.

Religion, on the other hand, presents a real problem for game designers. Traditional role-playing games have clerics who draw upon the powers of their gods for healing and other forms of magic. There can't be anything like that in a true-to-Tolkien game. God is there, in the background, but there are no priests. There are seers (a la Malbeth) but the old I.C.E. magic system really doesn't work well for Tolkien. Neither does the AD&D system, nor any other system I've come across.

For one thing, all role-playing games try to limit magic by imposing restrictions on race and profession. If you're of a certain race, you either cannot use magic or it's very difficult to learn, or else you have to be of a certain profession. But Tolkien's world didn't work that way. Individuals had aptitudes for certain tasks and abilities. Hobbits didn't use magic, except for "the ordinary everyday sort which helps them to disappear quietly and quickly" (see "An Unexpected Party" in The Hobbit). But Tolkien doesn't say they couldn't use magic.

In the Prologue to The Lord of the Rings he notes that "Hobbits have never, in fact, studied magic of any kind". The restriction he imposes is a cultural one, not a genetic racial ability (or disability). Their ability to hide is attributed to "ordinary everyday" magic in one book, and dismissed as a "professional" ability that seems like magic to Men in another book. But nowhere is it stated that Hobbits cannot use magic.

Which isn't to say that a role-playing game should encourage people to develop Hobbit-sorcerors who go around casting fireballs. But if the magic system allows people to cast fireball spells, Hobbits shouldn't be excluded from learning how to do such things.

Of course, Tolkien's magic is a mixture of lore and innate abilities. The angelic beings which became the Valar and Maiar (and the Istari were Maiar) were immensely powerful creatures; Tolkien sometimes allowed his characters to refer to them as "gods". But these Ainur were not omnipotent. There were limits to these beings' strengths. They grew weary, and if they took incarnate forms (living bodies, physically biological shapes in which their spirits dwelt) the Ainur could be injured or even killed.

Hence, though there is a hint of Sam and Frodo making use of "Elven magic" in Mordor (even invoking Elbereth's name in a prayerful fashion), there is no chance that either could go further and match Gandalf lightning bolt for lightning bolt. It's not entirely clear if the Nazgul could really have cast lightning bolts the way Gandalf seems to have been able to do. But they might, with the aid of Sauron's power, have been able to call lightning from the sky, a natural source of elemenntal power.

Tolkien writes that Elven sorcery really didn't differ from Sauron's sorcery, except in intent and effect. That is, they were both working the same kind of magic, but the Elves were interested in artistic applications, whereas Sauron was interested in machinistic applications. Of Men, Tolkien wrote that they couldn't use magic, but then remembered that the Numenoreans made magical swords. And the hill-men of Rhudaur became "a sorcerous people". Sorcery, and even necromancy, were therefore available to men, although the spirits with which men could communicate were those of Elves (and perhaps dead Maiar, too weak to re-embody themselves after having been slain). The spirits of men, except under very special circumstances, could not remain in the world.

So, if the limitations imposed by race and profession are removed, then they must be replaced by other limitations. Otherwise, magic users become too powerful in a gaming system, and everyone wants to play them. I think the best way to represent magic in Tolkien's world is through a combination of learned lore, innate ability, and degree. For example, a Hobbit or a Man should not be able to wield magic to the same degree that an Elf can, and an Elf (except for very rare ones like Feanor or Finrod) should not be able to match a strong Maia or a weakened Vala power-for-power.

That is not to say that the Valar and Maiar would have to be invulnerable. But they shouldn't be pushovers. Nor should a well-advanced player-character be deemed a peer to these types of beings. The power of the Ainur would be extreme compared to those of Elves, and they would have access to ancient lore which Elves would not (and neither, therefore, would Men and Hobbits). Dwarves need not be treated as a special case, either. But game masters could impose cultural restrictions on the players. That is, an Elf would make Silmarils and Rings of Power. A Dwarf would not. Their interests would lead Elves and Dwarves to achieve different things.

I think the concept of professions is foreign to Tolkien as well. Everyone knows there are Rangers in Middle-earth, but are the Rangers of Eriador the same as the Rangers of Ithilien? I don't believe so. The former may seem to be more mystical than the latter, but each group's skills seem better suited to the different geographies and situations they had to address. And the fewness of Aragorn's people might be deemed sufficient reason for their Rangers to become exemplary warriors and scholars. They had to achieve more than the average Ranger of Ithilien, because that was the only way they could survive. But the Rangers of Ithilien would have their own advantages outside of war and scholarship.

The chief distinctions in Tolkien are based upon both race and culture. Elves and Dwarves are clearly distinguishable from each other and other races. But are the Dunedain of Gondor so easily physically distinguished from the Dunedain of Arnor? On one level, after thousands of years of separation, it follows that there should be dissimilarities. The southern Dunedain should be darker skinned, and few if any of them are actually described as being pale of skin. But on the other hand, they were all Dunedain, descendants of the Numenorians and the Edain of Beleriand. The chief distinctions between them were cultural.

Hence, a character can start out as any race and be a craftsman, sorceror, rogue, or fighter. But a fighter should be a soldier in someone's army (or recently discharged). And they should have some level of skill or accomplishment that makes them capable. The emphasis should be on the adventure itself, and not on the advancement of the character. Role-playing games can become so distracted and preoccupied with the need to advance the character to that next level, in order to add more skills and spells to the sheet. Role-playing is not supposed to be about how many spellbooks you've mastered, or how many weaponstyles you can utilize. It should be about the choices you make for your character.

In the end, we'll probably see a whole new system devised for the next LOTR-based game. But it will most likely honor many traditional stereotypes found in adventure gaming. There is simplicity if not elegance in stereotypes, and simplicity frees the imagination for use in other areas. If we end up with Hobbit thieves, Elvish sorcerors, ale-guzzling Dwarven fighters, and warrior-philosophers from Arnor and Gondor, it won't be the worst thing ever to happen to Tolkien's world. But let the players beware a gaming system is true unto itself, and may owe little or no fidelity to Tolkien. So its answers are only relevant to its own questions.

Michael Martinez is the author of Visualizing Middle-earth, which may be purchased directly from Xlibris Corp. or through any online bookstore. You may also special order it from your local bookstore. The ISBN is 0-7388-3408-4.