Post originally by SteelCaress at 2003-04-28 11:25:59
Converted from Phorums BB System

Plus good luck finding an ICE Middle Earth Product. Tolkien Enterprises ordered all extant copies destroyed by ICE once Iron Crown went bankrupt.

Once it vanishes from the used bookstore it will likely never be there again.

I use the original MERP as filler...they didn't talk about Dragons in LOTR, for example. Kinda lame, when you think about it. The Valar are nicely filled in, too. There's a lot of background in MERP that kinda gets overlooked, and is a must read for anyone wanting to run a Lord of the Rings campaign. I think that might be my biggest gripe with CODA's interpretation.

My campaign's not set in Middle Earth, per se, but in the unnamed East, where 2 unnamed Istari were sent. Gandalf, Saruman, and Radagast were the only named Istari, and they were sent to the west. In the East, one Istari allied herself with Morgoth in the First Age. The second wizard dedicated himself to fighting this evil. The results are interesting, with crumbling ruins, dark threats from the witch-queen, etc. I made sure to insert the cliches of Tolkien's world, but in less recognizable form. I think the result is that it feels like Tolkien, without feeling like a rehash because of all the games that have copied Tolkien's ideas. That is the best of all possible worlds, I think.