...and then...Mirkwood.

Dark and foreboding when we first see it in The Hobbit, Mirkwood looms large in Bilbo's tale. Drawing on old fairy tales and legends, Mirkwood is the quintessential haunted forest of modern fantasy. There is a mystery to it that lingers long after the book has been read. The blasted dead mountains and plains of Mordor may be hellish, but Mirkwood is the realm of nightmare. The north is a perilous fairy forest, with strange magics and forgotten secrets, while the south is the haunt of the Necromancer, whose grim tower is a jutting shadow above the forest canopy. It was inevitable that ICE would publish game books covering this vast forest for their Middle-earth Roleplaying game, and it makes sense that they divided it into two parts, since they are different realms.

 These are among the earlier MERP game books, and it shows. The organization is a bit of a mess, and the typeface is small and cramped. I give ICE credit; they tried to cram a lot of material into these books.

Northern Mirkwood

Northern Mirkwood:The Wood-Elves Realm covers a lot of territory, much of it familiar to readers of The Hobbit. It ranges from the Carrock in the river Anduin to the West, to the western Grey Mountains in the North, to the Long Lake and the Lonely Mountain in the East. It's a rich, varied region, and the book devotes essays on the flora and fauna, as well as the histories and cultures of the various peoples found in it, from the Elves of the eastern part of the forest, to the bear-folk of Beorn in the central part of the forest, to the Dwarves of the Lonely Mountain and the Grey Mountains, to the Men of the Long Lake and the plains east of Mirkwood. And Dragons. Let's not forget the Dragons. Smaug was the greatest of them, but he wasn't the only one. This entire region within and without the forest is so densely-packed with interesting inhabitants and sites, that I can see it being the basis for entire game campaigns that last years.

Northern Mirkwood also contains the Halls of the Elven-king to the northeast. I've already taken a look at the book dedicated to the place. This book gives it more context, where it becomes something of an anchor against the encroaching dark that is permeating Mirkwood. However, as readers of The Hobbit know, that doesn't mean the Elven-king is a friendly face to those who travel through his realm, and his Halls are not a refuge. Those who stumble into the realm of the Wood-Elves won't be slain out-of-hand, but the best they can hope for if they persist in bothering them is to be locked in a cell until they give an accounting of themselves. A clean cell, to be sure, but a cell nonetheless; the Elves are inherently good folk, but they've been fighting a losing battle against evil for several thousand years, and they have not survived by welcoming strangers with open arms. A layout of the place is included, though it isn't as detailed as in the Halls of the Elven-King book, of course. Northern Mirkwood was published years before that book, so this would have been the lone sourcebook for the place for those who wanted it. However, the two together really help each flesh out the other. Without the Halls of the Elven-King book, the overview of the site in the Northern Mirkwood book is cursory and open for interpretation by the individual gamer or Tolkien enthusiast. That's not necessarily bad, as gamers often love tinkering with a setting, but someone reading this just to read it may find it lacking.

One level of the delvings within the Lonely Mountain.

 Erebor, or the Lonely Mountain, is also detailed in Northern Mirkwood. The place really deserves a book of its own, but I don't think ICE ever did one. To be fair, they did a couple of editions of their book for Moria, and there are Dwarven fortresses in books like The Grey Mountains, so it isn't like Dwarven digs are underrepresented by the game. Still, the Lonely Mountain is an iconic location for those who've read The Hobbit, and it rates its own separate book. Not to mention that a dragon's lair is a quintessential adventure locale not just in games, but in legend. You'd think that would make the Lonely Mountain the perfect subject for a whole game product of its own, and it was. But that boardgame doesn't seem like it'd be much use for a roleplaying game, and it was, and is, rare as hen's teeth. So the Lonely Mountain got lumped into Mirkwood. As with the Halls of the Elven-king, the Lonely Mountain is not detailed in any great depth, disappointingly so in this instance.To add insult to injury, mighty Smaug himself is barely mentioned.

This may be Smaug. Maybe not. They didn't bother to label the picture.

As usual with MERP books, there are a number of charts that list and detail everything from herbs and animals to military units in the region. These early MERP books were pretty strong in this regard. In fact, they almost redeem the entire book on their strength alone. These charts and lists include plants & herbs and their effects, legendary items and weapons of the area, a roster of dragons, a bibliography of books used as references for this one, adventure ideas, and background notes on possible player characters from the area.

Some of the maps are notable, too. ICE had some truly gorgeous maps made of Middle-earth. Hand-drawn and meticulously-detailed, I wish they'd been collected into one big poster-sized map that would likely be a good-sized mural. Maybe they did make one, but I never saw it. All I ever saw were the sections done for the various sourcebooks, and altogether those don't cover all of Middle-earth. Still, what is included is still pretty cool. In addition, they include a smaller, black and white version for the gamemaster's use, which is labeled with where plants, animals, peoples, and creatures can be found. It's a really simple idea, but damned handy. Some of the maps inside the book are unspectacular, but the ones that are really make up for those.

Let's not forget the giant talking spiders.

Southern Mirkwood: Haunt of the Necromancer covers a part of the forest that is only seen from a distance in the narrative. If Northern Mirkwood is shadowed and filled with mystery, Southern Mirkwood is even more gloom-filled. Dol Guldur, or "Hill of Sorcery," the sinister fortress of the Necromancer, rises up from amongst the trees of the southwestern part of the forest on Amon Lanc, the "Naked Hill."

The Necromancer was Sauron in disguise, as was revealed sometime during the events of The Hobbit, but that "secret" seems like it should have been blindingly obvious. If this was a spoiler to you, then welcome to Earth.

Southern Mirkwood; Dol Guldur, the haunt of the Necromancer, is the bare spot in the southwest part of the forest.

Let's play along and pretend like Sauron's charade as the Necromancer actually fooled anyone. Even given that, his presence was troubling and dangerous, spooking some of the most powerful people in Middle-earth enough for them to get together and brainstorm about what to do. Saruman, Galadriel, Elrond, and Gandalf himself gathered to worry about the Necromancer and eventually kick him out of Dol Guldur. It's not clear how that was done, but I'm sure it would've made a good story.

Topographical map of Dol Guldur to the left.

In the meantime, though, his presence caused Mirkwood to take on its foreboding aspect, causing it to be renamed - it had been known as Greenwood the Great. The whole forest took on a gloomy aspect, but it's reasonable to assume that Southern Mirkwood was especially afflicted, especially as one approached Dol Guldur.

Pants are optional among the forces of the Necromancer, apparently.

As Northern Mirkwood did, Southern Mirkwood covers a good chunk of the region around the forest. This southern region draws close to Mordor itself, the evil wasteland that was the focus of so much of Middle-earth's troubles in the time of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Elves are few and far between in this part of the forest, and Orcs, Trolls, and evil Men abound, given that Dol Guldur became a bastion for evil that sent out armies to attack both the Elves of Northern Mirkwood and Lorien. Horsemen and nomadic tribes inhabit the plains to the East, and are known to be hostile. The Brown Lands lie to the southwest, and were laid waste by Sauron thousands of years before. So Southern Mirkwood is a much bleaker place than the northern half of the forest.

This is the book's interpretation of Radagast.

Interestingly, on the western edge of the forest, and a bit to the north of Dol Guldur, is Rhosgobel, the home to Radagast the Brown. Radagast is a wizard, one of the handful sent to Middle-earth to help fight evil. he seems a good sort, but is more interested in birds and animals than people, whether they be Men, Elves, Dwarves, or Hobbits. He makes a brief appearance in The Lord of the Rings, and Saruman sneeringly refers to him as "Radagast the Bird-tamer! Radagast the Simple! Radagast the Fool!" in conversation with Gandalf. Still, he's a wizard, and that means something. It's interesting that Tolkien located him so near to where the Necromancer lived. It's pretty bad-ass that he apparently did so absentmindedly, yet still must have been a bit of a deterrence. I imagine his place would make for a good refuge for adventurers skulking around the Necromancer's stomping grounds.

As with Northern Mirkwood, people, places, and things are given a brief but substantive pass, placing everything in a fairly easy-to-grasp context for gamers and Tolkien fans. There are more nifty maps, as in the other book, which are really useful.

The biggest single chunk of the book deals, unsurprisingly, with Dol Guldur, and this is one of the only MERP books in which players can have their characters actually meet the Dark Lord face-to-face. It's not too likely, but it can happen. Even if it does happen, player characters are pretty much done for. Even in a weakened state, without his Ring, Sauron is no pantywaist.

I have to confess I find it somewhat silly that Sauron has a throne in the dead center of an eye-shaped room.

Dol Guldur itself is an evil fortress in the classic mold. Traps, monsters, troops, legendary items, and a generally evil atmosphere will be pretty familiar stuff to gamers used to dungeoncrawls. The maps for the place seem odd to me, though, because I have a hard time visualizing exactly what the hell it's supposed to look like from outside. I guess it's mostly inside Amon Lanc in this version. For some reason I always pictured Dol Guldur as a fortress on Amon Lanc, not in it, with dungeons and dark pits delved into the hill beneath the fortress. But, that's my own bag.

Beyond all that, Southern Mirkwood contains a few other minor sites, including a stronghold of Gondor and the home of a "seer." There are adventure and character ideas that are of some interest, and it's interesting to me that this was a feature of early MERP books that was either dropped or made less prominent in later books.

One big hit against both these books is the sizable game info-dump at the front of each. There is a solid block of relatively impenetrable gamespeak that would have to turn off the casual reader. Most MERP books are similarly afflicted, but it seems especially egregious to me in these. Something like six pages or more need to be plowed through to get to the true start of the book proper. It seems senseless to me to do that. Putting it all in the back of the book with the other game statistics seems like it would've made the books more accessible to non-gamers. But, this was almost thirty years ago, so the horse is long out of the barn.

Overall, though, these are pretty decent books. They're especially useful for a gamer, and could be used as a forest in any fantasy roleplaying setting once the serial numbers are filed off. The casual reader and non-gamer might find a bit of interest in the history and cultural essays in the books, though a good bit of it was extrapolated and made up whole cloth, rather than drawn directly from Tolkien's work.

These books are really evocative of nostalgia for me, as are many of the books I'll be discussing here. Long before the internet and its plethora of wikis and dedicated sites, there were only a handful of resources for anyone wanting more info about Middle-earth. So books like these came along through which I could pore, endlessly, usually late at night. There was no illusionary hum of activity that comes from Google searches and site-scrolling. It was a solitary pursuit. This is no "gosh things were so much better then" essay. It wasn't better. Different. Simpler. Quieter, after a fashion. But not better. Today, I could find pages worth of material about any Middle-earth region I care to know about, and much of it would be drawn straight from some Tolkienian source which may not have been unearthed yet years ago.

More melancholy? Yes, yes, like an old friend coming 'round as the evening draws down. Leafing through these books takes me back to a simpler time. Simpler for me then, of course, before time had begun to speed up for me, before the slow, stately, deep ringing of the bell that is the passing of the years began to take on the strident urgency of a fire alarm. These books, like all things we've held onto for decades, seem like faulty time travel devices, casting us back to an earlier age, but cruelly depriving us of the chance to do anything again, make our bad choices right, say the things we needed to have said then. This mood upon me now seems appropriate, though, because so much of Tolkien's Middle-earth narrative hangs upon the decisions of the past, and how they force the river of time to flow in ways those who made those decisions could not have guessed.

Fortresses of Middle-earth: Halls of the Elven-King...

Black butterflies and drunken elves. Those are two things that stuck out to me when I first read The Hobbit. Magical streams that cause deep sleep, paths that can't be strayed from, black squirrels, white deer, black stags...Mirkwood dominated the book in my mind.

There's something mysterious about even the most familiar patch of woods. It's easy to believe something strange and unknown lies within them, waiting to discover or be discovered. Throughout Tolkien's works, he presents a number of different woodlands, each possessed of its own secrets. The most mysterious of them all was Mirkwood.

Mirkwood is a darker counterpart to Lorien, with the Elven-King's realm an Unseelie Court to the Seelie ruled by Galadriel. King Thranduil of Mirkwood held sway over a wood haunted by giant spiders and a spooky atmosphere, quite unlike the starlit forests of Lorien.

Thranduil may have been the Elven-King in Northern Mirkwood, but his main stronghold was an underground fortress near the forest's edge. This fortress harkens back to the faerie mounds of legend, and is a labyrinthine place. This is where the dwarves were imprisoned by the elves, and from which Bilbo freed them after lurking about the place for who-knows-how-long, using his ring of invisibility. It's a clean, dry, civilized place, but still one with an otherworldly tinge to it, and sinister if one is not there as a guest, but rather as a prisoner. It's worth noting that Thranduil was the father of Legolas, meaning that Legolas was a prince and heir to the kingdom of northern Mirkwood.

Unlike Rivendell, the Halls of the Elven-King are an obvious site for a game adventure. The type of adventure is already spelled out for you in The Hobbit: infiltration, spying, and escape. The elves of Mirkwood, while not evil, are much more suspicious of strangers, and less likely to welcome anyone into their home.

This might be an interesting read for a non-gamer. The conceit for the description of the place is that it's a tale being told by a merchant who had dealings with the elves. Still, a lot of it is floorplans and descriptions of rooms that might wear thin after a while. The history of the place is probably more generally accessible, and like any of the Middle-earth Roleplaying books from ICE, it tries to cover several thousand years in only a few pages. Given the immortality of elves, this isn't as tough as it might seem; for a big example, there were only two kings in that time period, one of them the very one who held Thorin and Company prisoner in The Hobbit. It's a thin book, too, to boot, with a lot of maps and a few illustrations.


 The non-map illustrations have a faux-Bayeux Tapestry look to them. This adds to the alien atmosphere of the place, and gives the book a slight historical "feel" that is unlike other MERP books.

The MERP line extrapolates a lot of stuff out of necessity; a game book often needs to detail elements of the world that Tolkien either never addressed, or only touched upon. Sometimes the writers of the MERP books went a little astray from what seems "Tolkienian," but in this book they managed to do a decent job. Tree-forts grown into existence is a good example.

This is one of the better-done MERP adventure site books. With more substance, like a concentration on Middle-earth history, and more art rather than floorplans, this could have been a rainy-day book to leaf through. As it is, it's too flimsy for that, but it is good for those who might want to plug it into a fantasy game setting, Middle-earth or not.

Again, a map that has to be shown in two parts. Part the first...

...and part the second.

There's something dreamy about this book. Much of this has to do with the art, but the narrative description and extensive historical notes also contributes to it. It's a decent companion piece or quick reference for The Hobbit, though it's obviously not canon. ICE did a couple of books detailing Mirkwood itself, divided into Northern and Southern sections, so this one is a good companion for those.

Maybe the dreaminess has more to do with The Hobbit itself than with this book. That's entirely possible. I've read The Hobbit more times than I can remember, and I may well be projecting the mood I felt while reading that book onto this game book. I know that the entire adventure in Mirkwood always had a dreamlike quality to it, more so than almost anything else Tolkien wrote. I'm still struck by the image of Bilbo climbing out of the gloom and above the canopy of Mirkwood, seeing the black butterflies flying above the forest in the sunlight. It's a beautiful moment. I'm also struck by the image of elves drinking until they fall asleep, with Bilbo slipping around them as he works to engineer the escape of the dwarves. It's all a late-night fairytale.

Summer depths.

Stepping out into the fetid swamp this place has become, under a waning Moon still bright as it slides across the sky, I hear the gulping belch of frogs across the way. The field that stretches away on the other side of the road now has a mystery to it, with a mist rising up from it like the moors in Basil Rathbone's Hound of the Baskervilles. High weeds and bushes are silhouettes of creatures clawing their way up from the ground, frozen in poses of final escape. There is a thick, mild stench of rotting plants and cordite, a mix of smells that comes from an endless stretch of 90-degree-plus days and the fireworks of the Fourth of July. The air is heavy. The night is deep.

Some thoughts on the running of a Fourth Age Middle Earth game campaign.

This is an oldy but a goody. Given that I've been reviewing Middle-earth game books, this seemed like as good a time to post this again as any, in case anyone who's a gamer was passing by and had a hankering to read a bit about Middle-earth being used as a setting for a roleplaying game. Every so often I dust it off and post it somewhere, because it took a bit of effort and this is my blog so whatever.

This post may simply make the eyes of non-roleplaying-gamers glaze over, but a fan of Tolkien and his work may well find something of interest here.

A Fourth Age Middle-earth campaign is a great way to use Tolkien's world as a game setting without having to worry about, or change, canon. Tolkien himself provides a lot of interesting detail about his world after the time of the Lord of the Rings, detail that provides a wealth of campaign hooks and ideas. I'll quote some of this material to show how relevant it is to a gamemaster wanting to run a campaign in Middle-earth.

"For though Sauron had passed, the hatreds and evils that he bred had not died, and the King of the West had many enemies to subdue before the White Tree could grow in peace. And wherever King Elessar went with war King Eomer went with him; and beyond the Sea of Rhun and on the far fields of the South the thunder of the cavalry of the Mark was heard, and the White Horse upon Green flew in many winds until Eomer grew old." - The Return of the King, Apendix A, part II, The House of Eorl

This paragraph sets the premise for decades of Fourth Age adventure. It doesn't involve just Men, either. Even though Tolkien makes much of how the Fourth Age is a time of fading for all the peoples of Middle-earth except Men, it is apparent that many of the other races are actually becoming much more gregarious in the Fourth Age. Here are some examples:

"After the fall of Sauron, Gimli brought south a part of the Dwarf-folk of Erebor, and he became Lord of the Glittering Caves. He and his people did great works in Gondor and Rohan. For Minas Tirith they forged gates of mithril and steel to replace those broken by the Witch-king. Legolas his friend brought south Elves out of Greenwood, and they dwelt in Ithilien, and it became once again the fairest country in all the westlands." - The Return of the King, Appendix A, part III, Durin's Folk

"Three times Lorien had been assailed from Dol Guldur, but besides the valour of the elven people of that land, the power that dwelt there was too great for any to overcome, unless Sauron had come there himself. Though grievous harm was done to the fair woods on the borders, the assaults were driven back; and when the Shadow had passed, Celeborn came forth and led the host of Lorien over Anduin in many boats. They took Dol Guldur, and Galadriel threw down its walls and laid bare its pits, and the forest was cleansed.

In the North also there had been war and evil. The realm of Thranduil was invaded, and there was long battle under the trees and great ruin of fire; but in the end Thranduil had the victory. And on the day of the New Year of the Elves, Celeborn and Thranduil met in the midst of the forest; and they renamed Mirkwood Eryn Lasgalen, The Wood of Greenleaves. Thranduil took all the northern region as far as the mountains that rise in the forest for his realm; and Celeborn took all the southern wood below the Narrows, and named it East Lorien; all the wide forest between was given to the Beornings and the Woodmen. But after the passing of Galadriel in a few years Celeborn grew weary of his realm and went to Imladris to dwell with the sons of Elrond. In the Greenwood the Silvan Elves remained untroubled, but in Lorien there lingered sadly only a few of its former people, and there was no longer light or song in Caras Galadon." - The Return of the King, Appendix B, The Tale of Years

In addition, it seems that the Fourth Age is a time of renewal and rebuilding. A few brief but significant passages suggest that Elessar seeks to reinvigorate the entire northwestern part of Middle-earth, something which will take a number of hardy individuals performing countless heroic deeds. Here are some examples:

"King Elessar rides north, and dwells for a while by Lake Evendim."
[Fourth Age 14] - The Return of the King, Appendix B, The Tale of Years

"And Aragorn gave to Faramir Ithilien to be his princedom, and bade him dwell in the hills of Emyn Arnen within sight of the City. 'For,' said he, 'Minas Ithil in Morgul Vale shall be utterly destroyed, and though it may in time to come be made clean, no man may dwell there for many long years.'" - The Return of the King, Book VI, Chapter V: The Steward and the King

As simple as these passages seem, the actual doing of the deeds required to accomplish them is rather difficult. Elessar not only travels to, but actually lives at Annuminas for a while. Seeing that the city was a ruin at the end of the Third Age, abandoned for centuries, and surrounded by wilderness, this implies an enormous effort was made by Gondor. It seems clear that Annuminas is restored, and becomes the chief city of the northern kingdom. It is not difficult to picture that King Elessar also rebuilt Fornost Erain and Tharbad. It is also highly likely, even though unmentioned, that Osgiliath was cleared and rebuilt; given Elessar's desire to rebuild the Dunedain kingdoms, this seems a natural assumption to make.

In addition, the destruction of Minas Ithil, an entire fortress-city the size of Minas Tirith (at least), held by the chief of the Nazgul for centuries and used as a base for a large part of the strength of Mordor, is a task which would have to involve thousands of troops. This is especially true if the city was used as a rallying point and base for some of the remnants of Sauron's armies. It is not hard to imagine that the interior of the city is filled with all manner of evil things - Men, beasts, traps, and a generally unwholesome atmosphere. Very much like a D&D adventure. And speaking of D&D adventures...

"Far, far below the deepest delvings of the Dwarves, the world is gnawed by nameless things. Even Sauron knows them not. They are older than he. Now I have walked there, but I will bring no report to darken the light of day." - The Two Towers, Book III, Chapter V: The White Rider

With the Balrog defeated, Sauron gone, and a huge part of the strength of the orcs in the region destroyed, it is quite likely that the Dwarves would at least begin to explore and clean out Moria. This would provide the archetypal dungeon adventure. Especially given that tantalizing glimpse Gandalf gives into a world of darkness and horror far beneath even where the Kings of the Dwarves once dwelled.

Here are a few random, and final, thoughts about possibilities for Fourth Age campaigns:

Mirkwood (renamed Eryn Lasgalen) and Ithilien would likely also remain havens for a time for evil creatures, such as spiders and orcs, until the Elves, woodmen, and Beornings finally rid the forest of them. Shelob still dwells near Cirth Ungol, and the Watcher in the Water still haunts the lake near the west gate of Moria.

Veterans of Celeborn's taking of Dol Guldur would be good candidates for duty in Mordor itself, or any place wherein darkness still holds sway.

There are at least two great Elves still unaccounted for in the 4th Age: Daeron and Maglor. Perhaps one or the other is encountered in the East, or perhaps one or the other returns to western Middle-earth, finally weary of wandering, their pain and sorrow driving them towards the west at last. Perhaps one of them could take up residence in fading Lorien, or even in Rivendell for a time, or take up the kingship of East Lorien once Celeborn leaves.

All in all, Middle-earth of the Fourth Age is a vital, interesting setting. The gloom of Sauron’s presence has been replaced by an atmosphere of beginnings, but remnants of the Shadow and the things it wrought are still in Middle-earth, awaiting heroes to root them out and vanquish them. Just because the One Ring and its master are gone doesn’t mean their legacy has vanished.

 

The underlying truth.

“So what’s the story about?”

            “It’s about love and honor. It’s about faith and integrity and eternity.”

            “It’s about a girl.”

            “It’s about a girl.”

            “It’s always about a girl.”

In which I get Byronic on this here blog.

First, I’m not a writer. Or so I’ve been told. But I’ll try to tell you a story that’ll make you feel something. I want you to know what little I know or have discovered about love and honor and eternity. You probably already know about most of that yourself, being a person with a head on your shoulders and some time here on the Earth. But if you’re like me, it helps to know someone else out there has been through similar stuff. Even if that someone else isn’t any smarter than you.

I love the stars. I take comfort from them. There is nothing better than a sky full of bright stars, especially on a cold winter’s night or above the ocean. They hang above, brilliant and steady, slowly wheeling around the sky, and walk with you unchanging. I’ve lain out under them at times, flat on my back, looking straight up, and, y’know, it can suddenly seem like I’m falling forever and always upward into them, rushing through the heavens, a little speck of existence flying into the great nothingness of the sky.

           

Sometimes I feel like I’m all alone except for the stars. They seem like friends to me, constant and never-changing. Because when you’re lonely, the loneliness can play tricks on you, or make you turn to unloving (I meant unliving, but I’ll leave it) things for companionship.

           

I glide across the fields of the night, starlight silvering the grass, the darkness making everything strange and fay, and I fly up to the Moon and beyond, the summer wind staying with me as a warm blanket. The stars are blue-white fireflies in the backyard of the night, winking and slowly, slowly flying to where they are going, drowsy and lazy. The stars wash over me forever and ever…   

The power we have to affect the lives of others.

The other day I was at a store and the cashier said “hi, how are you?” My automatic response was “fine, and how are you?” She seemed startled by my response, her face screwing up into a classically baffled look, and said “I dunno, nobody ever asks me that!” That made me a bit sad. Here was a person who deals with people directly, all day long, who seems surprised when someone actually interacts with her.

Humans are a gregarious species; we thrive when we are together, our words and actions have a direct impact upon those around us – and conversely, the words and actions of others have a direct impact upon us - because we need other people to care about us. It’s so easy to just say a kind, polite word or to give someone a smile, yet too often we simply ignore these basic courtesies, wrapped up in our own world.

Really, it won’t break your ass to be nice to people you run across throughout the day. The notion that all of us are responsible only for ourselves and our own happiness and we can’t be bothered to help someone else feel good about themselves and others has always struck me as narcissistic nonsense. Reaching out to others seems a much better way to be happy, rather than self-centered navel-gazing. I’m not a particularly religious person, but one of the most appealing things about Christ’s sacrifice was that it was done for the good of all. He didn’t yell down from the Cross “I’m doing this for me!” I’ve known a few ostensible Christians who might want to contemplate that.

I believe that wisdom can be found in the most unexpected places, and in keeping with that belief, here is a quote from, of all things, a trailer for the movie “Good Will Hunting” (a movie I didn’t even find particularly interesting, ironically enough):

“Some people can never believe in themselves until someone believes in them.”

When I first heard that, it hit me hard. It seemed, and seems, so true. Too often I’ve heard people say “you have to love yourself before anyone else can love you,” but it rings false to me. It seems like a Hollywood construct – hey folks, Hollywood is made up of narcissistic show-offs with an overabundance of self-absorption; of course they’re gonna tell us we have to love ourselves first! Sometimes it really does take seeing someone else believe in you to cause you to begin to believe in yourself. We are too close to the subject; sometimes we need to see ourselves through the eyes of others to get a clear vision of what is strong and good within us. Sometimes it just takes a bit of reaching out to really affect someone’s life positively.

So say “hi” back to the cashier, and ask her how she’s doing. Call your mom and tell her you love her. Track down an old friend and tell them they’ve been on your mind. Get in touch with that person you’ve sworn not to talk to and patch things up. Because, gang, we don’t live forever, and sometimes time just runs out. Make others feel good while you have the chance.

Yeah, I know, this is all PollyAnna-ish, all sissified ‘n’ shit…

Rivendell: The House of Elrond...a review, of course.

It's logical to follow up on the previous review of Lorien & the Halls of the Elven Smiths with another elven stronghold. Rivendell is the most pivotal location in Middle-earth, and so rates a Middle-earth Roleplaying book of its own. For all its importance, though, it's not that big a location, so the book for it is, perhaps unsurprisingly, a rather thin affair.

As with Lorien, it's tough to imagine a lot of the usual roleplaying game hijinks of door-kicking brouhahas going down in Rivendell. In game terms, it would likely be used much as it is in the book and movies - a haven and rest stop for the good guys as they wander around fighting evil. However, just as with Lorien also, the source material shows just how interesting it could be for players who want their characters to interact with the setting. Lots of palaver takes place, plans are made, and alliances are forged in Rivendell.

Trouble is, this book doesn't really deal much with anything like that. Instead, there is, as with all of ICE's Middle-earth game books, an overview of the area, with flora and fauna discussed, the cultures of men and elves are given a brief pass, and there is a cursory rundown of the history of the place. There are charts (well, of course there are!) of animals, characters, and, intriguingly, herbs. There's a lotta herb use in Middle-earth (well, of course there is!).

Rivendell has a high concentration of Middle-earth's remaining badasses. It's pretty remarkable when you think about it. Of course, there's Elrond himself, who's no slouch if you dig back in his history, though he seems to mostly do a lot of talking and cogitating when he's "onstage" in both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. But really, he once had no qualms against wading into battle even when Sauron himself took the field. There's also Glorfindel, who got shafted in the movies. I mean, this is the guy from whom the Black Riders, as a group, mind you, ran when he showed up. And he chased them. But no role in the movies, unless you count some spurious "cameo" talk...and I don't. There are Elrond's sons, Elladan and Elrohir, who are barely mentioned, but the appendices to The Lord of the Rings reveals that they and Aragorn spent a lot of time roaming the wilderness killing orcs and playing Bear Grylls. Speaking of Aragorn, he was raised in Rivendell. Then, of course, there is Arwen, who basically did in the movies what Glorfindel did in the book. It's hard to criticize Jackson for that, as Tolkien's book had a paucity of strong female characters. Arwen herself spent her "onstage" appearance in the book literally on a pedestal. And yes, I'm using literally correctly here. There are implications that more badasses make Rivendell their home base, but we don't get to see them.

This book reflects how Rivendell was in the book pretty well, though as I mentioned elsewhere, ICE's Middle-earth books are pretty heavy on "crunch." That is, the game statistics take up a significant amount of the space in the book. There isn't much discussion of what to actually do here, unless you like playing out your character sitting around on the porch smoking pipeweed. I mean, there isn't a Council of Elrond everyday, and presumably most of the heavy hitters are out and about doing good deeds like beating up orcs most of the time. Elrond can be assumed to be home most of the time, I suppose, but I doubt players could have their characters pester him much before they got the boot. Characters could go to hang out with the more flighty Silvan Elves, sure, but how much singing and dancing would they be able to stomach?

Not again!

 Pretty soon, player characters would be avoiding the place...

 

Anyway, the book is nice, though not very inspiring. Rivendell isn't, in itself, going to be an exciting adventure location, except for really roleplay-intensive games.