Middle Earth Adventures using GURPS

[GURPSJM]

This has to be an issue that has been discussed many times before, but I haven't discussed it yet, so I bringing it up again.
The Middle Earth background is so rich for adventures beyond the traditional fantasy, allowing for fun interaction between the players and the history and background of the lands is complex, and I wondered what ideas other people had.
The trouble I have is that its hard to adventures before the destruction of the one ring because everybody already knows everything, so there is no mystery to it. Magic is diminished after the destruction of the one ring, so there isn't a new quest. And if you do a traditional dungeon crawl, if doesn't feel special about running a campaign in Middle Earth.
The ideas that immediately pop into my mind are adventures stemming from pockets of magic, areas where elven magic lingers and has been twisted. There can also be fun adventures about those who remained at Rivendell destroying the last of Sauron's minions, which could include aspects of dungeon crawl and lieutenants with weird powers.
I think GURPS is perfect for a Middle Earth campaign because you can do a campaign that is not complete combat based and requires high role playing, but still getting to do a little bit of gratitous violence, which despite my previous comments, I have to admit, is always a blast.
Anybody have any other ideas?

[Agemegos]

I ran a campaign set about a decade after the fall of Sauron, about the re-ordering of Eriador. The Dunedain of the North were re-establishing Arnor, and the King had made proclamations encouraging people to migrate there. But the Dunlendings were still basically hostile, the orcs in Moria were undefeated, and the departure of Elrond and his stompiest retainers meant that the watch on the Trollshaws and old Angmar was weakened.

In particular, my campaign focussed on the surviving Black Numenoreans (who were hated in Harad as Sauron's lieutenants) fleeing to Eriador to make new lives. Most of them were genuinely repentant of their former service to Sauron (and rather bewildered that the world turned out to be different from what he had taught them to believe), but they didn't really have an cultural idea of how to be "proper" Dunedain. And there was a lot of friction between them and the Dunedain of the North, who had fought the good fight for thousands of years etc. This was exacerbated because the Black Numenoreans had preserved their bloodlines more arrogantly (and therefore were of purer Numenorian race) and had preserved a lot of Numenorean lore and physical culture (technology) that the good guys had lost while they were hiding out as rangers.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by GURPSJM

This has to be an issue that has been discussed many times before, but I haven't discussed it yet, so I bringing it up again.
The Middle Earth background is so rich for adventures beyond the traditional fantasy, allowing for fun interaction between the players and the history and background of the lands is complex, and I wondered what ideas other people had.
The trouble I have is that its hard to adventures before the destruction of the one ring because everybody already knows everything, so there is no mystery to it. Magic is diminished after the destruction of the one ring, so there isn't a new quest. And if you do a traditional dungeon crawl, if doesn't feel special about running a campaign in Middle Earth.

Tolkien's history before the One Ring is unmade covers a vast reach of time and space, most of it scarcely mapped. Possible times about which nothing much is known in detail:

1. Late Second Age, Founding of Gondor and Arnor: Numenor has fallen, the majority of the Dunedain are dead, the survivors are mostly corrupted or at best misled, still following Sauron. But Gondor and Arnor are just being founded, PCs could be surviving Faithful Dunedain, who feld Numenor with Elendil. They've got new lands to explore, Elven allies to cultivate, old rivals out to get them.

Role playing opportunities abound. For interpersonal role play, imagine a Numenorean couple, one Faithful and one of the King's Men, who broke up over the religious dispute and now have met again in Middle Earth (the anti-Valar one might have left Numenor before the hammer fell).

Is the former majority Dunedain repentant now? Or is he/she angry and blames the Valar for the Downfall? If they meet again, how to they interact?

Adventures could include exploration: Elendil might send a party of explorers out to survey the bounds of Gondor and Arnor, or to bear diplomatic messages to Khazad-dum, or the Elven Realm in Greenwood. There may well be dragons in the skies in those ages. And of course Sauron is going to reappear, perhaps your PCs are the first Dunedain to discover that he's still alive...

Heck, Isildur might send people into Mordor in the early stages of the foundation of Gondor to see what's there, even before they know Sauron is back, only Eru knows what they might encounter there!

2. There are three thousand years of history in the Third Age. Imagine a party of Dunedain in the Gondorian Civil War, trying to salvage what they can, or trying to ameliorate the Plague.

There are lots of possibilities...

[zuldan]

hey i ran a middle earth game that used isador great grandchild being consumed by darkness. and pretty much ressurected Morgoth. acturally just used his essence to become the new dark lord.

elven blood had dimished only half elves have lived on.

and a new enemy shadow elves or shadow and air demons. opposed to the shadow and fire. idea.

i know hard core tolkien fans probbaly wont like the idea but if you wanna runa more darker gritty middle earth it works. my players enjoyed it quite a bit.

[Phantasm]

Our one and only GURPS Middle Earth game died when the PC playing Arwen betrayed the PCs. To this day, we still talk about Dark Queen Arwen the Betrayer. XD

[zuldan]

wow thats missed up lol. talk about alternate universes. probably coudl add that world to the infinite world list arwens world. lol

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by zuldan

wow thats missed up lol. talk about alternate universes. probably coudl add that world to the infinite world list arwens world. lol

My Middle-Earth campaign was set in an alternate history of Middle-Earth: Frodo managed to give Sam the slip, so he and Gollum were traveling into Mordor alone, and without Sam's hostility, Gollum recovered more and didn't betray Frodo to Shelob—but then when Frodo revealed that he intended to destroy the One Ring, Gollum freaked out and attacked him, Frodo put on the ring and commanded Gollum to jump off a cliff (as he had threatened to do earlier in the actual history), and then Sauron spotted him (putting on the ring in Mordor, bad idea) and sent the Nazgul for him. The campaign opened with Sauron's armies sweeping over Middle-Earth: Gondor, Rohan, and then the Grey Havens, the Shire, and Rivendell. The PCs were in the resistance. The opening scenes of the ruin of Middle-Earth were startlingly horrifying, even to me, when I was running them.

The biggest question was what to do with the Three Rings. I decided that Gandalf had died fighting against being possessed by his (spontaneous istari combustion, you know); Elrond had succumbed and was a mind-controlled slave (and eventually the PCs rescued him by amputation); and Galadriel was just barely holding her own, still using her ring to fight against Mordor, but going mad from the stress, especially since she didn't dare sleep. I recruited a friend who does good scary to play Mad Galadriel, and she terrified the players, who were genuinely unsure if she was corrupted or not.

It seems to me that the orthodox history has room for adventures—either grand adventures during, say, the cleaning up of Middle-Earth or small quests by Shirefolk who got restless. . . .

Bill Stoddard

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by whswhs

The biggest question was what to do with the Three Rings. I decided that Gandalf had died fighting against being possessed by his (spontaneous istari combustion, you know); Elrond had succumbed and was a mind-controlled slave (and eventually the PCs rescued him by amputation); and Galadriel was just barely holding her own, still using her ring to fight against Mordor, but going mad from the stress, especially since she didn't dare sleep. I recruited a friend who does good scary to play Mad Galadriel, and she terrified the players, who were genuinely unsure if she was corrupted or not.

Why didn't they take off their Rings? When Sauron first 'activated' the One Ring, back in the Second Age, the Ring wearers sensed him and took them off, what was different this time? I would especially expect Gandalf to sense that Sauron had the One Ring...

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Johnny1a

Why didn't they take off their Rings? When Sauron first 'activated' the One Ring, back in the Second Age, the Ring wearers sensed him and took them off, what was different this time? I would especially expect Gandalf to sense that Sauron had the One Ring...

That's a fair question. In Gandalf's case, he might have done so. Galadriel kept using hers out of sheer desperation. Elrond wasn't as alert as Gil-Galad, and got caught—and perhaps Sauron struck more swiftly, whereas it sounds as if in the Third Age he put the One Ring on and recited his little rhyme to gloat over it, giving the other side warning. I did figure that Gandalf had no temptation at all—but he died at Minas Morgul, fighting an army led by the newly power-boosted Eight.

Bill Stoddard

[Anaraxes]

the newly power-boosted Eight

Huh. For some odd reason, I've never wondered before -- but where did that ninth ring go after Merry* kills the King of the Nazgul? It's a bit valuable and dangerous to leave lying around the battlefield.

* Eowyn gets points for helping. But a hobbit is every bit as much "no man" as a woman. And Merry has the barrow-blade specifically enchanted as a bane for the Witch-King. Eowyn got the credit, but Merry's actually the one that kills him.