The Gauntlet podcast is one of my regular listens during my commute to work and in a recent episode they were talking about gaming, Lord of the Rings and gaming in a canonical setting.
Inspired by this I put together a links to old blog posts all musing about gaming and Tolkien.
Descendants of Agaron and Arwen, struggling to live up to their ancestors’ legends, punk noble kids in Gondor who have taken their grand-parents’ artifacts from Mordor, dusted it off and made Sauron as suddenly hip. Yeah, cool kids taking out their eyes, replacing it with dwarf-wrought clockwork glass so their parents do not know that they are worshiping the long dead Lord of the Rings, putting on tusked masks and going out orcing during moonless nights.
The first thing we get is the Hobbit RPG. It is an adorable boxed set. You can’t help but pick it up and want to take it home and open it.
When you open it, a Dwarf knocks on your door and another and another until finally there are a passle of dwarves and Gandalf, russling you out the door into a grand adventure.
It is fun to think about the various characters who cam into contact with the ring and what a Middle-earth would look like with the One Ring in their clutches:
- Bilbo
- Gandalf
- Elrond
- The Beast Outside Moriah
- Bill the Pony
- The Balrog
- Galadriel
- Boromir
- Faramir
- Shelob
What wonderful villains each of them could be (all except Bill the Pony; we know that Bill is above the Ring’s lure).
Based on the conversation on G+ I’m adding a few more posts about gaming in Westeros:
How we got to Westeros via Burning Wheel
I was pretty sure it was going to be a good night when I explained the situation over dinner and my dad turned to Charles and said, “Brother, I need some dragons; go get me some dragons.”
“I can’t get you dragons…”
“I’m your liege lord and if I say get me dragons, get some some damned dragons.”
And they started bickering over dinner.
“Save it for the game, guys. This is good stuff.”
In which the Warden of the North quickly musters banner-men who can answer quickly and sets up camp in Moat Callin. He didn’t have the numbers he could have had but he had speed, aggression and a little bit of surprise at this point.
My dad was the Warden of the North, The Lord of Winterfell. His buddy was his bastard brother, the one who was willing to do the bloody deeds his Lord wasn’t willing to do.
I have so many favorite moments that I don’t know where to begin.
Githyanki Diaspora 
Never estimate the true power of Bill the Pony.
My current favorite for gaming and Tolkien is Fellowship, which I got to play at Dreamation. One of the other players declared that it solved Epic Fantasy. From what I’ve read of the game, it can as easily go Game of Thrones, but we were all in the elegiac Tolkien mood.