Weird Revisited: Alternate Ravenlofts

The original version of this post appeared in 2016... 

Jack Shear brought to my attention an idea Kreg Mosier proposed of a Southern Gothic Ravenloft. Which is a great idea! It also got me to thinking about other settings where Ravenloft could be repurposed:

Planet of Vampires

A commercial cargo-hauler spacecraft responds to a call from the Demeter from a nearby planetoid, and finds an planet shrouded in eerie mists. The Demeter's crew have undergone a frightening transformation into the undead. At the center of all this strangeness is a weirdly earth-like castle and its master.

Inspirations: Planet of Vampires, Alien, and the Star Trek episode "Catspaw."

The Creepy Castle

Teenagers returning from Spring Break have their car break down in an eerie fog somewhere in Appalachia. Going the the forbidding European-style castle for help seems like a good idea...

Inspirations: any number of horror films including Texas Chainsaw Massacre; Scooby Doo, and for more of a tripped out euro-feel, things like Nuda per Satana and Requiem pour un Vampire.

Gameable Fiction Settings

Finding the audiobook of Simon Green's Deathstalker free on Audible until next week, I decided to revisit it. It's a book I read in the 90s, but I've found most of it has stuck with me, and my impression hasn't changed. It's high of action and invention, but above all, it's a really rpg setting-like world. 

Of course, almost any setting is gameable, but some worlds seem have been built with the requirements of game settings in mind: distinct character types with cool abilities, sources of those cool abilities as setting elements, and factions in varying degrees of conflict. The Deathstalker series has all of this and the kitchen sink: noble houses, rebel ESPers, rebel cyberpunks, a sleeping cybernetic army, an inimical AI civilization, and mysterious alien threats. Sources of "power" including intensive training, cyber-and biotech enhancements, weird alien tech, and psionic abilities. And there are swordfights.

All of this reminds me of a gaming setting. It says "play me," I think, more than any rpg tie-in fiction I have read (which isn't a lot, admittedly, but some).

Another series with this quality is Stephen Hunt's Jackelian novels. They are steampunk at base, but also sport robots, feyblooded mutants, biotech, Lovecraftian ancient gods, and a number of post-apocalyptic secrets. I gave them a fuller overview here.

I'm sure there are other such book series out there. Sykes' Graves of Empire series is in that vein, though not as kitchen sink as the above. Certainly, mainstream comic book universes are this and then some. 

The Funhouse Crawl

This past weekend, I visited my mother's family's old hometown of Panama City Beach, Florida. I got a chance to show my kid one of the landmark's I remembered from my childhood, the kitschy miniature golf course known as Goofy Golf. The firebreathing pink dinosaur that once demanded your attention at the roadside is, alas, no longer there, but the sphinx, giant ape, statue of Buddha, Asian dragon, Easter Island head, and assorted more mundane dinosaurs are still in evidence, along with rockets, windmills and the like.

I feel Goofy Golf is good inspiration for a point- or hexcrawl. I don't mean in its specific set-pieces (not necessarily, at least) but in the way it's basically a spread out funhouse dungeon. I like a good, well-thought out setting as much as the next guy, but I also enjoy the kitchen sink weird lost worlds. I'm thinking of things like Ka-Zar's Savage Land or the world beyond the Bermuda Triangle Skull the Slayer gets sucked into. Hollow World has more than a little of this vibe with cavemen, Rip Van Winkle still dwarves, and gaucho orcs, but there isn't as much of this done in gaming as there could be.

Making it a bounded location to be explored like a pocket dimension or lost world frees it to strain seriousness and consistency in a way than might not work in an entire setting. 

Appendix Nth: Inspirational Media for Rifts

 The recent blast of Rifts related Bundles of Holding had me not only spending a bit of money (with 5 bundles one was bound to get me!) but also got me thinking about the lack of a sort of "Appendix N" documented for the game. In fact, so far as I can find on the internet, its creator has never really discussed his influences, though apparently he has said it grew out an earlier version called Boomers focused on the mecha pilots later called "Glitter Boys." The former name was abandoned when someone told him the term was used in Bubblegum Crisis (which rules that anime out as an influence).

So, I want to look back at the media prior to August of 1990 and think about the things that seem like plausible influences on Rifts. Obviously, I have no way of knowing whether any of these things actual were, but they'll be at least somewhat educated guesses, using what is known of Siembieda's interests. 

I'm going to stick to things with multiple points of applicability. Firestarter, for instance, might be an inspiration for the burster (or might not), but that's really the only Rifts-relevant point.

Film/Television

Planet of the Apes series (starts in 1968). Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970) seems the most relevant as a post-apocalypse with evolved animals and psychic mutants.
Damnation Alley (1977) - post-apocalyptic with a team with a cool vehicle.

Star Wars trilogy (starts in 1977) - An evil empire with a toyetic flair, a lot of aliens; knights with energy swords.

Thundarr the Barbarian (1980) - post-apocalypse with super-science and sorcery; the sunsword.

Blade Runner (1982) - future city aesthetic, artificial humans.

The Terminator (1984) - robot, travel between "worlds" (or in this case, times)

Robotech (1985) - Mecha, aliens.

Akira (1988) - Dystopia with psychic powers, "city rats", and a future urban landscape. The manga Akira also started its American publication this year.

Comics

"War of the Worlds" (Killraven) (starts in 1973 in Amazing Adventures v2 #30) - Post-apocalyptic world conquered by aliens, features freedom fighters and mutants.

Deathlok saga (begins in Astonishing Tales #25 in 1974) - A government cyborg in a post-apocalyptic future, based in the Midwest.

Judge Dredd (in 2000AD from 1977) - future in a megacity in a dystopian future with psychics, robots, and mutants. Most Rifts-relevant is arc may be "The Cursed Earth" in 1978.

Dreadstar (1982) - A space opera team of sort of superheroes but not officially featuring a guy with a psychic sword, a psychic, a cybernetic wizard, and a cat man battle an evil empire.

Grimjack (1984) - features a pan-dimensional city where magic and technology co-exist.

Scout (1985) - Takes place in a dystopian future; a lot of guns, some mystic monsters, a few mechs.

Appleseed (1988, in English) - cyberpunk, mecha, cyborgs.

I am reliably told that there are a number of anime and manga whose designs seem to have influenced greatly Rifts artists. I haven't repeated those here because I'm not sure what influence they had on Seimbeida, and I personally am not familiar enough with them to do more than repeat what I've heard.

Revisiting Skaro

I originally posted these maps in 2018, but I came across them again and thought they were worth re-sharing. For those of you not familiar with Doctor Who lore (it's at least possible somebody reading this isn't!), Skaro is the homeworld of those plunger-armed, shrill-voiced robotic monsters, the Daleks.

According to the map, first appearing in The Dalek Book (1964), Skaro is almost AD&D Outer Plane weird. Check out the named locales here:

Seas of Rust, Ooze, and Acid. The Lake of Mutations. The Radiation Range. All pretty dire stuff. Also, don't miss the note on the giant "serpents" of Darren that are really mutated earthworms!

If that's not enough, subterranean Skaro, is just as weird:

Readings in Planetary Romance: Lost on Venus

Not too long ago, I made the case for Planetary Romance, and particularly its Sword & Planet (sub-)sub-genre, as good fodder for role-playing games, particularly games focused on exploration of the sort come to old school hex and point crawls. I've recently re-read the first of Edgar Rice Burroughs Venus series, Pirates of Venus (1932) and read for the first time its sequel, Lost on Venus (1935). These provide could examples of the Sword & Planet virtues I mentioned.

The Venus series follows the adventures of Carson Napier, young engineer and daredevil, who's launched out in a missile for Mars, but due to faulty calculations, winds up on Venus. Unlike most epic fantasy or even Sword & Sorcery heroes, but like most of his Sword & Planet brethren, these adventures largely come down to him being lost a lot and stumbling onto monsters and weird civilizations.

In Pirates of Venus, he falls in (literally) with the Vepajan loyalists in exile, in a city built high in titanic trees. After learning the language, he gets a job as a tarel gatherer in training, which turns out to be a dangerous line of work, as tarel is the silk of a giant spider. After getting lost in his first outing, he and a friend end up on the ground, where they encounter more hostile wildlife before being taken as slaves by birdmen working for the Vepajan's enemies, the Thorist revolutionaries. 

Taken on board a Thorist vessel, he foments a conspiracy among the other slaves and leads a mutiny to take control of the ship. They briefly turn pirate (or privateer without letters of marquee since they act in Vepaja's interests), until the Vepajan princess Carson is in love with is abducted by Thorists into the wilderness and Carson gets tossed overboard in a storm.

Lost on Venus picks shortly after that, when both Duare (the love interest) and Carson have been captured and taken to a Thorist colonial settlement. There, Carson is placed in a death trap with 7 deadly doors. He escapes though and manages to rescue Duare through a series of the sort of coincidences that Burroughs is famous for. They run into and get lost in the Venusian forest where they have to avoid dangerous animals and cannibals and figure out a way to get food, which involves making a spear and bow and arrows.

Eventually, there's a capture by a mad scientist-type with an army of undead (and another escape), then Carson winds up in an advanced, scientific "utopia," which is really a totalitarian state with an obsession with genetic purity. And then they escape...

If this all sounds rather episodic, well it is--in exactly the way roleplaying games are episodic. The deficits (at least in this regard) these originally serialized stories have as literature are virtues for the table. Finding food and shelter is a concern, too, in a way it might be in a hexcrawl, though the plot armor provided Burroughs' characters ensure none of them starve.

Burroughs' protagonists, and Sword & Planet protagonists in general, are often more reactive than players are or at least often like to be. Things happen to them, or they are forced into a certain course of action. I feel like some of this is broadly acceptable, though there should usually be ways to avoid an encounter by cautious players, and there should always be multiple of ways out of any predicament. 

Random Appendix N Campaign Concept Generator

Need a campaign idea or at least a prompt to develop your own? Just roll on the following table based on the AD&D "Appendix N" and fill in the blanks! 

Protagonists like [A] in a setting like [B] with magic like [C].

Roll     Author

1         Poul Anderson

2         Leigh Brackett

3         Lin Carter

4         Edgar Rice Burroughs

5         L. Sprague De Camp

6         De Camp & Pratt

7         Lord Dunsany

8         PJ Farmer

9         Gardner Fox

10       Sterling Lanier

11       Fritz Leiber

12       H.P. Lovecraft

13       Abraham Merritt

14       Michael Moorcock

15       Fred Saberhagen

16       Magaret St. Clair

17       J.R.R. Tolkien

18       Jack Vance

19       Manly Wade Wellman

20       Roger Zelazny

So, I got A=17, B=20, and C=12, which gives me: Protagonists like JRRT, a setting like Zelazny, and magic like H.P. Lovecraft. I'll interpret that this way: There's a tidally locked planet (suggested by Jack of Shadows), where the nightside is dominated by Elder god-horrors with an oppressed human class in a technological realm, and the dayside is a sylvan realm of elves and dwarves, who seek to keep back the encroaching hegemony of the nightside.

One more example: A=4, B=14, C=10. ERB, Moorcock, and Lanier. This is an easy one. A group of "modern" Earth folk find themselves in post-apocalyptic realm of knights and chivalry where psychic powers are viewed as magic.

Give it a try!

The Non-Fantasy Origins of Fiend Folio Monsters

I've mentioned before how the original Fiend Folio (as compared to the Monster Manual) seems suited as inspiration for sci-fi creatures. In part, I think that's because the inspiration for so many of them seem to lie outside fantasy fiction or myth and legend. They owe their creation to media that would generally be placed in some other genre. 

Here are a few I'm aware of whose origins I think are generally accepted, but I'm sure there are more:

Grimlock 
(by Albie Fiore)
Inspired by the morlocks in H.G. Wells' The Time Machine (1895), particularly their portrayal in the 1960 film by George Pal.

Meenlock
(by Peter Korabik)
While the name likely has its origins in Wells' morlocks again, their portrayal adapts the demonic entities from the 1973 TV movie Don't Be Afraid of the Dark written by Nigel McKeand and remade in 2011 by Guillermo del Toro.

Art by David Mattingly

Quaggoth
(by Andrew Torchia)
Their name was possibly coined by blending Sasquatch and Sagoth, a race of ape-like humanoids (serving the "orc" role) appearing in Edgar Rice Burroughs' Pellucidar series, first appearing in At The Earth's Core (1914).

Art by Frazetta

Qsquip

(by Brendan Bulger)

Their description matches the ulsio (Barsoomian rat) first described in "City of Mummies" (Amazing Stories, 1941) later fixed up into Llana of Gathol (1948).

Art by Wayne Barlowe

Xill

(by Brian Ashbury)

Inspired by the alien ixtl in "Discord in Scarlet" (Astounding, 1939) by A.E. von Vogt fixed up into Voyage of the Star Beagle (1950).

Spelljammer Like This

To my mind, the these works and works provoke an impeccable Spelljammer vibe:

Don Lawrence (Storm)

Al Williamson

Magnus (Milady 3000, I Briganti)

Alex Raymond (Flash Gordon)

Howard Chaykin (Cody Starbuck, Ironwolf)

Inspiration Excavation

Earlier this week, Anne reminded us of an old post where she discussed her earliest, fantasy inspirations. It reminded me of my own fantasy genre prehistory. I wrote a bit about it in my very first post on this blog back in 2009:

In my personal pre-history (which is to say the mid-seventies to the dawning of the eighties), there was already in my brain a nascent cauldron of fantasy abubble: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz conjured by the voice of a babysitter, King Arthur for boys illuminated by NC Wyeth, four-color barbarians on spinner-racks, Myth and legend sifted by Bullfinch and Harryhausen, singing hobbits and rotoscoped orcs, power swords split in twain on not one, but two, alien worlds; an elf, a dwarf, a giant--and a slayer named Hawk, the doom that came to Vermithrax Pejorative, fantasylands with oracular pigs and messianic lions.

I also not in the post the inspiration for my first character (in AD&D): An elf fighter/magic-user inspired by the protagonist in the Endless Quest book by Rose Estes, Mountain of Mirrors.

That's not the only thing in my gaming history I can trace to a specific source. For another example, I've used flightless birds as mounts in several campaign worlds I created, I suspect all traceable to this cover by James Gurney for a book I haven't read:

There are numerous things like that. Some probably borrowed from sources so long ago, I don't even remember their origins.

Why Isn't There A Game for That? [Update '25]

I wrote the original version of this post in 2014, then I updated it in 2019. It's probably time to check back in and see how the rpg landscape is changed. There are a number of genres/subgenres that are under-utilized or not utilized at all in rpgs, despite the fact they would probably work pretty well. Here are the ones I listed originally and have been following up on:

Humorous Adventure Pulp
Basically this would cover the whimsical, fantastical, and often violent world of Thimble Theatre (later Popeye) and the Fleischer Popeye cartoon. A lot of fist-fights, fewer guns. This would also cover Little Orphan Annie, various kid gang comics, and (on the more violent end) Dick Tracy.
Update: Still nothing, really. Acheron Game's Helluva Town does a sort of Roger Rabbit or Cool World sort of setting, so references things like Popeye, but it's not quite the same thing.

Wainscot Fantasy
Little creatures hiding in the big world. Think The Borrowers, The Littles, and Fraggle Rock.
Update:  Some progress here! Household by Two Little Mice does this sort of thing, though from its specifically about fairies. There's also a game called Pixies and one called Under the Floorboards that specifically namechecks The Borrowers.

Kid Mystery Solvers
Scooby Doo is probably the most well-known example, but you've got several Hanna-Barbera returns to the same concept. Ditch weird pet/side kick, and you've got The Three Investigators, Nancy Drew, and the Hardy Boys. 
Update: There's Meddling Kids I mentioned in 2019, and then there's The Mystery Business that debuted in 2024.

Wacky Races
I've written about this one before--and Richard has run it. Still needs a game, though.
Update: Still just the board game, so far as I know.

Peacekeeping Mission to Mars

I was thinking about Leigh Brackett's Mars today (as I often do) and reflecting on how it isn't very science fictional at all, so that if you advanced the timeline of its colonial Mars about half a century to a century, you might get something that looks a bit like our modern world except with spaceships where Terran peacekeeping forces get bogged down in insurgencies or civil wars on Mars (or Venus).

With a set up like this, you could do the pulp Mars version of modern films set in conflict zones like Blackhawk Down or even better Three Kings. If you went with Earth in a sort of Cold War, you could even wind out with a Twilight:2000 sort of situation would troops lost on Mars and trying to figure out what to do next.

Ozoom Revisited

Scott Martin can be blamed for this post for pointing out the similarities between Oz and Edgar Rice Burroughs fandom....

Mars is dying and has been for millennia. The only truly fertile land left is the squarish Land of Oz, surrounded on all side by deadly desert.

Oz has four countries, each home to a different race of men. The east is the home of the Blue Men, short in stature and friendly. It was once under the tyrannical rule of an ancient crone, but she was felled by a little girl from Earth. In the South is the Country of the Red Men, ruled by a benevolent queen. In the west are the Yellow Men, who are renowned for their technological skill. They are ruled by a metal man. The northern country is the land of the Purple Men. They've been ruled by a succession of queens, each with a mastery of the powers of the mind.

In the center of Oz is the Emerald City-State, and it's lofty spires and magnificent domes are made entirely of crystal. Their true color is in a part of the spectrum neither human nor Martian eyes can perceive, but the city's people wear optics which convert the color to green. It was formerly ruled by a man of Earth, a charlatan and huckster, but the rightful queen has been restored, after having spent her youth in exile, disguised as a boy.

Young Dorothy Gale was transported to Mars by a strange storm that tossed her, along with her dog and her home across the astral void. She killed a witch, exposed a charlatan, and helped restore the rightful ruler of Oz. She didn't do it alone. She was aided by a Lion Man, exiled for his supposed cowardice, an artificial man without the ancient brain that formerly guided him, and a Yellow Man whose mind was had been placed in a metal body. The companions took the Golden Road that followed the ancient canals that terminated in the great Emerald City, then undertook a quest to depose the witch that ruled the Yellow Men and who forced them to use their knowledge to build her an army of conquest.

This was only the first on many trips Dorothy Gale made to Mars. That young farm girl became a dying world's greatest hero.

The original version of this post appeared in 2018.

Prophet of the Wyvern's Word

Though the deadline's are tight, I thought it would be fun to join the Appx. N Jam over on itch. The challenge is to create an adventure homaging the style of the pulpier fiction of the fantastic of Appendix N. Your given a title and you have to work with that to create your short adventure.

I got "Prophet of the Wyvern's Word," for which I think I'll take inspiration primarily from one of my favorite's: Leigh Brackett, as well of a lot of general pulp fiction ambience. It will be a challenge getting everything done in the time less than 25 days remaining, but since it has to be 4 pages of less, I figured it was worth a shot.

Above is my work on a banner. I based it on the hand drawn title text of the Ace Double of People of the Talisman from 1964.

Further Thoughts on Magic

Thinking about my Monday post further (and reading more examples of magic in McKillip's Heir of Sea and Fire), I feel like the part that perhaps the most central element to number of these magic systems I like is that they demonstrate Frazer's concept of sympathetic magic.

Raderle can create a powerful illusion of large lake, by digging a fist-sized hole and pouring water into it. Arthur in The Revolutions can snap a chair leg by snapping the stem of a wine glass. These are both examples of similarity, or like producing like.

The other common employed aspect of sympathetic magic is contagion. It shows up quite a bit in The Revolutions, but I don't think I quoted an example. It's where an item that was once physically connected to someone or something else still has a magical connection to that thing. This is being able to cast a spell on someone because you have a lock of their hair or the like.

Similarity shows up some in D&D spell material components, but I think more of these are sort of jokey correspondences instead.  These things are fine and could even be flavorful for bigger spells or more complicated rituals, I think more spells that used a perhaps caster-specific but reasonable application of similarity and contagion. 

Magic Systems I Like: The Riddle-Master series

I wrote a post almost a year ago related to portrayals of magic in fiction I'd like to see magic in fantasy rpgs be more like. In reading Patricia McKillip's excellent Riddle-Master series, I've come across more examples that are perhaps even more adaptable to fantasy adventure rpgs than some of the ones I mentioned previously.

In McKillip's setting, there are wizards but they are hidden/in hiding at the beginning of the story. The examples I've given here reflect the things able to be done by talented individuals (explicitly not everyone is capable of learning them) but not by people who either have the highest aptitude or training.

She had left, in front of Rood's horse in the College stable, a small tangle of bright gold thread she had loosened from her cuff. Within the tangle, in her mind, she had placed her name and an image of Rood stepping on it, or his horse, and then riding without thought every curve and twist of thread through the streets of Caithnard until, reaching the end, he would blink free of the spell and find that neither the ship nor the tide had waited for him. 

- Heir of Sea and Fire

Raederle (the "she" above), is also able to use this same technique to trip someone immediately (like in a combat situation by throwing a tangle of thread or similar material in front of them. She also is noted to be able to make a thorn bush into (or perhaps seem to be) a difficult to traverse bramble and to find her way out of a magical forest that confounds visitors and gets them lost.

These abilities seem more like spells of the AD&D sort, though they are perhaps wider in application than many and certainly less flashy than most. Another commonly employed magical ability in the series is "the shout:"

...Rood caught his breath sharply and shouted.

Morgon dropped the crown. He put his face against his knees, his hands over his ears. The wine glass on the desk snapped; the flagon on a tiny table shattered, spilling wine onto the stones. The iron lock on a massive book sprang open; the chamber door slammed shut with a boom.

- The Riddle-Master of Hed

More magical powerful individuals can generate more powerful shouts, even to the point we are told of laying low armies in rare instances. We are told that individuals able to shout are only able to do so at times of intense emotion, so it isn't exactly an "at will" power. Still, fairly D&D spell-like.

It's interesting to me how, in broad strokes, the magic conforms to Isaac Bonewits concept in Authentic Thaumaturgy in that, at base, its most common presentation is psychic phenomena. Characters are able to communicate telepathically and invade the minds of others to read their thoughts or memories. There is also a psychic attack--the mental equivalent of the shout--that came overwhelm the mind of an unguarded person and stun them or knock them unconscious. I suppose this psychic magic is hardly uncommon in literary (at least older lit) and real world belief, but it's very different from the energy-wielding magic of many modern portrayals.

Shape-changing is also common in the series, though a number of practitioners only have one form they are able to assume. Danan of Isig, for instance, is only able to turn into a tree, but that's a usual talent for hiding or resting in overland travel. Others are able to assume multiple forms in a way that would give a lot of rpgs fits due to concerns of game imbalance.

Overall, though, I think D&D magic could be molded more in the direction of this series pretty easily. A lot of it would be in reconsideration of the special effects of spells really. Oh, and for you bard fans, there's a bit of harping magic in the series too.

A Partial Gazetteer of the Planet Sagar

Sagar is the alien world that astronaut John Blackstar found on the other end of a black hole as revealed in the Filmation animated series Blackstar (1981). Here are a few of the fantastical locales he visited in the series:

CITY OF THE DESERT DWELLERS. A walled city beyond the Gorge of Winds where live an elfin people (perhaps related to the Desert Sprites) who possess the Healing Stone and guard it from the gargoyles who serve the Overlord. [ep 05]

DEMONLANDS. A barren region of jagged, coral-like formations and strange trees with boil-like growths where demons are particularly easy to summon. It is the location of a temple where the Overlord’s ally Taleena is high priestess and last worshipper. [ep 12]

MARAKAND. Floating city of the rapacious Shaldemar, the Zombie Master. The passing of Marakand leads to destruction of cities, but living beings are helplessly drawn up by its beams and Shaldemar uses his Sphere of Souls to transform his captives into soulless automatons, subject to his will. [ep 13]

TAMBORIYON. A lost city of the Ancient Ones, it lies on a jungle-choked island in the middle of a lake beyond the volcanic Flame Mountains. Tamboriyon's slender spires and domes bedecked with precious metals and jewels are now jungled-choked ruins, but the giant aumaton, Sumaro, who is the city's guardian, merely slumbers and may be reawakened by the unwise. [ep 02)

The Patchwork Kingdom Crawl

 As has been pointed out before, the kind of frontier envisioned by old D&D owes more to Westerns than it does to the Western European Middle Ages or most of the fantasy works in the Appendix N. The modern idea of the "points of light" setting is perhaps closer to these things but still tends to miss the mark for many sources of the game's inspiration.

There's another option that shows up often, in disparate places from Le Morte d'Arthur to Star Trek, and many works in between. We have heroes wandering from one place to another, perhaps with a goal, perhaps not. These places are more or less civilized jurisdictions, but they have unusual customs (from the perspective of the protagonists) or eccentric or antagonist authorities. While one of the examples I mentioned above describes voyages covering a significant amount of territory (interplanetary!), some fairy tale-ish or picaresque stories (like Oz novels) do the same thing over a much smaller area: A patchwork of fiefdoms or petty kingdoms. The sort of campaign that could easily be made from a map of Holy Roman Empire:

This differs from the points of light setting in that there really isn't a distinction between wilderness for adventure and civilization for safety. In fact, the challenges of the wilderness in such stories may be much more limited than the challenges of civilization. The various eccentric monarchs and humorously dangerous social situations Manuel finds himself in in Figures of Earth are good examples, as are the strange and isolated cities John Carter visits in his wanderings across Barsoom.

The advantages of this sort of setting to me would be that it's very easy to work in all sorts of adventures from social conflict and faction stuff to traditional dungeons and overland travel.

Religion in Middle-earth

Art by Falmarin de Carme

I came across this site a couple of weeks ago that compiles additional background material generated for a Finnish Middle-earth based role-playing campaign. What I found most interesting is its extrapolation and elaboration of the religions for Middle-earth. 

This is a perceived area weakness pointed out in Tolkien's work in the past. In Imaginary Worlds, Carter notes critically that Tolkien's world "has no religion in it." In Dragon #127, Rolston in his review of Lords of Middle-earth for MERP gets to the gamer brass tacks of it:

According to Lords of Middle-earth, Middle-earth has a "seemingly inexhaustible collection of deities, pantheons, practices, and religions." However, all of them are wrong. Eru is the only god, and the Valar and the Maiar are simply his servants. Enlightened folk (Elves and Dunedain) practice a nonritualistic monotheism with no formal clergy - pretty boring stuff by FRP standards. 

A lot of epic fantasy has followed Tolkien's areligious example (Jordan's Wheel of Time series, for one) and as modern society becomes ever more secular, it probably is less and less seen as a deficit. Still, if you think of religion is a fascinating aspect of the real world well worth including in imagined worlds (where you at, Gloranthaphiles?) it's cool to see the work Sampsa Rydman has done here. The religions described build on the details provided in Tolkien's extensive writings and (so far as I am familiar with the lore) the new things added seem consistent.

For instance, the orthodox worship of Númenor is as described in terms of its simple ritual and insistence that only the king prays to Eru. The description of a Trinity of Eru, Word, and Flame Imperishable seems a credible extrapolation from details given. Likewise, the sort of Satanic faith of the Black Númenoreans is given a creed that is consistent with what me know about the downfall of their land but with reasonable details as to what Sauron might have convinced them to get them on his side. "Doing evil" (from the point of view of the doer) has historically not really been a common motivator for human religions, so it makes more sense that those that Sauron seduced to his cause were given some other line: "The Valar have wronged both you and the true god, and the true god will redress that wrong if you help him out."

Art by Angus MacBride

Of course, an issue with religion in Middle-earth is canonically we know what's true and what isn't. For a game campaign I think it might be more fun, as Rolston implies, if that weren't true. Going as far as Jacqueline Carey's The Sundering duology and switching the moral polarity of the two sides doesn't really help, but borrowing her idea that the Creator is out of the picture and the lesser gods have differing understandings or interpretations of how to carry out their mission leads to a more ambiguous situation with more possibilities for equally valid appearing religions. In other words, something like the sort of cosmologies or interpretations offered in fantasy works that utilize Judeo-Christian mythology as their backdrop. Really just making the complete truth unknowable to beings within the world (even immortal ones like the elves) would serve the same purpose, though I think most people familiar with Middle-earth would tend to make assumptions that would make this minimal change approach Less effective.

I don't think a Middle-earth game (or a game in any setting) has to have religion (unless you got clerics, in which case, you sort of already do), any more than you are required to explore any other element of culture, but if you're planning to run a long campaign I think it's an interesting facet to add.

Urshurak

Scott 'Dwarfland" Driver once opined that there was often more gaming inspiration to be had from "bad" fiction than from good. He was specifically talking about the works of Lin Carter, but I think this is often true in general. I haven't read Urshurak by the Brothers Hildebrandt and Jerry Nichols, so I can't comment on it specifically, but that seems to be the internet consensus. Here's a typical review.

Regardless, the art was surely the main selling point for purchasers in 1979. That and curiosity got me to pick it up on ebay a few months ago. It's gorgeous if you like the work of the Hildebrandt Brothers, though it could easily, I suppose be derided as too traditional or even generic nearly 50 years on. Certainly, the images and a thumbnail description of the plot mark it as a work of a more naive time when it comes to genre fantasy. There are heroes and a quest with swords and sorcerers and elves and dwarves in a vaguely faux Medieval Europe sort of setting. There are some sci-fi elements (it's a bit of fusion of Lord of the Rings and Star Wars), but no gestures toward realism, grittiness or deconstruction to be found.

Perhaps it's just nostalgia, but naive fantasy has a certain sort of appeal to me, though. It's not that I never want fantasy to go new places, but having seen the new places it has gone over the decades become, in their own way, stale or cliched or really shine in their focus on aspects other than adventure and action (which are the most relatable of fictional elements to the gaming table), I sometimes feel the pull for gaming inspiration to the things that wouldn't have made my reading list a decade or so ago.

And honestly, more fantasy epics could probably benefit from high tech Amazons.