The Quests of Middle-earth - Page 7
© Michael Martinez
Gandalf undertook two quests to Dol Guldur, neither very well documented. Earnur undertook a quest to rid Eriador of Angmar (he succeeded) and later a quest to rid Middle-earth of the Lord of the Nazgul (he failed). And the quests go on.
Tolkien's quests are diverse and often clash with traditional ideas of quests. The Middle-eatrh quest isn't always to save the local kingdom (in fact, it's rarely to save the local kingdom) from some evil invader. Nor is the Middle-earth quest usually undertaken for glory, adventure, wealth, and fame.
Role-playing games embrace the quest and the gamers often think of Tolkien as the father of the genre which inspired the games. I've played in a few RPGs myself, and I've helped to save more than one world. One of my favorite characters, Admiral Bryan Gruffydd, went down fighting 30 demons because he refused to abandon a comrade in arms. That was just one small skirmish in a wider war brought on by a quest the purpose of which I can't even remember, there have been so many.
Gaming quests are often undertaken rather casually. Someone's character needs "a few more experience points", so the characters ask around, find out there are some Cave-Yucks over beyond the next hill, and trudge off to do their heroic duty. We were literally singing "A-hunting we will go, a-hunting we will go, hi ho the derrio a-hunting we will go" as we marched to our destiny. Turned out the Cave-yucks had organized themselves into wedges (ala Stephen Donaldson's Thomas Covenant books) and it was a-limping we dragged ourselves home looking for help.
I sent a group of gamers off on a time-quest to save an adept (a very, very powerful magician) one time. He was saved, but two characters disobeyed my orders and killed two evil magicians, leading to a radical change in the timeline (my mistake, I had put two really important guys in the line of fire, and my entire 2,000-year history was thrown out the window, but that's the way games go).
RPG quests are so unlike The Lord of the Rings, I often wonder why people see connections. Would anyone really go trekking down through Eregion and try to cross over Moria, or would you take the short cut across the Misty Mountains and the High Pass, which was held by the friendly Beornings, and then saunter down the Anduin's west shore to Lorien? What were Gandalf and Elrond thinking? Take those boys down a level for bad strategy.
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