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Mountains on the Left, Ruins on the Right - Page 4

© Michael Martinez

They take away our freedom to imagine the landscape passing by at a slow and ponderous pace. My college group thought nothing of spending three months plumbing the depths of a mountain fortress. I got rather sick of it after about six weeks. I was ready to kill every dwarf and rat I came across by the time the leader of the group agreed we'd better leave (it was too late -- we'd let the wizard's familiar escape and he was on his way back to make us pay for robbing him). I remember spending days in forests, weeks sailing on ships, long nights of bartering and haggling at one shop, dozens, hundreds, or maybe thousands of melees. There were interesting characters to meet on the road, in the taverns, at the local gallows. We often got our butts kicked. We drew up a roll of honored dead, which started out with non-player characters (men-at-arms we hired) but eventually became dominated by the names of beloved characters which, in some cases, had been nurtured for years. Some of my friends got married and had babies in those groups. I got married and left, and came back, and left again. Players came and went. The original group is no longer playing together, but one of the members keeps the tradition going, and his teenaged son -- who wasn't even born yet when we sat in his father's apartment, freezing and chattering away with pencils, paper, and dice in mid-winter as we struggled to get away from Cave Yuks -- has now joined the group. A whole new generation of gamers is gearing up to take on Pat Macy's gods, demigods, demons, devils, and dashing daring-doers. They'll be treated to mountains, villages, cities, towns, lakes, forests, caves, plains, hordes of undead, tribes of Orcs, and lost races and continents. All of which has nothing to do with Middle-earth. And that is the problem with gaming in Middle-earth. It's virtually impossible to do. Gamers can relive Frodo's journey, but that's a bit of a let-down for a purist like me. What if Gandalf doesn't fall into the chasm? After all, it's not like the players don't know what's hanging out in Moria. What if Aragorn is slain before he becomes King? Does Arwen sail over Sea? Will Frodo make it to Mount Doom? Some people might say the uncertainty of the outcome of such scenarios is what makes a Middle-earth game interesting. But to me, that is too much like playing monopoly, where the various tokens stop and have conversations with the houses and hotels on the boards. I suppose it might be bearable if I got to be the battleship or the car, but I really got tired of being the dog when I was a kid. My older brother would pick it up and say, "I'll get you, Missy. And you're little dog, too!"

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