Now, first off let me say I know this will probably be very controversial and upset some people. So be it. However, please play nice regardless, I merely want to see if anyone has any insight into my conundrum.

So, my issue is this: I have various thoughts floating around in my mind which I would love to try out as campaigns/quests/etc but I know that doing them in Middle Earth would be difficult to achieve without affecting canon, and well, I shudder at the thought of that. There's also the fact that my players do enjoy a bit more magic, which is fine, but I don't really want to add magic to TOR. So I thought 'Hey, the 4th Age doesn't have much information on it, why don't I set a campaign then?' I then also thought that since (so far as I know) there isn't any information on Melkor after he was imprisoned, I could use him as the BBEG. Basically I really wanted a challenge.

Now the problems here are that obviously there'd need to be a reason Melkor returned to Middle Earth. Equally, a reason for magic becoming more prominent. And finally, one of my friends, who was intrigued by this idea, pointed out that your 'ordinary' TOR hero would stand no chance against the likes of a balrog or dragon, let alone Melkor.

I was hoping (albeit with a growing sense of dread and forboding) that you nice chaps might be able to help me, whether it be to give me an idea as to how to get to the point of Melkor once more being free and magic flowing more commonly, or even if it is merely to reprimand me for my blasphemy and explain to me nicely about why I'm off my rocker

So, thanks in advance

Beleg

First off, do you need to use TOR? Why? What is it in this system that makes you want to stick with it? The reason I ask specifically is the comment you made here:

It may be easier to pick up a system that 'scales' to that level may be a better choice. Assuming "facing off against Melkor" is a requirement for you.

I just love everything about TOR as a game system to be honest. And actually, level scaling really annoys me
I also don't have the time or patience to completely convert another system to play in Middle Earth, and I prefer the narrative style or TOR to all the numbers and such in D&D, for instance. So yeah, I've really stuck myself in a pickle

I've toyed around with this idea myself some, though not for reasons of justifying more magic usage available for players....

My long term answer is this: To properly even begin ruminating on this idea, you need to have a proper understanding of the full cosmology of Arda. To do that, you need to read at least the Silmarillion if you haven't already, and probably all the Histories of Middle-earth.

Short term answer: I see one of two ways to do what you want to do:

1. Introduce a new Maia, as yet unrevealed and therefore non-canonical insomuch as "true" Middle-earth stuff is concerned. This Maia would be the direct avatar or emissary of Melkor. You can use him to set whatever stage of evil-ry that you like for the 4th age. If you want to keep in canon, I would at least suggest you pay respect to Aragorn's accomplishments and have the 4th age start off for the first 100 years or so in relative prosperity, peace, and moral growth.

2. Mining the cosmology, you could decide that the 4th age sparks the Dagor-Dagorland (last battle of the end of time) aka, Armageddon, aka Ragnarok. In this effect, you would be in keeping with Canon that Melkor gets released and gets to enjoy a period of wanton destruction before the Valar and Eru return to destroy him utterly again. My understanding of the cosomology of Arda is that that is not supposed to happen until a period LOOOOONG after the 4th age....but cosmology gets highly meatphorical so I think you have some latitude to do what you will.

Regardless of how you justify it, if you do have Melkor or a mighty servant of Melkor running about, he should have a different tone than Sauron; Sauron was a megalomaniac whereas Melkor is a nihilist, so you should probably have him or his emissary just acting in more of an aggressive destructive manner.

Cheers!

Good that I didn't say that then! I stated "scaling". That and levels aren't the same thing.

... Well, I'm sure you can get out of it!

I think if you want them to face-off against Melkor then it's not really going to work for you. TOR's not a combat oriented game so I think facing Melkor in another way would be more viable...

Perhaps he could return as some kind of elemental powers that perverts the land and environment in much the same principal as Shadow Lands in TOR already - except more extreme and greatly accelerated?

Problem I have with Melkor and the 4th Age is that I see magic as dwindling not returning so I can't really think of how the reverse could work. Sorry. When I've thought of 4th Age campaigns I've always had the ideas of the antagonist being someone like the Mouth of Sauron, one of the Blue Wizards, some corrupted Elf, or Tom Bombadil.

Rocmisto
I've read the Silmarillion, I've yet to buy the Histories since they'd set me back a pretty penny and I have to fight myself every time I see them. However, the idea of introducing another Maia never occured to me. That way they wouldn't be as powerful as Melkor, but they would still pose a threat, and would allow me slightly more leway.

Rich
You're going to have to explain the difference then, me and my ignorance
I understand the dwindling magic thing, since the elves are almost all gone etc, so I was going to have it return with whatever enemy I picked. Though again, one of the blue wizards could be interesting. I'm curious though, what's evil about Tom?

Okay, I have this in my old files - think it was from RPGnet originally, try it on for size:

Oldest and Fatherless: The Terrible Secret of Tom Bombadil
Old Tom Bombadil. Possibly the least liked character in The Lord of the Rings. A childish figure so disliked by fans of the book that few object to his absence from all adaptations of the story. And yet, there is another way of looking at Bombadil, based only on what appears in the book itself, that paints a very different picture of this figure of fun.

What do we know about Tom Bombadil? He is fat and jolly and smiles all the time. He is friendly and gregarious and always ready to help travellers in distress.

Except that none of that can possibly be true.

Consider: By his own account (and by Elrond’s surprisingly sketchy knowledge) Bombadil has lived in the Old Forest since before the hobbits came to the Shire. Since before Elrond was born. Since the earliest days of the First Age.

And yet no hobbit has ever heard of him.

The guise in which Bombadil appears to Frodo and his companions is much like a hobbit writ large. He loves food and songs and nonsense rhymes and drink and company. Any hobbit who saw such a person would tell tales of him. Any hobbit who was rescued by Tom would sing songs about him and tell everyone else. Yet Merry – who knows all the history of Buckland and has ventured into the Old Forest many times – has never heard of Tom Bombadil. Frodo and Sam – avid readers of old Bilbo’s lore – have no idea that any such being exists, until he appears to them. All the hobbits of the Shire think of the Old Forest as a place of horror – not as the abode of a jolly fat man who is surprisingly generous with his food.

If Bombadil has indeed lived in the Old Forest all this time – in a house less than twenty miles from Buckland – then it stands to reason that he has never appeared to a single hobbit traveller before, and has certainly never rescued one from death. In the 1400 years since the Shire was settled.

What do we know about Tom Bombadil? He is not what he seems.

Elrond, the greatest lore-master of the Third Age, has never heard of Tom Bombadil. Elrond is only vaguely aware that there was once someone called Iarwain Ben-Adar (“Oldest and Fatherless”) who might be the same as Bombadil. And yet, the main road between Rivendell and the Grey Havens passes not 20 miles from Bombadil’s house, which stands beside the most ancient forest in Middle Earth. Has no elf ever wandered in the Old Forest or encountered Bombadil in all these thousands of years? Apparently not.

Gandalf seems to know more, but he keeps his knowledge to himself. At the Council of Elrond, when people suggest sending the Ring to Bombadil, Gandalf comes up with a surprisingly varied list of reasons why that should not be done. It is not clear that any of the reasons that he gives are the true one.

Now, in his conversation with Frodo, Bombadil implies (but avoids directly stating) that he had heard of their coming from Farmer Maggot and from Gildor’s elves (both of whom Frodo had recently described). But that also makes no sense. Maggot lives west of the Brandywine, remained there when Frodo left, and never even knew that Frodo would be leaving the Shire. And if Elrond knows nothing of Bombadil, how can he be a friend of Gildor’s?

What do we know about Tom Bombadil? He lies.

A question: what is the most dangerous place in Middle Earth? First place goes to the Mines of Moria, home of the Balrog, but what is the second most dangerous place? Tom Bombadil’s country.

By comparison, Mordor is a safe and well-run land, where two lightly-armed hobbits can wander for days without meeting anything more dangerous than themselves. Yet the Old Forest and the Barrow Downs, all part of Tom’s country, are filled with perils that would tax anyone in the Fellowship except perhaps Gandalf.

Now, it is canonical in Tolkein that powerful magical beings imprint their nature on their homes. Lorien under Galadriel is a place of peace and light. Moria, after the Balrog awoke, was a place of terror to which lesser evil creatures were drawn. Likewise, when Sauron lived in Mirkwood, it became blighted with evil and a home to monsters.

And then, there’s Tom Bombadil’s Country.

The hobbits can sense the hatred within all the trees in the Old Forest. Every tree in that place is a malevolent huorn, hating humankind. Every single tree. And the barrows of the ancient kings that lie nearby are defiled and inhabited by Barrow-Wights. Bombadil has the power to control or banish all these creatures, but he does not do so. Instead, he provides a refuge for them against men and other powers. Evil things – and only evil things – flourish in his domain. “Tom Bombadil is the master” Goldberry says. And his subjects are black huorns and barrow wights.

What do we know about Tom Bombadil? He is not the benevolent figure that he pretends to be.

Tom appears to the Ringbearer in a friendly, happy guise, to question and test him and to give him and his companions swords that can kill the servants of another evil power. But his motives are his own.

Consider: it is said more than once that the willows are the most powerful and evil trees in the Forest. Yet, the rhyme that Bombadil teaches the hobbits to use in conjuring up Bombadil himself includes the line, “By the reed and willow.” The willows are a part of Bombadil’s power and a means of calling on him. They draw their strength from the cursed river Withywindle, the centre of all the evil in the Forest.

And the springs of the Withywindle are right next to Tom Bombadil’s house.

And then there is Goldberry, “the river-daughter”. She is presented as Bombadil’s wife, an improbably beautiful and regal being who charms and beguiles the hobbits. It is implied that she is a water spirit, and she sits combing her long, blonde hair after the manner of a mermaid. (And it is worth remembering that mermaids were originally seen as monsters, beautiful above the water, slimy and hideous below, luring sailors to drown and be eaten.) But I suggest the name means that in her true state, Goldberry is nourished by the River – that is, by the proverbially evil Withywindle.

In folklore and legend (as Tolkien would know well) there are many tales of creatures that can take on human form but whose human shape always contains a clue to their true nature. So what might Goldberry be? She is tall and slender - specifically she is “slender as a willow wand”. She wears a green dress, sits amidst bowls of river water and is surrounded by the curtain of her golden hair. I suggest that she is a Willow tree conjured into human form, a malevolent huorn like the Old Man Willow from whom the hobbits have just escaped. If she is not indeed the same tree.

So, if this is true, then why does Bombadil save and help the ringbearer and his companions? Because they can bring about the downfall of Sauron, the current Dark Lord of Middle Earth. When Sauron falls, the other rings will fail and the wizards and elves will leave Middle Earth and the only great power that is left will be Bombadil.

There is a boundary around Bombadil’s country that he cannot or will not pass, something that confines him to a narrow space. And in return, no wizard or elf comes into his country to see who rules it, or to disturb the evil creatures that gather under his protection.

When the hobbits return to the Shire after their journey to Mordor, Gandalf leaves them close to Bree and goes towards Bombadil’s country to have words with him. We do not know what they say. But Gandalf was sent to Middle Earth to contend against Sauron and now he must depart. He has been given no mission to confront Bombadil and he must soon leave Middle Earth to powerless men and hobbits, while Bombadil remains, waiting to fulfill his purpose.

Do I think that Tolkien planned things in this way? Not at all, but I find it an interesting speculation.

To speculate further and more wildly:

The spell that binds Bombadil to his narrow and cursed country was put in place centuries ago by the Valar to protect men and elves. It may last a few decades more, perhaps a few generations of hobbit lives. But when the last elf has gone from the havens and the last spells of rings and wizards unravel, then it will be gone. And Iarwain Ben-Adar, Oldest and Fatherless, who was ruler of the darkness in Middle Earth before Sauron was, before Morgoth set foot there, before the first rising of the sun, will come into his inheritance again. And one dark night the old trees will march westward into the Shire to feed their ancient hatred. And Bombadil will dance down amongst them, clad in his true shape at last, singing his incomprehensible rhymes as the trees mutter their curses and the black and terrible Barrow-Wights dance and gibber around him. And he will be smiling.


A-ha! Found it. Linky here: http://km-515.livejournal.com/1042.html

You've always got the two blue wizards (istari) to have fun with too... Alatar and Pallando.

Oh... my... uh... wow. Umm... To hell with Melkor. I'd take Melkor over Tom any day after reading that!

It's awesome isn't it?

Cthulhu + Tolkien = WIN!

I am now very very tempted to use Tom rather than Melkor or a Maia or one of the Istari... though in a sense the last two are identical. Though some sort of blue wizard/tom pairing would be intriguing.. then again the blue wizards could be lovely chaps

Easy for them not to be. Although TOM would eat them for breakfast like the boyscouts they are!

Yeah, do it. Far cooler and more original. Your players will be sat there going "WTF!?!?!?". All. The. Time. The idea is made from lashings of awesome sauce.

Hmm. Well, I think I can quite happily throw the Morgoth idea out of the window. Tom sounds like a lot more fun. Equally, the wizards could be another threat, or one of them could be while the other is trying to stop them. Or they could have spent the entirety of their time in the East locked in a cage and they come back and try to help the players
Now I have no idea where to go

That it is. This is going to require a large amount of effort and preparation... but by golly, it'll be worth it

Tolkien did not write much about the 4th Age, but the little that he did is quite consistent in the theme of dwindling magic and the legacy of evil coming to "human" adversaries. As Tolkien put in a letter, Sauron was the last "mythological" Dark Lord (i.e. a being pre-existing Arda) trying to rule the world. After him, evil did not suddenly disappear, but he was the last supernatural incarnation. There may be leftovers of lesser power but similar (Ainu) status, but these would be local phenomena, tied to specific places for one reason or the other and not trying to emulate another "Dark Lord".

Thus IMO other characters left from the Third Age (Tom B., the Blue Wizards etc.) do not qualify for new "Dark Lords". Sorry to say that, but IMHO the 4th Age is no place for mega-powerful evil to return and superhero characters battling it.

The 4th Age is the Age of Man, with the phenomena and problems of mankind. The last Elves and Dwarves dwindle away and after that it's only the Secondborn. Only at the very end of Arda Melkor will be able to return. According to Tolkien, today we live in the Sixth or even Seventh Age, and the end is still far off.

In summary, IMO there is none even remotely "canonical" way to introduce powerful new Dark Lords in the Fourth Age, let alone Melkor.

Cheers
Tolwen

Hmm... Damn. Why'd you have to go and know everything Tolwen?
I was getting all good and ready to pitt my players against Tom Bombadil. Do you have any alternative suggestions perchance?

Well I would suggest using a period of middle earth not overly develped by tolkien. There are spans of 1000s ofyears where little is written about.

Try the second age, or the early third age.. the Slow Fall of Armor would have had Numenorian lore masters, as well as plenty of elvem lore masters (ie quite a bit more magic), and the time lines which exist only give a very rough outline of what is going on in the world with planty of room to develp your own wars, lords, heroes, foes, etc...

You are going to have to create a bunch of as yet undevelpoed cultural backgrounds.... and make them all balenced... you can't do a second age game with eorings and Woodsman and Bardings etc... well maybe you can use woodsman they seem to exist in one place or another across the ages.... but Also if you want a game with more magical potentail you;ve already got your work cut out for you anyway.

PS: that article on Tom was priceless! and... kinda convincing.... :-)

There's some intriguing ideas on this thread.

If any of you plan a Fourth Age chronicle, you can introduce some foes in addition to the ones already posted:

1. The Mouth of Sauron escaped with his embassy back to the Morannon & (apparently) escaped. He did, after all, 'know much sorcery.'

2. Shelob may have survived - LOTR even says as much.

3. Shagrat reached the Dark Tower & then what? In Tolkien's original MS he was "put to death," but in the published work he only reached the tower. You could have Sauron imprison the meddling fool, preparatory to dealing with him later, & then during the fall of the Dark Lord & the ensuing tumult, he escaped from the collapsing tower. It's a stretch, but well within the realms of possibilty.

4. Bill Ferny, Harry Goatleaf, & the 'slant-eyed Southerner all vanished from the annals. In fact, Ferny fled into the night following his confrontation with the Hobbits at the Great Bridge of Stonebows. Where did he go? The Hobbits recorded that he vanished - but only to them. BTW, the Chetwood, where Barliman referred to some of the other "robbers," lay in the direction that Ferny took.

5. The Watcher in the Water still lurks outside the West Gate of Moria.

This article on Tom is pretty wild. You can have a lot of fun with it, however, if you have some players who are real Tolkien fans, you may rattle them a bit (which might be your intention of course ).

In an effort to save you some time, you may wish to find a copy of The Adventures of Tom Bombadil .

The tales are a mix of comedy & lore, but at least some of the Hobbits of Buckland & the Marish did know of his existence.

I know there's little written of the second age. From what I remember it's predominantly Numenorean stuff then? Someone would have to tell me if I'm right or wrong. In regards to having my work cut out, I knew I probably would when I decided I wanted to let my players use magic without just sticking a magic system in the game. Damn me and my inhibitions about alternate time lines :/
You've all raised very good points. I completely forgot how many notable foes there are in Middle Earth. More for me to think on...

Oh, I try my very best to become omniscient in Middle-earth matters

Other Minds, Issue 9 has a "Fourth Age" focus theme. There you can find several ideas for campaigns, including my own timeline and history based and extrapolated on Tolkien's scant information.

If you have any questions on these, don't hesitate to ask

Cheers
Tolwen

Tolwen, thanks for that. It's proving a very interesting read. I'm curious, are there any other articles on the Age of Sauron as of yet? Also, is Burh Alge a creation of the author?

Take your time, it can be a long read

I do not have any further submissions for the Age of Sauron, but you may drop the author an email. It is provided at the beginning of the article.

Burh Alge is the linguistically fixed (by people more knowledgeable in such matters than me) version of Buhr Ailgra, a MERP creation. It was the supposed center of an Éothraim (Ehwathrumiska) tribe in the mid-Third Age and located a bit east of the northeastern edge of the Great East Bight.

Cheers
Tolwen

All these strange names and places. Anyway, I read all the Age of Sauron stuff, loved it, and I read the majority of your essay, up to just after the chronology of the Telcontari kings. Suffice to say, I definitely won't be running a campaign in the 4th age unless I completely rethink everything... there's also the fact I have players who love elves, and they're somewhat lacking by then. Thank you yet again

If you do decide to go with second age or early third age I found a document somewhere that was a guide to the eldar and introduced several elven cultural backgrounds: Noldo, Sinda, and Nandor I think... Anyway I thought it was well written but a little unbalencing especilly when it came to the Noldor, but if you were running a second age game and making new cultures maybe the new balence point could be better virtues and rewards and birthrights.

I'm not sure where I found it...

It's somewhere on these forums. I nabbed it when I came across it, a practice I'm well in the habit of now, since links seem to expire, or the thread just gets buried in all the new stuff we come up with. You have a good point though, I should give it another looksee

Alright, definitely a bit of a tangent to the current conversational thread but you could always try using RoleMaster (aka MERP) for your game mechanics, trying to simplify that game system tremendously though. Although, at it's core, the game isn't all that complex. It's just that previous editions are written about as clearly as tax-filing instructions. Luckily they're working on a new edition of RM.

I couldddddd... but I'm guessing that would cost me money?

Great stuff here (and interesting idea, Beleg!). The article about Bombadil was especially fascinating (I had no idea he potentially had such darkness associated with him).

Decipher's CODA system would also scale well for a higher "level" campaign; in fact that's one of the weaknesses with the system, IMHO, in that PCs can quickly grow to such a power level that you've got to challenge them with balrogs, dragons, and the like. It takes a lot to make characters for that game, though (another thing that TOR does better).

You've set quite the challenge for yourself, but it does sound like a great deal of fun!

I just had a thought. I was thinking about Tom, and the way one of the quantifying pieces of 'proof' is that the area around people is shaped by their dispositions: Galadriel and Lorien, Sauron and Mordor, etc. So, if that's the case, and Fangorn is infamous for being evil, does that make Treebeard evil too??

If you(and/or your players) want Elves, magic, sorcery, entchantments, Balrogs, corrupted Maiar and Morgoth all reunited in the same place and timeline, why dont you put your campaign in the First Age?

And then when your players have escaped all that, you throw in the most crazy, and "stop at nothing to get what they want" characters: yes, you guessed it: Feanor's seven sons!

Beleg,
It might cost you money, I don't know how extensive your RPG collection is.

Having said that, the ICE website offered copies of the RM introductory rules Character Law and something else... Campaign Law? These were not "full versions" as seen in RM or MERP. For instance all of the archetypes (professions, classes) were missing from Character Law. They wouldn't allow you to play, but it might give you some idea of whether that system would fit your needs. I'm not sure if the free files are still available, but you had to sign up for the ICE Forums and a hidden area was revealed to download the files. Instructions were on the front page of their site (a blog)


Sorry, but I didn't perceive Fangorn Forest that way. I got more of Legolas' comment with regards to the forest. Basically: mysterious through withdrawal, ancient beyond memory of Man, and slowly brewing to anger against forest defilers.

I think someone on here mentioned something along the lines of (and I'm inclined to agree with them) that TOR really resembles late 3rd age Middle-earth gameplay.

A campaign set in the First Age, I feel, could probably use a different system altogether, something more along the lines of D&D.

Back when ICE had the licence for a Middle-earth RPG, it produced this module (not canon, of course):

The Court of Ardor

This group of Elves were trying to bring Morgoth back to Middle-earth. What if they succeeded?

That Bombadil thing is fabulous, I would go for it just for the fun! Especially if the characters could have been lead to trust Tom for some time.

As for what Tolwen said, it is true I think (as is usually the case ). Tolkien started to write a new book set 100 years after start of 4th age:


New Shadow

That kind of confirms Tolwen's claim, though more could most probably be found in letters / HoME

The issue with the 1st Age, again, is canon. The players wouldn't be instrumental in defeating Morgoth, since Tolkien wrote about all those who were.
Garn, good point about Fangorn. It was just a thought that popped into my head and I didn't verify it with the books or anything.

On another note, since very little is known about Tom would it be safe to assume he was around in the 1st and 2nd ages?

As Tom re-establishes his power Fangorn could easily be the first thing to fall under his dread power. Some or even all of the Ents corrupted and bound into his service.

Easily. You could even make him older if you want to explore/use the idea of him being a cthonic type entity - or at least shades of such a creature...