The geography of Middle Earth

[Gorbulas]

I love geography. I rejoice in searching for real world vistas and landscapes that evoke the localities that are so beautifully described by the professor. For example: the Matterhorn in the Swiss Alps would be a great Amon Thyryr in my opinion. And Ansel Adam’s photo of El Capitan in Yosemite might convince as the Carrock? I want to wonder at plausible river types, vegetation types, landforms, fauna, etc. in the different Wilderland regions. These categories all seem soo relevant in this game.
Currently I am enjoying this silly little project where I plot the visibility range of mayor land features on the LM Rhovanion map as well as visibility ranges from localities that my (hopefully future) players might visit. For example up to what point south in the Vales of Anduin would a traveller notice the distinctive form of the Eyrie or the three spires of Gundabad or the extinct Amon Lanc volcano in bright weather conditions? Would a traveller standing on the edge of Dimrill Dale be able to see the dark shadow of Mirkwood on the horizon or would that be Lorien? Landfeatures visible from High Pass or the Old Ford seem highly relevant to describe to the players I think. Or maybe not but I just want to know. Wilderland is foremost a desolate land. As such, dominant landfeatures would likely attract a travellers attention and wonder, not? For convenience I use a Distance to the Horizon Calculator. For geographical data I foremost use Cubicle's great Heart of the Wild and Fontstad's Atlas of Middle-Earth. I also use some extra detail from old MERP publications.
Travel, Lore or Song tasks might enable players to identify mayor mountain tops in the distance. In game players would thus engage with these far away and possible hazardous places which would enliven the otherwise abstract or passive ‘roleplaying landscape’. Does this make sense?
Would anybody know the height of the Carrock or the hill above Thranduil’s Hall btw? And can you think of other dominant landforms in Rhovanion besides Gundabad, High Pass, Dimrill Dale, the Eyrie, Erebor, Hoary Mountain, the Northern Mountains of Mirkwood and Erebor?
I do not know if I can post my annotated LM map on this forum. I supose mailing it in a private message shouldn’t pose a problem? So just give me a shout and I will send a jpg. (sorry -I am a total ITC illiterate). I also have selected pics usefull for general landscapes and mayor landforms for all regions west of Mirkwood. This is a work in progress and more regions should be ready in the near future. Perhaps these can provide evocative props for in game? Send me a message if you are interested. I suppose it would be a copyright nightmare to use this thread directly to exchange usefull photo’s and vistas found on the internet?

[Glorelendil]

And Ansel Adam’s photo of El Capitan in Yosemite might convince as the Carrock?

Whoah.

It's like the Stonehenge scene in Spinal Tap, but in reverse.

Currently I am enjoying this silly little project where I plot the visibility range of mayor land features on the LM Rhovanion map as well as visibility ranges from localities that my (hopefully future) players might visit.

Here's a fun game: compute how high the Misty Mountains and/or Lonely Mountain must be for one to be visible from the other. Surprising answer.

[Gorbulas]

If you would stand on an average Misty Mountain top at 4000 m or more one could see Erebor in the distance if that mountain would stand over 4000 m tall itself.
Permanent snowcover on the top of Erebor and latitude would permit a minimum estimate of 1000 m height for Erebor. MERP (Mirkwood North) mentions 1284 m (4213') which kind of fits. Tolkien Gateway mentions 3500 m but I think they forgot about latitude correction in their 'snowcap reasoning'.

With a tall peak like Caradhras at 4864 m height according to MERP (Moria) Erebor would never be visible from any of the Misty Mountain tops. On the other hand MERP fluff might not be valued to high as conclusive evidence.

Btw. just found out that the Carrock was only 20 m high according to MERP (Mirkwood North), so Ansel Adams's pic wouldn't be appropriate after all

[torus]

This all depends on what diameter you use for Arda, as besides local topography and obscuration by clouds, the curvature of the planetary surface is the main limitation on visibility. I suppose people are assuming the same diameter as Earth today?

[Falenthal]

compute how high the Misty Mountains and/or Lonely Mountain must be for one to be visible from the other. Surprising answer.

I think it is at a distance of "Roll a Search test with a TN18. At least one Tengwar is required".

[Glorelendil]

This all depends on what diameter you use for Arda, as besides local topography and obscuration by clouds, the curvature of the planetary surface is the main limitation on visibility. I suppose people are assuming the same diameter as Earth today?

I do assume that.

At the 4000 meters Gorbulas suggests, distance to horizon would be about 255 km (140 miles). Assuming the mountain at the other end had the same height, with each just poking about the horizon, that would give us a maximum distance of 510 km or 280 miles.

What's the distance?

[Glorelendil]

compute how high the Misty Mountains and/or Lonely Mountain must be for one to be visible from the other. Surprising answer.

I think it is at a distance of "Roll a Search test with a TN18. At least one Tengwar is required".

Or you need to have a Wondrous Artefact and spend a point of Hope for a magical result.

[Stormcrow]

You could just plug this into the Tolkien Only Visited the Alps Once and That Was The Limit of His Experience with Mountains Calculator. You get much greater visibility distances.

[Glorelendil]

You could just plug this into the Tolkien Only Visited the Alps Once and That Was The Limit of His Experience with Mountains Calculator. You get much greater visibility distances.

I tried that but I kept getting the square root of -1.

[Halbarad]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sl ... 624718.jpg

I think that Slemish Mountain in Northern Ireland is a good representation for the Carrock. I live about 12 miles from it and it’s visible from anything up to 20 miles away, depending on the direction you are approaching it from. I would guess that the Carrock is visible for maybe 3 hexes east towards the forest, a similar number to the south and north along the river valley and two to the west as some of the foothills of the mountains may be as high.