Darkening of Mirkwood is much less rigid than Tales from Wilderland, which suits the players just fine. The players will be able to go on their own adventures, not planned by me as a LM, as I have pretty good knowledge of Tolkien's Middle Earth (even though I'm not a JRR Tolkien fanatic or purist).
But one idea I came up with for Darkening of Mirkwood is to have player-driven Hazard Episodes. Many of the stories in DoM is less detailed than in Tales from Wilderland, and the players can send their characters off in unexpected directions. So, when a Hazard is rolled on a Fatigue check, we're going to try to let the player who rolled the Hazard step in as a Loremaster for that isolated Hazard Episode.
I have a group of quite experienced roleplayers, and I think this will be quite interesting. I still roll on the table to see which character that is affected by the Hazard, and what type of Hazard it is. But the details, and the roleplaying around it, is in the hands of the players. And of course, a simple Hazard Episode could be blown all out of proportion, leading to new story hooks, and unexpected adventures. And that's all part of the game, I think.
So, there you go, that's my idea.
Eirik