Review of Angmar by Jason Tondro
First published in Other Hands 12 (January 1996) p. 52-53

I enter the game store and walk immediately to the ICE section. My eyes flick to the MERP shelf for a cursory glance, fully expecting to see the same old stuff: the 2nd edition hardback, Creatures and a left-over Lake-town. Then my eyes widen: three copies of Angmar. I had forgotten that a revision was coming out. Quickly I snatch it up and flip through. The cover is handsome, the text looks familiar. Then I see it—printed right across the Angûlion's breastplate: "illo #21"—a clumsy and inexcusable production gaff, and the first sign that all is not well in the Witch-king's lands. Nonetheless, I buy it. It is my only purchase for the day.

I have many problems with Angmar, which I'll get into later, but first a little bit about the contents. Angmar is a fine treatment of the region. In common ICE fashion, it begins with a bit about the land and the people that live there, then moves on to politics, war, and settings such as strongholds, towns and Orc-holds. Only ten characters have full descriptions: the Witch-king and his most powerful lieutenants. A couple of new character types are detailed: Angmarean Military Priests and MERP Orc characters. Other small articles are dropped in at the end: a few adventure seeds, some herblore summaries, languages, etc.

Some innovative work has been done in this book; I particularly liked the "Awful Fragment" of the lamp Illuin, corrupted into a weapon of evil by the Witch-king. The maps of Carn Dûm, both inside the book and in the pull-out, are handsome and clear. Most of the work is solidly written, showing the same laborious work that we have come to expect from the upper echelon of MERP products. Angmar is not as excellent as, say Gorgoroth or The Kin-strife, but it is a fine product and will serve gamemasters of any fantasy RPG well.

All right, the honeymoon's over. Let's talk about the editing.

For those of us familiar with the first version of Angmar, titled Empire of the Witch-king, it would not be out of line to have high hopes for this revision. Empire was an excellent book, and expectations are that a revision will be at least as good or better than the original. Alas, I have many minor editorial quibbles about this most recent treatment of Mûrazôr's realm.

As mentioned, the cover is sharp. Angus McBride is one of the best Tolkien illustrators I have ever seen, and the new MERP trade dress is powerful in its red and black glory. The book will look good on the shelf. Which was, I suppose, the point.

Inside the cover the euphoria drifts away. There are—and this is my major complaint with the book—no new text sections at all. No new characters, no new adventure seeds or complete scenarios, no new histories or locales. No new nothing. However, many minor things have been altered.

For example, several of the Witch-king's generals, the Mornarturi, have been renamed. Apparently the editors felt that names like "Dancu," "Cykur," and "Durkarian" were not suitably "Middle-earthy." The same names have been replaced with "Dairkan," "Sakalurë" and "Driuecared." I'm no linguist, so if the new names are more accurate to Black Númenóreans, Umbareans and Northmen, who am I to argue? The old names can still be found in the character descriptions, explained away as Orkish corruptions of the generals' true names.

But other changes do not have even this much justification. The Witch-king has had his magic lists circumcised, reducing his highest level spells from 60th to 30th. (I know—at that power level, what's the difference? And no one is going to survive a direct confrontation with the Witch-king anyway.) But why the change? It certainly wasn't for reasons of his sanitary health. Mystifying.

Several of the "corrections" have, in fact, been bungled as badly as "illo #21." All of the magic-using characters have had their Rolemaster spell lists defined precisely in the new RM mold—a nice help, so far so good. But when the authors wrote the new lists they forgot to delete the old ones, which can still be found buried in the MERP spell lists! In many cases, such as the Witch-king's stats, these multiple RM lists are contradictory; and what are RM spell lists doing in the MERP section anyway, when MERP players are supposed to be using a simpler system and shouldn't have to be familiar with RM terms? I thought this is exactly what the revised format was supposed to fix!

Other contradictions abound; I won't tire you with more. Well, okay, I'll bring up one more that really irks me because I do a lot of wargaming in my campaign. The number of soldiers assigned to each of the Mornarturi is detailed in their character descriptions, but in the "Warcraft" section new numbers are given for each of these commands, and they're all different. Argh.

One final note. Readers of Other Hands may recall that in Issue #3 Anders Blixt identified much of the Empire of the Witch-king's Orkish dictionary as cribbed directly from Icelandic, Danish, German and Swedish. While it is perfectly reasonable for Middle-earth languages to be based on real languages, the use of Scandinavian tongues for the rude and guttural speech of Orkish is a slander most foul, and without much basis. Apparently, the authors of Angmar either don't read OH, or else decided not to meddle, because the Scandinavian Orkish remains.

Oh, what could have been done here! What missed opportunity! Why couldn't the Mornarturi have gotten real character descriptions with history and plot hooks, instead of one paragraph reprints? Why not some new adventures for people who know the Angmar of old? One new stronghold or Orc-lair and I would have felt like I'd bought something new.

Angmar is a worthwhile product; a thorough treatment with powerful (if underdeveloped) antagonists, details on Mûrazôr's army and tactics, interesting adventure seeds like the Zaugthrakash, and beautiful maps of Carn Dûm. In short, everything good in it was already there in the original edition, and if you already have that book I do NOT recommend buying this new one. If you don't have Empire of the Witch-king, and can't buy it in one of ICE's fire sales, then I suppose you might have to get the new one, but that's an expensive shame at $25.

Oh well, it has satisfactory art I suppose, and the Lord of the Rings Adventure Game stats might be useful to someone, somewhere.

 

Review of Angmar by Chris Seeman
First published in Other Hands 12 (January 1996) p. 53-55

The long-awaited revision of ICE's highly successful Empire of the Witch-king (1989) has finally arrived. This reissue features fine new artwork and some new text, but much of it is identical in content to its predecessor. Jason Vester has already evaluated the similarities and differences between these two editions; by contrast, my review will deal with the overall cogency and success of the module as a unified work. This is easy for me, since I have never actually read through Empire (though I retain a fairly acute memory of its ancestor, the 1982 Angmar: Land of the Witch-king release, and will have cause to comment on some persistent discontinuities between the two works which have—regrettably—not been overcome by the present release).

Even though it has been at least a decade since I read the original module, it is crystal clear to me which parts of the current Angmar are survivals and which are innovations. The difference in quality and perspective could not be greater. The 1982 module was a dungeon crawl, pure and simple. This is baldly epitomized by the "Suggestions for Adventures" section (retained from the original), which assumes that the only reason for running a role-playing game in Angmar is so that the PCs can sneak into enemy fortresses, murder their inhabitants, and collect their treasure.

The new material adopts quite a different set of assumptions. It focuses upon the inhabitants of Angmar themselves, depicts how they live out their lives, and profiles the religious convictions and rituals that motivate them. It even contains rules for the creation of Orcs and Angmarean priests as player characters. It bestows individuality and personality to the hitherto nameless and faceless hordes of the Witch-king—both Men and Orcs alike.

The chief crime of Angmar '95 is that it doesn't go far enough. It leaves unchanged or undeveloped too many of the flaws of its inferior ancestor, often to its own undoing. The result is an uneven and, at times, disjointed product. What is most frustrating to me is that the vast majority of these shortcomings could have been remedied with a minimum of effort. It is a missed opportunity that can only be mourned, since it appears unlikely that we shall ever see yet another edition of this important module.

But let us examine first the module's strengths. To begin with, as I have said, Angmar is a true "Realm" module in that it describes the region through the eyes of its own people. In their account of Angmar's Easterling peasants, for example, Staplehurst and Kubasch write: "The climate of Angmar does not encourage a friendly or generous temperament. The growing season is short, and the winters long. Most individuals never travel farther than nearby villages, even in the summer months—a circumscribed life that makes the villagers insular and suspicious of strangers. The war against the Dúnedain has reinforced this provincial attitude—for reasons unclear to the Witch-king's subjects, the Dúnedain and Elves seem determined to destroy their home in Angmar. Although they come originally from diverse cultures, insular village life has narrowed their outlook (20)."

Having established a set of circumstances conducive to the militant stance of the Angmarim, the authors go on to tackle an even more critical issue; namely, how was the Witch-king able to sustain such attitudes uninterrupted over the course of six centuries? A glance through the module's table of contents witnesses to the centrality of religion to this equation. It is no accident in this regard that the "Power and Politics" chapter begins with a discussion of the religion of Angmar and its organization. Rather blatantly modeled after the monastic hierarchy of medieval Tibet, Staplehurst and Kubasch have given concrete substance to the Cult of Sauron, which has received such superficial treatment in previous MERP modules.

The Witch-king governs his realm through a priestly figure known as the Iron Sorcerer, a sort of "understudy" to the Nazgûl, who mediates between him and his subjects. This sorcerer-priest stands at the head of a bureaucracy manned by priests who have been trained for their offices in Litash, the great monastery-town nestled against the heights of the Misty Mountains in the desolate fastness of the Nan Angmar. The college of priests functions not only as the bureaucracy of the Witch-king's domain, parallel to its military chain of command, but also sends its emissaries far into the East, where they seek to win new recruits for the worship of the Dark Lord and his centuries' long war against the Dúnedain. In short, Staplehurst and Kubasch have engaged the first and foremost task of any MERP author: to seize upon a theme or motif from Tolkien (in this case, the notion of Sauronic emissaries) and to give it concrete meaning and historical depth by elaborating on it.

The bold step taken by our authors is an important one, but its execution is not without flaws. For starters, it is highly questionable to my mind that the adherents of the cult would go so far as to identify their deity with the Necromancer of Dol Guldur (29)—how can Sauron possibly keep his identity secret if it is being openly proclaimed on the lips of thousands of worshippers?!? Equally incredible is the suggestion that, on special occasions, the Witch-king would publicly manifest himself as Sauron (30). Remember that it wasn't until circa T.A. 1940 that the Dúnedain even began to contemplate that "some single power and will was directing the assault from many quarters upon the survivors of Númenor (LotR III: 329)," and it took another THOUSAND years (T.A. 2850) before they would realize that this power was Sauron. If the chronology of Tolkien's drama is to be even remotely believable, we can't have the Witch-king announcing his master's return to his subjects as a contemporary event—it would only invite the suspicion of Sauron's ancient enemies.

This leads me to my second criticism of Staplehurst and Kubasch's portrayal of the cult; namely, their hesitance to decide whether the cult is "genuine" or whether it is a cunning priestly sham. In other words, does the cult really DO anything for those who participate in it, or is it all just propaganda to dupe the credulous and the weak-minded? (This is a good test case for the degree to which a module adopts the viewpoint of the people it is describing.)

Certainly the cult serves to celebrate and reward the military services rendered to the Dark Lord, but I'm speaking here specifically of magical power. For instance, the priests of the cult are trained in various domains of magic (116), but we are not told whether this power actually comes from the deity they worship, or whether such attribution is mere Machiavellian pretense. This is, of course, a debatable issue, and any attempt to answer it must deal with Tolkien's remarks on the subject of Sauronic magic in Morgoth's Ring; the problem with the Angmar module is that it can't make its mind up on this point—and it is no laughing matter, if we are to believe that this cult managed to command the loyalty of thousands for more than half a millennium.

There are two other very cool ideas the authors have come up with, one more successful than the other; both are intended to account for distinctive aspects of Angmar as described by Tolkien. The first is the Witch-king's ability to control the weather. In keeping with the epic character of this power, Staplehurst and Kubasch have adduced an equally epic explanation. They posit that a fragment of the primal lamp, Illuin, was buried by the cataclysm of its downfall in the mountains of Angmar, and that the immeasurable energies contained within this fragment were manipulated by the Witch-king to alter the climate of Eriador, so that it would be more difficult for the Dúnedain to inhabit.

The second neat concept is that the Witch-king's stronghold of Carn Dûm was built upon the ancient foundations of Angband, the fortress of the original Dark Lord (thus following the Tolkienian theme of degenerative recurrence—history repeats itself, but on an ever-diminishing scale). This, however, cannot be the case, since (according to even conservative estimates) Carn Dûm stood at least seven hundred miles east of Angband's location (and Angband, in any case, sank into the sea with the rest of Beleriand). More troubling than this, though, is the fact that, whatever the validity of this idea, NOTHING IS MADE OF IT ANYWHERE IN THE MODULE! ("Oh, by the way, we happen to be standing on the ruins of Angband, the mightiest and most awe-inspiring citadel of Middle-earth. And now, if you'll follow us this way, we'll have a look at Er-Mûrazôr's new pit trap...") And on top of that, everywhere else in the module we are given a contradictory foundation story for Carn Dûm (based on the original 1982 release), claiming that it was in origin a Dwarf-hold (61). What is a reader to think of this inconsistency? Didn't someone bother to proofread the module before sending it off to press?

Angmar contains many fine descriptions and layouts for the villages, towns, and fortresses of the Witch-king's domain. Unfortunately, the innards of Carn Dûm, its capital, seem unworthy of the undead horror they supposedly house. Carn Dûm is essentially a four-level dungeon, filled with traps, magic items, and gold pieces. (Indiana Jones would feel right at home.) Its design (at least on paper) does not evoke for me the presence of Sauron's greatest and most terrible servant. On top of that, it manifests a certain illogic of design and residence. There is a subterranean lake that lies directly above one level (apparently without leaking), and the denizens of the level require the use of a rowboat to make it to the next level—what a damn inconvenience, especially if a lot of people or things need to get moved in between the two levels! And then, of course, there are the Witch-king's "astrologers"—what does he need astrologers for?!? To predict the weather that he controls anyway? To read his fortune? And why keep your star-gazers locked up in a windowless labyrinth? Maybe I'm missing something here.

And now we move from the good and the bad to the ugly. (Yes, it gets worse!) Let's take the "History" section, which does not give us the basic background information on the Witch-king's domain and his wars until a THIRD of the way into the module (52). For me, that was a long time to wait for a SINGLE page of history (most of whose contents are a summary of Appendix A from LotR in any case). We get a reiteration of this same brief history in the Witch-king's biography, a seven-page epic tale (lifted word-for-word from LoMe II) of which SIX pages had absolutely nothing to do with Angmar.

The practical uselessness of this misplaced treatise is compounded by other internal deficiencies. The author of the text mistakenly states that the palantír of Osgiliath was lost in the waters of Anduin as a result of the Nazgûl's raid of that city in T.A. 2475. (That misses the mark by just over a thousand years.) It gives us a physical description of Er-Mûrazôr prior to his metamorphosis into a Nazgûl—not much use as a description of him as the Witch-king, is it? Finally, the biography continually refers to him as the Witch-king before and after his tour of duty in Angmar, and is equally careless about referring to him as the Lord of Morgul. "Witch-king" was not a personal designation, but an alias that Mûrazôr hid under only while he ruled Angmar; at any other time, it is as inappropriate to refer to him by that title as it would be to call Sauron "Annatar" during the War of the Ring. The same goes for Morgul. This Sindarin (Dúnadan) name only got attached to him as a result of his capture of Minas Ithil in T.A. 2002. One need only browse through Richard Blackwelder's Tolkien Thesaurus to see that Tolkien was careful to make these distinctions.

These all may be quibbling details, but the fact remains that seven pages were wasted that could have been used to provide richer and fuller bios for the Witch-king's under-described generals. Rogrog, the Troll-warlord of all Angmar, does not even appear in the biography section, despite the fact that the authors elsewhere assert his importance to the Angmarean military.

And then we come to the names. I find it surprising that the Witch-king and his military staff—many of whom are Adûnaic-speaking Black Númenóreans—should so stoop beneath their dignity as to use hated Elvish terminology in describing their own organization (e.g., Mornarturi, Angûlion, Mor-sereg)—whatever became of the Black Speech? To the authors' credit, they have attempted to utilize a real Adûnaic dictionary to come up with real Adûnaic names for the Witch-king's generals. Unfortunately, the old forms have not been jettisoned; instead, they are said to represent the half-hearted attempt of the Orcs to pronounce their true names. I remain unconvinced: anyone who can say "Dancu" can probably just as easily say "Dairkan." Finally, the authors insist on referring to the Daen Lintis portion of the Angmarim as Dunlendings, even though the word "Dunlending" is Rohirric, a language that did not come into being until nearly six centuries after Angmar was annihilated.

But the greatest incongruity of all is the claim that the Iron Sorcerer was a millennia-old mortal who managed to stay alive merely by virtue his own magical powers. Well, if you don't need a Ring of Power to live forever, why bother sacrificing your life to become a wraith!?!

A few final miscellany:


I don't want to get lost in Angmar's faults, because in spite of them I have enjoyed the overall picture it gives of the Witch-king's realm. As a MERP author, however, I am particularly sensitive to the weaknesses or errors that the second edition modules have failed to eliminate because they are now set in stone for a long time to come, and other authors must now live with them as best they can.

 

Review of The Shire and Angmar by Rick Swan
Quoted from Dragon Magazine 229 (May 1996) pp. 108-109, 111

I hate to travel. An agoraphobic and proud of it, I never leave the house with-king and screaming, and I go on vacations only at gun point. The way I see it, why hassle with flight schedules and hotel reservations when a role-playing game can take you anywhere you want to go? Sure, an airplane can get you to Monte Carlo. But it can't get you to Middle-earth.

Iron Crown has spent more than a decade mining gold from J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy. They've cranked out board games, poster maps, miniature figures, everything but Hobbit-flavored ice cream. Ironically, Middle-earth Role Playing (MERP), the centerpiece of the Iron Crown line, is one of their more troubling efforts. Though MERP boasts a solid system, it never quite nails the fairy tale ambiance of the novels and tends to emphasize the wrong elements. Combat and magic, for example, play much larger roles in the game than in the books. Still, despite my reservations about MERP, I'm crazy about the sourcebooks, noteworthy for their stunning attention to detail. When Tolkien fans die and go to heaven, they'll likely find themselves in a library stuffed with MERP books. The Shire and Angmar, two volumes in the 'Realms of Middle-earth' series documenting specific locales in the Tolkien universe, typify what Iron Crown does best.

The Shire, the lighter of the two, features the land of the Hobbits. Angmar, the darker one, describes the eerie realm of the Witch-king. The books follow the same format, more or less, with long chapters devoted to culture, history, politics, personalities, and landmarks. Tolkien aficionados will probably feel more at home with The Shire, arguably the most memorable locale in the novels. Designer Wesley Frank provides vivid depictions of Hobbiton, Sackville, and other Hobbit hideaways, along with in-depth profiles of Bilbo Baggins, Samwise Gamgee, and Gandalf the Grey. The brainy treatise on Hobbit magic includes a generous list of magical items unique to Middle-earth, such as the vantage stick and Lestine's pipe of creature comforts. A five-page timeline brings newcomers up to date, a chapter-long glossary explains the difference between 'mathom' (a gift with sentimental value but no practical use) and 'muck' (sheep droppings). Angmar covers less-familiar territory, requiring the designers to fill in a lot of blanks; while casual players won't find that a problem, Middle-earth scholars might take issue with some of the second guesses. Though not as character-focused as The Shire - and hence a bit drier - Angmar impresses with its analysis of military affairs (Angmaran fortifications, siege equipment, and chains of command) and imaginative essays (herb lore, orcish nomenclature, and castle design).

Both books are well-organized and tightly edited, and contain a surplus of informative, clutter-free maps. Neither has an index, however, reducing their value as references; if you want to find Bilbo's biography, you'll have to recruit a search party. The writing is generally strong, more so in Angmar. The Shire, though comprehensible, is stilted in spots ('Hobbits possess a subtler/& panache than most legendary beings'), as if Frank were trying too hard to impress his English teacher.

But it's the content that's important here, not the execution. Frank so skillfully evokes the pastoral landscapes of the Shire that you can almost smell the daisies. He takes us on a whirlwind tour of Bywater, the Bridge of Stonebows, and Hardbottle, spinning enchanting tales of the fairy spirits of Brocken Borings and how the Hobbit Bandobras invented the game of golf. He gives us a taste of the Hobbits' pastries (made with maple drippings and fresh plums) and opens their dresser drawers (proper gentlehobbits prefer linen bedding to straw). If Bilbo fractures his leg, he can mend the bone with an arfandas flower poultice; if he burns his lip on a hot pastry, he can ease the pain by nibbling on a klaven berry.

Angmar is an equally riveting place. Designers Graham Staplehurst and Heike Kubasch conjure a world of barren plains, gray skies, and random death. Here, a description of the slave city of Litash: 'The remains of some [of the slaves] could still be seen, skeletons wrapped in wind-dried skin like parchment, nailed with barbed spikes to the clay walls of their dwellings.' Trolls infest the hills, dwelling in garbage-strewn lairs riddled with lice and fleas. Minions of the Witch-king protect their fortresses with pit traps coated with jegga, a pasty black poison made from bat venom.

If the books share a flaw, it's that they tend to emphasize the whimsical a bit too much. The blissfully serene Shire seems more like a place you'd go for a vacation than a place you'd go for a fight. Angmar oozes gloom but doesn't seem particularly menacing. Angmar bad guys spend too much time fortifying their strongholds and not enough stirring up trouble. The trolls don't seem to be up to much other than wallowing in garbage. We're told of a mighty dragon called the Worm, 'greedy, devious, and selfish.' Sounds promising. But what kind of greedy, devious, and selfish stuff does the Worm do?

A more troubling drawback for Angmar is the absence of adventure hooks. That's a drawback hard to overlook considering the formidable task facing a referee attempting to put together campaign from all these bits and pieces. (Let's see... I'll use the Cult of the Dark Lord from Chapter Five, add the Storugoruz Orc-hold from Chapter Eight, and maybe throw in a few trolls from Chapter Three.) By comparison, The Shire serves up 30 pages of adventures; though none are earth-shattering, they're complete, they're playable, and best of all - they're there.

Evaluation: The Shire and Angmar are first-rate sourcebooks, meticulously researched and staggeringly complete. Iron Crown did just about everything right, even sequestering most of the statistics in the appendices to make the books accessible to those who've never heard of MERP. If I could have only one of the two, I'd take The Shire; Angmar loses a pip for skimping on adventure ideas. Still, both volumes are worth a look from anyone drawn to the concepts in Lord of the Rings. And if you're a fan of the AD&D® game - which, like just about every fantasy game that's ever wriggled its way out of a word processor, owes a heavy debt to Professor Tolkien - that means you.