An Interview with Jessica Ney-Grimm
I thought it fitting to conclude my "Making of MERP" series by interviewing Jessica Ney-Grimm who, as both series editor and art director, stands more than anyone else at the center of things. Here we get a glimpse at "the big picture"—how Middle-earth Role Playing has developed and where it is going, an updating of Pete Fenlon's letter to us three years back (OH 1: 3-6). We've all come a long way since then...
Chris: I've noticed that your name doesn't appear in the credits for some of the older MERP modules. Could you tell us how you first got involved with ICE, and what led you to your current position as both the MERP series editor and art director?
Jessica: I became acquainted with Coleman Charlton, Terry Amthor, and Bruce Niedlinger in Terry's Middle-earth game while attending the University of Virginia. When I finished school I went to Iron Crown's offices and said: "I have seven years of training in drafting and graphic presentation, I have been role playing and GMing since 1976, and I have read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings more times than I can count. I think you should hire me." That was in 1982 when the first modules were just starting to get published. Before then (when I was in high school), I had done some play-testing on Arms Law. They did not hire me then, because at that time they were not hiring anyone or paying anyone any money. (They were all working at ICE and doing other jobs on the side to survive.) Two years later they came back to me and asked if I would draw some floor plans for Moria. My formal training and my degree were in architecture. So if you look in the credits of some of those early modules, you will see my name under the credits for maps and floor plans. I did the graphics and production work for a couple of years and then moved into the editing side of things with the Narnia product line. We obtained a license for Narnia and published five solo game books in that line before it came to an end. Having seen what I could do with the Narnia line, they knew I had the skills for the Middle-earth editorship and asked if I would be interested. Who would say no to that question? Thus I came to be the series editor.
Chris: Was the art direction a more recent development?
Jessica: I took on the duties of art director about five years ago.
Chris: How have the publication goals and overall concept of ICE's Middle-earth line changed over time, or have they?
Jessica: They definitely have evolved and changed to a large degree in relation to our perception of what the market place and the customer wanted. When I initially took over the line, the perception was that the customer wanted shorter books that were very action-oriented.
Chris: Hence, the Ready-to-Run adventure series.
Jessica: Exactly. Then, as time went on, we began to perceive a desire for longer books, more source material, and action integrated into that context. ICE's Middle-earth has continued moving in that direction for several years. You can see the most extreme expression of that trend in Arnor with its 400 pages. We might still be publishing 300 and 400 page books were it not for one important economic reality. Paper prices tripled in 1994, making 250 pages the upper limit for most of our books. Currently, I am perceiving more interest in our customers in the scholarship behind the products. Many Middle-earth fans have begun to write us letters inquiring into the particulars of Tolkien's early notes (generously being made available to the public over time by his son in volumes such The Book of Lost Tales, etc.) as they touch on Angmar, Gondor, and other subjects. Others engage in extensive dialogs on the net. Scholarship was always a foundational element for Middle-earth modules, but now it is gaining an up-front appeal.
Chris: Does that focus tend to attract other (non-gaming) Tolkien fans?
Jessica: I think the line has always had that dual appeal—to the role player and to the Middle-earth aficionado.
Chris: In the early years, there was no Middle-earth Role Playing system. Was this planned from the beginning, or did the idea of having a set of game mechanics specific to the line also evolve over time?
Jessica: It did evolve over time. The original rules that Iron Crown created were the Rolemaster rules. Some people may not realize that Rolemaster originally emerged in a Middle-earth context—in campaigns run by Pete Fenlon and one other GM. The later impetus to create a system separate from Rolemaster grew out of the complexity of the existing rules.
Chris: So, in actuality, MERP was born more out of a logistic concern to simplify an existing system that had itself been designed with Tolkien's world in mind.
Jessica: Since then there have, of course, been refinements to MERP, based on the need to re-examine its concepts and to make them truer to the world. In the future there will probably be further refinements.
Chris: What audience was The Lord of the Rings Adventure Game directed towards?
Jessica: I wrote "Dawn Comes Early" (the adventure in LOR) with a particular family in mind—an acquaintance of mine, her husband, and their 3 kids (two 13-year old twins and a 9-year old younger sib). It was intended to appeal as a family game or to a slightly younger audience or to a more sophisticated adult one that had never done role playing before—whereas MERP was for people who already had some role playing experience using another system. We envisioned that a broad spectrum of people might play LOR. Those who had done role playing for a long time might want to switch emphasis away from a rule-heavy system to one in which the rules were fewer and more submerged and thus more friendly to role playing.
Chris: What are your current thoughts about the goals of the Middle-earth series with respect to northwestern Endor as opposed to the rest of the continent? What are you looking for in terms of materials from authors?
Jessica: I want to complete northwestern Middle-earth per se geographically. Near Harad, Northern Gondor, and Rhûn are being written even as we speak. I'd like books covering Mordor and Barad-dûr. Lindon could be a magical, mystical module, if we could find the right author to tackle it. In addition to the geopolitical viewpoint, there is the thematic focus. For example, the prominent peoples in Middle-earth should be explored in a more in-depth and complete fashion. Other themes include the Wainrider Wars, Gondor's Ship-kings, and the War of the Ring. These theme books are as important as the realm books describing the geopolitical area of northwestern Middle-earth. I envision forming a core with them from which we slowly make bridges to outlying areas. I'd avoid leaping from one end of the continent to the other—I would want to move incrementally. A third focus is LOR, which was originally conceived as a six-part campaign; the final two adventures have never been published. A partial manuscript for the fifth adventure needs an author to build on what first writer began but did not complete.
Chris: So it is conceived as a bounded campaign with a beginning and an end.
Jessica: Yes. The adventures in LOR are well-defined and more directed than in a normal MERP module. The gamemaster is literally directed to passages of prose to read aloud to the players. The idea is that a novice is led through the LOR adventures, essentially giving him or her a self-teaching experience. By the time the new GM is done, he or she will know how to gamemaster and will not need further directed modules. He or she will be ready to read a MERP module and use it. That is part of the reason we have been including LOR stats in our MERP modules. Just because LOR GMs and players have finished our six-part series does not mean that they are finished with Middle-earth. They are merely ready to take on the less directive sourcebooks.
Chris: As ICE's art director, how do you go about locating artists?
Jessica: Basically there are two processes. In the more common one, artists send us their portfolios or samples of work and I evaluate those. If they fit in with our vision of what is suitable for one or more of ICE's product lines, I contact the artist to see if he or she is agreeable to our terms and with our scheduling. The card game, Middle-earth: The Wizards, created a whole new demand, requiring a lot of color art—almost 500 pieces. I did not have sufficient resources among the freelancers who regularly drew for ICE. So I looked through many artist venues and tried to track down more painters. Now that METW is out, we have a lot more artists that do color work. There are some artists who do both. Liz Danforth is one of the more notable.
Chris: Do you see artwork as a way of creating cross-overs between the MERP series and Wizards?
Jessica: We do expect that some people who play the card game will be introduced for the first time to the idea of games set in Middle-earth. Some of them will probably try MERP or LOR. I expect many more who do role playing in Middle-earth will try METW. In terms of the visual presentation, I want consistency.
Chris: What goes into the concepts for the color covers of the MERP modules? They all tend to share an action theme.
Jessica: You may have noticed that the earlier covers were primarily action scenes derived from book content. Currently I am looking for scenes directly from The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit that also relate to book subject material. The visual images on existing covers have been influenced heavily by Angus McBride's vision of Middle-earth. When he tackles a cover painting, we discuss the view point from which I wish it to be portrayed, touch on a few of the more unusual details, and leave the rest up to Mr. McBride.
Chris: Do you plan to continue to rely primarily on Angus for the cover art?
Jessica: Yes. We can trust Mr. McBride: we know that this is a subject about which he is very passionate and that he has pondered carefully. His vision of Middle-earth parallels my own. We make a good team, and I wouldn't want to want to break it up.
Chris: Is there any plan to republish at a later date the Characters of Middle-earth, essentially a book of his artwork?
Jessica: People who bought the book seemed to love it, but I wonder if we offered it to the market place a little too early. The popularity of collectible cards games may be showing a resurgent interest in art, so a book like that might be more enthusiastically received than it was at the time. It would be well to study the market again with re-publication of Characters of Middle-earth (or perhaps Characters of Middle-earth 2) in mind.
Chris: Anything else about the art work or art direction?
Jessica: First, I'd like to say a bit more on the editorial side. When I look at manuscripts, I look not only for adherence to Tolkien's legacy, but also for clean prose and strong story lines. One of the things that makes MERP special is the fact that Middle-earth was presented to us within a work of literature. I want the role playing aids to have some of the elegance and presentation of a novel. That of course depends on each author's talent; fortunately, we do have some very talented authors working for ICE. To return to the subject of art directing: there is a lot of enthusiasm about illustrating Middle-earth. Most artists leap at the chance, but possess varying degrees of familiarity with Tolkien's world. To many, I send photocopies from The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, photocopies from MERP products, maps, and even polaroids showing the positioning and postures of characters in a scene. I tell artists, "Your vision of Frodo is going to be different than that of other artists, but pretend that you're painting a portrait of the same person." We try to adhere closely to The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. If we are portraying a scene from one of those works, I want to make sure that the artist does a fairly accurate rendition. Art work in the Middle-earth line does have some special constraints to be faithful to the Tolkien legacy.
Chris: Thank you very much for your time.