COMMUNICATIONS

School of Elven Studies (Association of Friends of Tolkien in France):

Open letter to role players:

We would like to draw the attention of the role-playing readers to the role playing Game M.E.R.P. ("Middle-earth Role Playing Game") from the American company ICE.

This "crowning glory" of role playing games is a highly dangerous dish for novice tolkienists (and other amateurs) who want to learn more about Tolkien and his world!

Could the modules of this game be drawn from the actual writings of J.R.R. Tolkien? According to the colourful packaging, they are "based on J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. And "Each module is based on extensive research," according to the notice. But can this be taken seriously? No way! This is sales talk, speech making Gríma Wormtongue couldn't have done it better. ICE intends these claims to reassure the inexperienced reader; the real Tolkien enthusiast (or "tolkiendil" in Elvish) will speedily see through them. Once past the alluring wrapping, there is nothing to be found but pretentious literary essays, and other colourful gimmicks. The purchaser will find in the innumerable modules and aids for the game not a single pertinent analysis, no notes worthy of interest, not the least trace of well considered interpretation, only a huge funhouse mirror.

The game modules, often accompanied by large coloured charts (and what ridiculous ones!), maps, and various bizarre sketches, are full to overflowing with the phoney role-playing stuff this "junk-food" company specialises in. All this company and others like it, the usurpers of the precious "mithril," have to do is stick the Tolkien label on a product for it to become highly marketable. No, the modules of MERP were in no way drawn from some "lost Tolkien writings". Nor do these "small models" (made of "mithril") even respect the "Tolkien vision"; a sort of smoke screen behind which they withdraw cosily with their literary efforts. Nor is all this material drawn from texts supposedly inaccessible to outsiders like ourselves, as the head of the company would have us believe, according to his many brusque and indigestible interviews.

This unsavoury character and his minions supply role-players with crazy information, having no relation to Tolkien's work: half-dwarves, a hodgepodge of magic objects, an additional imaginary continent by the inapt name of Morënorë, to mention only the most grotesque errors. What's more, if making up the game were not enough, these scribblers knowingly plunder what a magnificent writer spend years in conceptualising and perfecting to set down in print. Sources are misquoted, dates faked, places wrongly located, coast lines, mountain ranges, and rivers are sloppily drawn. MERP turns out to be not only impossible to use or to play for the person who loves and appreciates Tolkien's writings and wishes to recreate a Tolkien atmosphere in playing a game (although this is quite difficult to do, nearly impossible). Above all, it proves to be harmful for all those, too numerous, who either through lack of curiosity or though excessive reliance on false claims ("Designed with faithful attention to Tolkien's world", allegations that anyone of modest intelligence can see through at a glance) do not take the trouble even to skim the author's numerous works in English before playing the game.

We, the Association of Friends of Tolkien in France, have nothing against RPG in general. Many of us have played and enjoyed the RPG. We are only alarmed by the "game settings" MERP is proposing to the players, but we are not at all concerned about the "MERP rules" or "Rolemaster rules". We only draw attention to the fact that ICE transforms what Tolkien has actually written in his books, and pretends otherwise. When Tolkien says that Dwarves are a "race apart", they ought not to be any Half-Dwarves, and when he say that the Ringwraiths were "Kings" and "Men" it ought not to be any "Wraith Queen" amongst them, when he puts Pelargir 5 miles north of the inflow of the Sirith into the Anduin, it ought to stay there and not to change place, and when he says that Glorfindel of Gondolin and Glorfindel of Rivendell are the same Elf, he means it.

We do not pretend to criticise the "rules themselves". That is how to play "MERP". And we are certainly not trying to find a way "to play according to Tolkien", which would be totally impossible and meaningless. Because even if Tolkien is one of the greatest writer of the XXth century, he wrote romance, not game-modules. Pretend as is doing ICE what he did so in his "books" is pure folly.

Each and every one is free to make up his own rules, and to have fun. Because RPG is aimed at that, don't you think? But, please for your game-settings, do rely more on your imagination than on ICE modules.