Hi Dark, True. However, I was merely throwing the Mines of Moria idea out there as a case example of how the three books could be trimmed down to something manageable by a single developer rather than an actual idea for a LOTR game. For a real LOTR game I would probably do something along the lines you mentioned like using some event not specifically covered in the books such as Balin's doomed expedition where I am more free to play with the storyline and characters. Any of the main characters from the fellowship itself is already written history, and anything I could do to create a game would require tampering with the cannon, and I don't think any true fan of LOTR really wants me to do that.
In fact, I would say I think all of the commercial LOTR games out there are failures precisely for that very reason. The game designers wanted to use all the characters from the fellowship and ended up creating side quests and adventures beyond the scope of the original three books which isn't as good as if they picked an event like Balin's doomed expedition or when Gandalf left Bilbo and the dwarves to travel Mirkwood on their own while he and the other wizards went to fight Sauron. There are a number of potential quests in the LOTR books and Hobbit that could be taken up by a game designer, but have not simply because the commercial companies decided to base the game on the main characters and did a bad job of it. When it comes down to it this is a pretty general problem with basing a game on any book or movie. There is a certain amount of cannon around the main characters where there isn't any room to write new quests or adventures for those characters without seriously altering the history of that character or story. In something like LOTR the history of the fellowship is known and a game developer has to follow the history laid down by the original author. With something like Star Trek its a lot more flexible because its assumed Picard, Riker, Troi, Data, Warf, etc have adventures that are not covered by the weekly TV show, and there you can write a game about those adventures. LOTR is pretty much a closed history where Star Trek is an open ended story. Big difference in terms of writing a game. However, the best solution is to take the established universe be it Star Trek, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and create your own characters and quests for that game world. In fact, Lucas Arts rarely ever uses Han, Luke, Leia, Obi-Wan, etc in their Star Wars games for this reason. Instead they have created their own characters like Kyle Katern who was in Dark Forces, Jedi Knight, and Jedi Outcast as the main character. They used Mara Jade in Mysteries of the Sith who was pretty much an unknown character at that time. More recent games have Master Shan and some of the other Jedi Masters from thousands of years before Luke Skywalker was even born. All of this is to point out the games are based on Star Wars but the games don't have to worry about cannon or if the books conflict with this or that because the games exist in their own cannon and history. So if I were to write a game set in the Harry Potter universe I would be better off creating a custom student at Hogwarts who just happens to run into NPC characters like Ron, Harry, Jinnee, Hermione, etc during his or her own adventures. This would allow me to write stories not covered by J. K. Rowling while preserving the cannon. I think from a purity perspective is the best solution. Unfortunately, a lot of gamers probably want to play the main characters which is why even though it breaks with cannon you get a LOTR game with the main characters in it doing things like finding Sam's gaffer's glasses in order to get him to join the Fellowship of the Ring which is just dumb. Game developers aren't given much wiggle room when it comes to cannon and main characters so stick side quests into their games as filler between major battle scenes whatever, and are something of a detraction from the over all game. Cheers! --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
