Obscure Tolkien Adaptations

Rusco

New Member
Hello! I'm new to the Mythgard forums (and new to forums in general), so please forgive me if I'm in the wrong place.

I've had a hyperfocus for the past year of finding and watching as many Tolkien adaptations as I could find. It's what led me to discover Silm Film, and then all the other Mythgard programs.

I'm curious to see if anyone else is interested in obscure Tolkien adaptations? And discussing the good, the bad, and the absolute bonkers?

There are so many out there- tv miniseries and musicals, fanfilms and rock operas... I've even found an equestrian Lay of Leithian musical?

Do you have some to share with me? And can I share some with you?
 
And, more than anything, I want to share what I think is the best adaptation I've found, with people I think would love it most.

There's a rock opera adaptation of The Lay of Leithian currently playing in Russia.

It is genuinely fantastic. You can feel the original poem in the lyrics, the actors are so incredibly talented, and the costumes are beautiful.

I've spent the past six months working on a translation, and I now have their July 2021 livecast fully recorded, edited, and subtitled. (I considered submitting it to Mythgard Misc, but I don't think it would fit.)

I'd prefer not to share the file openly, however- I don't have any rights, and I don't want to take views/stream purchases from them.

But if anyone is interested, I can point you in all the right directions to watch it... or I'm doing a stream of it on Sunday, Feb 20th that you're welcome to join.

Anyway... I love them. Great show. Highly recommend.

Trailer:

 
Well i cannot really say much about obscure adaptations like heavy metal albums, rock operas or musicals but personally i have been really into pen and paper and video roleplaying game adaptions such as MERP or interplays Lotr series, they have some nice story twists and come up with additional lore on their own which i find fascinating from a subcreation perspective...
 
I'm afraid I don't know much about the gaming world, but after hearing all the talk on the Tolkien Prof podcast, I finally downloaded LOTRO. I haven't started yet, but it's definitely on the to-do list.

I also have vague memories of a Hobbit gameboy advance game?

But if you have any recommendations, let me know. Are they dnd sort of games?
 
The GBA games all were very fun in my opinion. I have to admit i only very briefly played LOTRO but i watched many letsplays, the storyline is quite good in my opinion.
 
Hey Rusco! (We are both in the small but dedicated anglo silmarillion rock opera fandom) I mean I can also heartily recommend finrod-zong, lay of leithian etc.

Other Silm/lotr adaptions i am really curious about but are a little too inaccessible for me to just easily experience are probably the rpgs! There are quite a bunch of them, but to piece out which ones might be to my taste or accessible enough to learn & dm for a 2022 roleplayer is really hard to find out, at least for me.
 
What recently came to my mind, also considering Corey has started a new podcast called "other hands and minds"...

There actually is a fanzine called "Other Minds" which is sorta the spiritual successor to "Other hands" a magazine supporting middle-earth roleplaying to which i was happy to have once contributed an article as well in my teenage years:


Other Minds still is very rpg related but it also mainly does lore such as filling out the gaps in genealogies, alternate history and even stuff like military and demography of middle earth and detailed maps etc.

It has quite frankly been many years since i have last read it, the editor , Dr.Thomas Morwinsky is a really nice guy i knew from old german Tokien forum days...

Everybody interested in many forms of subcreation might give the zine a try...
 
@Haerangil Do you have any sort of overview over the Tolkien ttrpgs out there, what it is worth to try & play, what less so, etc? Bc I would be interested to try & learn one of them at some point, but i definitely don't have the energy to read them all & decide then which to play

My taste in rpgs is generally more exploration & social based, with battle more as a spice than as a base, and i generally prefer a lot of flavour in the worldbuilding and mechanics over powergaming and realistic simulation.
 
I honestly am quite out of that scene...
In my opinion merp, especially 2nd edition had quite a few remarkable sourcebooks, but the rulework per se was, excuse me, trash. Decipher's lotr rpg had a pretty solid rulesystem but far too few background/sourcematerial. The one ring and adventures in middle-earth got very good reviews by the fanbase, but personally i have never played them nor really read the sourcebooks... so i do not have a strong personal opinion.
 
Yeah I've heard the same about merp too, and from the rest i've not heard enough precise things to really wanna go for it yet xD
 
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