Issue 9, February 2010 OO THERTHER MMINDINDSS The Unofficial Role-Playing Magazine for J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth and beyond OTHER MINDS Magazine Issue 9, February 2010 Publisher Other Minds Volunteers Co-Editors Assistant Editors Thomas Morwinsky Neville Percy Hawke Robinson Chris Seeman Proof Readers Artwork Katy Koenen Ted Nasmith Oliver Schick Jan Pospisil Chris Wade Maps Production Staff Chris Taylor Thomas Morwinsky Neville Percy The next Issue of Other Minds is not themed, every contribution is eligible! Submission deadline is April 1 2010 © ‘At the Cross-roads’ by Ted Nasmith, used by permission of the artist Unless otherwise noted, every contribution in this magazine is published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license (b n a) The exact license of a given contribution can be found at the beginning of each contribution. 1 Other Minds Magazine MAIN FEATURES 2 Editorial: The Dominion of Man by Thomas Morwinsky Editorial: 4 Inside Information by Thomas Morwinsky 5 The Age of Sauron The Dominion of Man by Padraig Timmins 14 The Heirs of Elessar and the Fourth Age by Thomas Morwinsky This Issue more traditional lines, accepting the course of events as developed by Tolkien. It gives 29 A Fourth Age Chronology I hope all of you had a good start to by Tom Davie an overview of the major events of the 2010, and that all your wishes may come Fourth Age according to my interpretation 39 Religion in Angmar true! We have had a good crop of submis- by Thomas Morwinsky of Tolkien’s scarce evidence about it. sions, so the first Issue of Other Minds in Loose ends that were left by Tolkien are 2010 will make a good Tolkien-related further developed, as is an idea of how start for sure. Again we have a first-time OTHER FEATURES Tolkien’s Secondary World might be contributor who was so kind as to offer us blended in into real-world myths. In light 60 Fine Print and Disclaimers his ideas for publication. Concerning the of this it comes with two different endings 61 Creative Commons License now established broad variety of authors, I to the Age, allowing readers to choose the firmly believe that Other Minds is on a good one that best suits their own preferences. 64 Appendix A: Dúnadan lifespans in the way. Fourth Age Next in line is Tom Davie with his 65 Appendix B: Alternative ending for As announced in our last Issue, we now Fourth Age Chronology. Here he pro- “The Heirs of Elessar and the Fourth have a theme again: The Fourth Age. vides us another vision of the Fourth Age Age” Tolkien, through Elrond, called this the based on the “real” course of events, but Table of Contents: Other Minds Maga- Dominion of Man, which we’ve taken as a with a different angle on how things should zine, Issues 1-9 fitting headline for content dealing with further develop after Elessar’s and this time. Naturally, the visions and inter- Eldarion’s time. In this he picks up the pretations of various authors differ consid- theme developed by Martin Baker in his erably. This is hardly surprising, since Tresco Manuscript article (Other Hands, Issue Tolkien told us little about this time and 13, April 1996), and building further de- we deem this multitude of opinions as very velopments upon it. fruitful, since it fosters discussion and will result in a better understanding of the pe- The final contribution this time is again riod. by me and it fulfills a promise given in Other Minds, Issue 7. However this article We begin with The Age of Sauron, does not follow our “Fourth Age” focus, as already foreshadowed in our last Issue. but I guess you can live with that. Religion This is a fascinating Middle-earth game in Angmar is intended to be used in con- setting developed by first-time contributor junction with “The Angmarrim” from Padraig Timmins. In the present contribu- Other Minds, Issue 7 and contains my sug- tion, he deals with the overall setting of gestions for revising ICE’s take on the reli- this “alternative history”: Frodo failed in gious system in Angmar to something his quest and Sauron got the One back! more believable – and especially to con- Padraig shows us a highly realistic approach form with statements made by Tolkien to what might have happened once Sauron himself. Similar to Padraig’s approach with got his Ring back. This article is focused on the ‘Age of Sauron’, this is intended as an the broad description of the Northwest overview to which specific details will be following this pivotal event, leaving much added in future. room for further scenarios and pieces built on this great foundation. In fact, Padraig Movie News has already promised to provide further There is also some movie-related details in later Issues of Other Minds. news – and not in the context of the Peter It’s natural to put the Fourth Age Jackson trilogy or the upcoming The Hobbit pieces together, and so The Heirs of movies, but of an old acquaintance. In case Elessar and the Fourth Age by myself you haven’t heard already, Warner Home comes right behind. This is written along 2 Issue 9, February 2010 Video will release a remastered version of Finally, we have a new feature on our the Bakshi Lord of the Rings movie on April, website. From now on, a regularly up- 6 2010 (US release). See the announce- dated Table of Contents for all Issues of ment at http://uk.dvd.ign.com/ Other Minds to date will be available for articles/105/1058187p1.html for more download as well. See the Inside Informa- details. Many thanks go to António Simões tion piece in this Issue for more informa- for digging this up! tion on the matter. A New Middle-earth For the Other Minds team Roleplaying Game! Thomas Morwinsky Another exciting piece of news is about February 2010 a new Middle-earth RPG! Two companies (Cubicle 7 Entertainment and Sophisti- cated Games) in cooperation have obtained a new gaming licence for a game based on The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. They have announced the publication of a brand- new game named The One Ring: The Lord of the Rings® Role-playing Game (not to be confused with the similar- sounding and now-defunct game from De- cipher). Check out their webpage at http://www.cubicle-7.com/ for news. They are planning to release the game in the second half of 2010. We at Other Minds Magazine are very excited about the prospect of new move- ment in the Middle-earth roleplaying sec- tor. Faithful to our motto, we will gladly extend our support to this new game and will welcome submissions related to it. We will report any news of further developments on the game as soon as we have it. Last but not least There is also something to say about the artwork found in this Issue. We are very proud that two artists gave us permis- sion to use their artwork within our pages. First is renowned Tolkien illustrator Ted Nasmith! Needless to say, he is among the most noted Tolkien artists and his su- perb work has been published widely, e.g. in several Tolkien Calendars including the current one for 2010. See Ted’s webpage at http://www.tednasmith.com/ for further information on his huge portfolio of great work. Jan Pospisil is the other artist who has been so kind as to give permission to use his work within Other Minds. His web- page can be found at http://merlkir. deviantart.com/. We are greatly in- debted to both of you! 3 Other Minds Magazine Inside Information Table of Contents available! Lord of the Rings Roleplay- The One Ring: The Lord of Other Minds reader and contributor José ing Game statistics needed! the Rings® Role-playing Enrique Vacas de la Rosa pointed out that Another topic worth mentioning is it is becoming difficult to keep track of all Game OM’s game mechanics. Those contributions the content published in Other Minds. For As already mentioned in the Editorial, that provide game data (e.g. adventures, this reason, we decided to make a Table of a new Tolkien RPG game will be published scenarios, NPC’s) are currently showing a Contents available to ease the navigation of in the second half of 2010. We will closely concentration on MERP/RM. As Other our growing fund of Tolkien-related mate- follow developments and share any news Minds is meant to be a gaming magazine for rial. For the beginning we provide this in we get. In addition, we will of course seek GMs and players of any game system, we two formats: a PDF file sorted simply by to support this system by publishing game would be glad to broaden our range in this Issue, and a spreadsheet with drop-down material and any other related information. respect. titles which can be used for filtering ac- Adventures, encounters and other con- So any reader who is proficient in the cording to several criteria: Issue, type of tent related to (and including stats for!) the Lord of the Rings Roleplaying Game (the Deci- content, author, up to three keywords etc. new game will be highly appreciated and pher game) and willing to lend a hand to These will be updated with each Issue and we would like to add game statistics for provide statistics for this system is cordially we will keep on improving their usability.