A bad guy campaign in Middle-earth?

[tkdco2]

While Middle-earth games assume the PCs are going to be good guys, I know a few people who enjoy playing evil characters. At least one MERP adventure (I forget which) allowed the PCs to take the villainous route.

I have a few MERP characters that are evil, although they work for themselves instead of Sauron. The animist is probably a priest of Sauron, however. I created them to serve as the antagonists for my main characters, who are of course heroes. I haven't played a lot of MERP recently, so this idea hasn't gone very far.

But maybe you can have a short-term AD&D campaign about villains set just before and during the War of the Ring. The PCs will be humans and half-orcs terrorizing Bree-land and the Shire under Saruman's orders. The PCs can be fighters, thieves, and assassins. They may be brigands accosting travelers or spies infiltrating the towns after the Rangers have gone to war. Their forces will eventually be routed during the Battle of Bywater, but allow the PCs a chance to escape, so they may continue their villainy somewhere else.

[Deleted]

The thing about the Orcs, Trolls and other minions of Sauron is that they're implied to not exactly have agency in the way the protagonists do. Obviously they do to some degree, hence the Orcs overheard talking about breaking away from the big bosses and going to do their own thing, but there's some sort of wide net Charm effect going on with Sauron in the center (and Saruman in the case of the Isengard forces) and IMO a big part of the appeal of the story is that the good guys are fighting a battle for freedom and individuality against this monolithic hivemind of sorts. If you were really gonna play the Orcs or Corsairs of Umbar or whoever as close to their canonical portrayal as possible, it would be kind of two-dimensional. I suppose there's room for deviations but considering it's a bad guy campaign I assume it wouldn't be the story about an Easterling who deserted and did his own thing.

[tkdco2]

Easterlings and Haradrim would work fine. Even Corsairs and Black Numenorians would also have a lot of stuff to do. Don't forget the Dunlendings either. Orcs may be thrown in chaos after Sauron's downfall, but half-orcs may have more agency. If any survived the Battle of Hornburg or the Scouring of the Shire, they would find new ways to harass the Free People.

You can use the bad guys as minions of Sauron or Saruman, or you can have them do their own thing. The former may be interesting to explore. Granted, their side will lose in the end, but that's why I specified that the campaign be a short-term one. Of course, my Mordor thread includes ideas on how Sauron's surviving minions may operate after the Dark Lord's fall.

[premmy]

The way I see it, LotR/Arda's "moral cosmology," the ideas it communicates about the nature of God, divine will, freedom, morality, temptation and corruption, are an essential, critical and indispensable part of the setting. Discard that, and you're no longer playing a Middle Earth campaign; you're playing an Evil-aligned D&D campaign with a map you just happened to nick from elsewhere.

Having said that, I also think it would be possible to play a campaign that explores these topics from a different perspective, but it would need more setup than just "you're the bad guys." I could, for instance, see a campaign set in the early 4th Age which explores how Sauron's former human allies adapt to the new world order. Maybe some factions continue to worship Sauron in a cult; others might decide that allying with the Dark Lord was a bad idea, but now it's time for them to strike out on their own and reaffirm themselves as significant powers. Yet others might choose to accept the changes, make amends and co-operate with the victors of the war. Yet others might be willing to own up to their people's past sins, but still have reservations, possibly legitimate one, about the new situation. Yo could have a game like that, but it would still need to preserve the "moral message" to feel authentically Tolkienish.

[tkdco2]

You can always include the option of redemption, which would be in line with Tolkien. Of course, it would be up to the players if they take that option.