A Casual Stroll to Mordor

Outside LOTRO: Finding a New Love in a Dead Product

Posted on 05. Oct, 2009 by Merric in Outside LOTRO

The release of movies centered on your favorite fantasy world is a double-edged sword.  With such releases, if they’re popular enough, you’ll see thousands of products released by different companies.  Some of these products are inevitably disappointing, but some are true gems which bring new life to a world that you love to visit.  Lord of the Rings was truly a blockbuster film series which brought forth a myriad of different products that have been the subject of my past couple of articles.  However, unlike my previously mentioned products which are still being produced (although in some cases quite limitedly) I am starting to find that quite a few products have fallen out-of-print because admittedly the general public has a very short attention span and companies are not prone to continue manufacturing items that do not return a profit.

In general I’ve found over the years as I’ve become interested in products such as trading card games, or even recently with my peaked interest in miniatures, that you cannot expect the general public to share your enthusiasm in any particular product.  I’ve heavily invested in games in which I eventually discovered that I was (seemingly) the only person in the area who was truly interested in playing.  I’ll never forget walking into a comic store that had been advertising gaming sessions in a new collectible card game only to find I was the only one who showed up.  I was sure that there would be tons of people there sharing my interest, but was shocked into realizing that maybe others were in fact not interested in the same things I was.  Fortunately for me though, one staff members was nice enough to play a couple of games with me, but it was obvious he wasn’t interested in the game.  Now, had I shown up for one of their more popular and long-established Magic: The Gathering gaming sessions, I’m sure that I would have had no shortage of competitors to play against.  Of course, I might have just needed to find a different comic/game store that had a clientele who shared my enthusiasm.  Currently I’m finding that most stores have their own “favorite” miniature gaming lines and that they differ from store to store.  Some game lines (like Magic and Warhammer 40k) though are universally popular in most places.  However I like what I like, and I don’t want to play something I don’t enjoy just to have someone to play with.  I’ve found that if I invest in something half-heartedly I just end up giving it up.

All that aside, what does that mean for a person such as myself who is starting to delve into Lord of the Rings who wants to play games that revolve around that world?  Should they give up?  Should they just go with what’s popular or in print?  No; I don’t think so.

See, fortunately with the Internet we now have a vast marketplace that is no longer limited to that within our acceptable driving distance.  Doubly so when you take into resellers utilizing Amazon Market Place and eBay!  For example, one game that some of the LOTRO fan base might like to take a look at is the Lord of the Rings Role-playing Game by Decipher Inc. which won the Origins Award for Best Role-playing Game of the Year in 2002.  Although Decipher still owns the right for the role-playing game, they haven’t done much with it since 2006 and have not released any new information or product updates.  However, this doesn’t mean that the product is truly dead.  The rules in the book will always work, meaning that the system is still valid and enjoyable.  A product does not have to be continuously updated for it to be a valid product.  Sometimes I find myself falling into a marketing trap of feeling that a game needs constant updates and work for it to be playable, but that’s simply not true.  It’s just an excuse for me to spend more money on something that was fine to begin with.  Sure, it’s nice when a game manufacturer releases new additions to an existing game, but don’t we have our own imaginations for doing the same thing?  Especially when role-playing games are involved.

But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t any support out there.  Currently there is a fan webzine that puts out issues now and again with ideas on items, people, and places that can all be included in an adventure.  Even though it’s small, it still proves that the game is functional and that there are others out there enjoying it.  Besides, as long as you and your friends are interested in the game and find it enjoyable isn’t that what truly matters?

Tags: games, Outside LOTRO, roleplaying game