Making my Middle-Earth role-playing game heartbreaker using DCC RPG as the chassis and adding in various other elements from games like The One Ring, Nimble 2e, Dolmenwood, Shadowdark, MERP, Pendragon, and others has been both exhilarating and dispiriting, often in equal measures.

As I got deep into the weeds of character stats, magic systems, Luck/Hope/Despair mechanics, I was suddenly left wondering if maybe I should just learn The One Ring after all and call it a day. Why fight the system that everyone seems to agree “gets” Tolkien the best?

But my Middle-Earth RPG isn’t trying to capture TOLKIEN’s Middle-Earth; it’s trying to capture MY Middle-Earth: the one that I created as a kid via various versions including the Tolkien books, and cartoon movies, and other fantasy-related games, books, and media, and the aforementioned MERP, and my own ten-year-old imagination.

I want a Middle-Earth RPG that’s more 1960s “Frodo Lives” counter-culture and 1970s and 80s American fantasy publishing and Angus McBride MERP illustrations. That’s why I settled on DCC RPG as the main rule-set for my homebrew. DCC gives the right vibes of loose-goosey, pre-codified Dungeons and Dragons generic fantasy that feels right for how I imagine my own head-cannon Middle-Earth.

The One Ring, for all its virtues, is very much in line with the aesthetics and interpretation of Tolkien’s legendarium post-Jackson’s film trilogy. It’s got that WETA Workshop feeling–and listen, I love that WETA Workshop feeling! But I want something different for my homebrew game. I want something that takes me back to my kid days, when Middle-Earth wasn’t so “fixed” in everybody’s minds (including my own). It’s hard to describe this “kid-version” of Middle-Earth, but it was somehow more fluid, more malleable. My imagined Middle-Earth was more of a hodge-podge, and as good as the Peter Jackson films are, and as beautiful as Alan Lee’s and Ted Nasmith’s illustrations are, they aren’t my head-version of Middle-Earth.

Anyway, despite my frustrations, I don’t want to abandon my attempts. I’m a bit stuck on the Hope/Despair mechanic and how it will work. I want it to be similar to the Luck mechanic in DCC, but I’ve been toying with using Pendragon’s personality traits mechanic, where Hope and Despair are two opposed scores that add up to 20. If Hope is 10, Despair is 10; if Hope is 13, Despair is 7; etc.

But then what happens if a player spends Hope? Hope goes down, Despair goes up. This might disincentivize players from using Hope (a la Luck), which is one of my favorite DCC mechanics.

No. The Despair score needs to be something else.

This is where I thought maybe Despair might replace the DCC mechanic of Disapproval. Players start with Disapproval of 1, and it goes up by one point each time a character…what? Fails a Hope check? Falls unconscious? Hmm.

That’s the sticking point. In normal DCC, Disapproval goes up if a Cleric fails a spell check. But in my Middle-Earth homebrew, I’m considering getting rid of spell checks and using a mana point system for magic instead. So when does Disapproval/Despair go up?

This has led me back to Pendragon’s personality traits. Perhaps I keep DCC’s Luck mechanic as-is. Players can spend Luck and it works the same as the rules as written in DCC.

But in addition to Luck, there’s now a Hope/Despair trait. Players start with a base of 12 for Hope and 8 for Despair. They can make a Hope check right from the get-go in character creation, and if they roll under 12, they can add +1 to their Hope score.

Mechanically, players can ask for a Hope check at any time to help them on their journey. Maybe they need something really good to happen that can’t be covered by any other rule or mechanic, like they are in a tricky spot against an overwhelming number of goblins. They can ask to make a Hope check, and if it succeeds, then something good does happen–maybe a tunnel gets spotted that allows the party to escape the goblins, or one of the goblins gets too cocky and accidentally trips himself and several of his comrades. Maybe everyone in the party gets +2 to armor class or something during the fight. The player making the Hope check can decide in conversation with the GM. Later, after the session, they make a Hope check again, and a success means Hope goes up by one point (and Despair down by one).

But if the Hope roll during the game fails, then the player must put a check mark next to Despair, and at the end of the session, they make a Despair check, and success makes Despair go up (and Hope go down).

When Despair is higher than Hope, the player falls under the Shadow… not sure how this will work yet. Maybe I make this more of a role-playing thing and less mechanical. As Despair increases, the player must play their character as falling further and further under the sway of the Shadow, and that means they become more Denethor-like, or even Saruman-like. At some point, the PC might even reach a Despair of 19 or 20, in which case they might cease to be playable because they are too under the sway of the Dark Lord.

There’s also a possibility that Hope can get a check even without a player asking for a Hope roll. Maybe the GM can award a check for the party’s success in a difficult situation, and everyone can get a chance to increase their Hope. Similarly, Despair can also get a check when, let’s say, one of the party dies or is seriously injured without healing at the end of the adventure. PCs will have to make a Despair roll at the end of the session to make sure they aren’t overcome by the bad situation.

Maybe this is too swingy or fiddly, but if I make rising Despair into something that is more about role-playing and less about a mechanical disadvantage, then that might give players freedom to ask for Hope rolls during the game to advantage themselves, knowing that if Despair goes up, it’s more about the storytelling than about making their character less effective mechanically.

I’m also curious to try the Nimble 2e (and Cairn/Into the Odd’s) mechanic of only rolling for damage. This would mean hit points need to be slightly higher at first level, and I’m not sure I would use Nimble’s exploding crits mechanic (but I would keep its normal crit rule, where rolling the highest number on the die equals a crit and you can roll again and add to the total). I would keep Nimble’s rule of missing on a roll of 1 too.

I would also use Nimble’s armor class rule, where the AC is lower (normal AC score minus 8), and that’s what gets absorbed on a hit (but only when using Defend as a reaction, see below). Everything hits, basically, except a roll of 1.

Similarly, I would also keep Nimble’s action economy. Every PC gets three actions per round, and those can be used outside their turn as Reactions too (help, interpose, defend, opportunity attack). A PC could potentially attack three times in one round, but the second and third attacks are rolled with increasing disadvantage. Monsters would not get three actions; they would most likely get two actions (move and something else). The more dangerous the monster, the more actions they would get (using DCC’s action dice rules).

I think warriors and dwarves at higher levels will get more actions or special actions to make their classes special.

I would also steal Nimble’s magic system, where PCs would spend mana to cast instead of rolling. I feel like magic in Tolkien’s Middle-Earth rarely “fails.” I’ll keep the DCC spells, though (with a few subtractions… the ones that don’t fit the flavor of Middle-Earth).

My next big step in all this is to make a character sheet, come up with a starting occupations table that’s more Middle-Earth-centric (no gongfarmers, lol), and create the patron tables for Elbereth, Aule, Manwe, and Sauron. Then I gotta cut down the magic spells lists, figure out how to modify the DCC Annual’s Canticles rules to fit with Middle-Earth sensibilities, and playtest with some of my new rules (the Nimble combat and magic stuff, and the Hope/Despair mechanics especially).

I’m still teetering on the edge of my own despair (pun intended) that this homebrewed system won’t work or be worth the effort, but my hope hasn’t faded entirely yet. I think once I put some of these ideas into playtest, see how it goes, then perhaps I’ll feel better.

One may ask: “What’s the point of all this labor?” And I’m not sure I have a good answer. All I know is that I want to try it. I have an idea of playing in Middle-Earth, and I want something that keeps me in an OSR-space while also being a bit more Middle-Earthy than normal OSR DnD. For now, I’m still obsessed with making this homebrew, and despite my struggles, I’m still having fun.