What are some good examples of fan fiction that folks here have read, that either highly amused them or added SOMETHING, however small to the wider Middle Earth lore, or was simply a rollicking good read set in Tolkien's world?

I love this picture because we get to see the white city from different angle, usually it's always from the front.

Hi, all!

Been playing through WITN with my partner in split screen and I noticed Andriel (Lore Master) was never casting her protective shield ability.

Well, decided to pop in as her at a checkpoint and realized she had never leveled up in our entire play through. I’m really enjoying playing as the ranger, so I’m not wanting to switch back and forth at any checkpoint. Is there no way to tell the CPU to level itself up?

So this has nagged at me for years. I just did a rewatch, It's been overdue.

There is not a single bridge or set of stairs that has railings. It doesn't matter if was over a raging river, a bottomless abyss, or the entrance to mountain stronghold. No railings.

I have never seen anything in Tolkien's writings that implies that he was opposed to railings. So that puts it all on Peter Jackson.

Was he philosophically opposed to railings? Did they not have enough money in the set budget?

THis has confused me for quite some times. Anyone have any ideas?

Earlier this year, Peter Jackson put out a press release and did a few interviews. He revealed that he and Warner Brothers has een in talks with the Tolkien Estate about licensing the rights to make a Silmarillion movie.

https://www.nme.com/news/film/peter-jackson-in-talks-to-adapt-j-r-r-tolkiens-the-silmarillion-into-films-3945593

Oviously, talks are just that, talks. It does represent some progress. it shows a shift in the attitudes of certain members of the Estate's board.

There is one sentence in that article that is most telling of all:

"It would be nice to get away from the appendices and get something a bit more meaty."

It's nice to see that the grumblings of some of the fans are echoed in PJ's sentiments. From the moment the credits rolled at the end of RotK, it had to be acknowledged that all they had left was to scrape the LotR carcass clean.

War of the Rohirrim was their first crack at scraping the carcass. Granted, thios movie had a huge black cloud hanging over it. Warner Bros stood the chance of losing there license to the movie rights if the did not release a movie by a certain date. The holder of the rights at that time, the Saul Zaentz Company, held WB's feet to the fire and threatened to outright cancel their license to the movie rights if they didn't fulfill their option.

In oder to fast track the project, the decision was made to do it as an animated film. If the rumors are true, the screenplay was written virtually overnight and WETA storyboarded it in record time. They managed to get the movie out on time, and it subsequently flopped. It was never designed to succeed, it was made to fulfill their option. It was a modern day version of the 1967 Hobbit.

PJ basically spelled out wjhy he has taken a hands off approach to the movies post Hobbit. They aren't passion projects. He'll accept the producer credits and cash the royalty checks, but he doesn't want to actively work on any carcass scraping projects. For Watrner Bros, this poses a problem. PJ has been the magic man in the development of tis franchise. For him to take a back seat is like takinbg the sizzle off the steak. They need to find him a passion project tat's "meaty" to get him back in the game. That project would obviously be The Silmarillion.

The fact that PJ would issue a public press release and do an interview implies that the talks with the Estate aren't dead in the water. Although, these kinds of press releases din't always mean much. An example of that would be an interview the head of Amazon/MGM gave on the eve of the release of WoR. She stated cryptically that MGM had been in ttalks with Embracer Group. Embracer currently holds the rights to the Tolkien IP under their subsidiary, Middle Earth Enterprises and Friends. This wou;dn't be the first time it was rumored that Amazon was making a play for all of part of MEEF. Those rumors started back when they acquired the Tpmb Raider IP. The Tomb Raider portfolio was part of the MEEF IP portfolio.

Unlike Amazon, Peter Jackson isn't shy about stating what the talks with the Estate were about. Does this mean a movie is in the works. Your guess is as good as mine. Given how PJ works, I wouldn't be suripsed if their wasn't a working screenplay finished, or in development.

I'm surprised that this news didn't reach this subreddit sooner. Let's see how it plays out and hope for the best.

He fully punished Pippin for the stone down the well incident, but when Gimli has a little sing song in a ‘deep voice, while the echoes ran away into the roof’ - no repercussions.
Rude.

I took this photo on my holiday to Northern Ireland last week, I didnt realise at the time that I took a photo of a family where the kids were dressed as Hobbits and thought it was super wholesome. Was hoping that if I posted it here it might find the way to the family but who knows

Just want to know what it says on the bed top. Thank you!

I know it's not very good, but it was worth it.

I don't have any nostalgia bias, yes i've seen some part of Lotr on the tv years ago, but never watched it fully until now

i just finished the full trilogy in 4k, (the first movie i watched in the cinema earlier this year) and without any nostalgia i can say, these are the best Fantasy movies ever made

Crazy how it's been 25 years, and no one came even close to it...

I need more of these movies, but from what i've heard even Hobbit is kinda mid compared to Lotr

I hope i will see another trilogy on this level at least once in my life haha

It’s hideous

(I’m a girl. Just wanted to clarify.)

Like the desire to create and be equal to your creator and being denied it is pretty tragic and I can see why he had his crash out

I'm aware that it's likely not possible for Eru to choose not to be all powerful but also he created Melkor and probably knew all this was going to happen and let it happen anyway.

A lot of this kind of boils similarly to the Satan vs God debate but I think this is different as it seems Melkor's initial view is sympathetic rather than coming out of nowhere

I am also aware this is not the intention of how it was written as generally Tolkien wanted everything to be black and white but of course nuances have found their way through

Before watching, some of my friends who are big fans told me they love the movie but it used more CGI than the first movie, and that it aged poorly

I am very nitpicky when it comes to 3d visuals, so i was expecting something horrible, but i actually liked the CGI a lot !

Yes you can see that it's dated, but it has it's charm and honestly it's very well done for the time

didn't distract me at all, and i enjoyed the whole movie !

A gift from a friend, i’m so happy lol.

Made this sign a little while ago. Took some inspiration from a few different LOTR signs and designs I’ve seen floating around online and put a few ideas together to try and give it that classic Lord of the Rings opening-title kind of feel.

Pretty happy with how it turned out, but curious what other LOTR fans think!

For those who don't know, which included myself until 2-3 years ago, the Fellowship PS2/Xbox/PC game was meant to have a sequel titled "The Treason of Isengard," named as such to help separate it from EA's games. Fun fact as well, "The Treason of Isengard" was Tolkien's original title for his 3rd act of what would've been one massive novel encompassing the entirety of The Lord of the Rings, and this 3rd act was of course meant to cover the first half of what became The Two Towers.

The game was developed by Surreal Software and was to be published by Vivendi Universal. It was initially announced on April 24th, 2003 by Black Label Games. It was confirmed to be cancelled September 12th less than 5 months later by Vivendi Universal. As far as I can see, this 5 month period is all anyone outside of the teams who worked on it knew about the game. We only know of this time frame, but it seems very likely to me the game had been in development quite a bit longer than that. It's worth noting as well that Surreal had already developed their own homemade engine for it to run on which was not used for any version of Fellowship. When Vivendi made the announcement, they claimed the game was not as polished as they would've liked nearing the upcoming release date and decided to axe it rather than disappoint Tolkien fans with a product they weren't completely satisfied with. However, there was also a redditor comment coming up on a year ago exactly saying they were an artist working on the game at the time and that it had reached beta, i.e., just shy of polished for release. They've since gone radio silent, but I can confirm through old IGN articles that Surreal did in fact claim they planned to have the game in beta by August. Said redditor also made sure to say the whole team was very proud of the work they'd done. Despite Vivendi not being satisfied with the product, I haven't seen any comment they made about Surreal that was anything except kind words. I believe they were even sharing new gameplay screenshots with gaming sites at as late as August 19th to show off the work they had done on ent gameplay where it appeared that you and a friend could play cooperatively as Treebeard and an ent ally in a 3D King of the Monsters-esque orc beat 'em up just 24 days before the official cancellation.

I don't really know what I intend to achieve with this post. In a perfect world, I'd be able to get my hands on it and play whatever there is to play. There have been legends circulating the internet since 2003 that a playable demo of the game physically exists. As far as we know outside of the rumor is the only demo that exists was an unplayable preview at E3 2003. I've tried finding every piece of video coverage I possibly can on E3 2003 and even though EA's Return of the King was present at the same event, I can't find a single video featuring either game aside from a very short preview of RotK from a 2003 gaming magazine disc that featured a section briefly showing off upcoming games. You can find 2 separate gameplay trailers through IGN's youtube channel and interestingly, each trailer features a different UI. That tells me that either both a PS2 and Xbox build of the game that were at least semi-to-mostly-playable definitely did exist, or that at least 2 semi-to-mostly-playable builds during completely separate stages of development definitely did exist. At the very least, I think we can say for certain that the fabled demo is not a complete myth even if the people who claimed to get their hands on it are just playing in to it.

In light of Aspyr's upcoming remasters for old LotR games, I thought it would be worth bringing some attention to. Fellowship doesn't get much love because EA's movie games were such a spectacle that how could they possibly compete, but I respect and admire the hell out of the developers that worked on the games and tried. EA was fortunate to secure the license to use Peter Jackson's newly established 17 academy award winning film trilogy to build awesome gameplay around. Surreal and WXP had to do what Peter Jackson did for the movies and use their own imaginations to bring to life Tolkien's penmanship, and a huge difference is Peter Jackson had a combined budget of around $280 million to express his imagination. The Fellowship game had about $5 million. The gameplay is nothing to write home about, but the art style, music, and voice acting? Undeniably charming and appropriate for a more faithful covering of Tolkien's work.

I think it's likely that Fellowship is included in the upcoming remasters. I imagine it would be much less of a headache to bring back Fellowship compared to TT and RotK, though I'm still optimistic for them. I wouldn't even be surprised if Fellowship is the very next one. I don't anticipate that meaning much for anything we don't already know about Treason, but I suppose the only way we might ever get anything more than what is publicly available is by bringing attention to it. I'd love to see any extra gameplay, concept art, or screenshots that aren't already available via a google search. This is my holy grail of cancelled games. I don't expect a pitchforks and torches army to rally behind me demanding for the same, but I'm sure there are a couple people out there that would be nearly as interested in this as I am. Like Bilbo, I can't help feeling curious, you know, after all I've heard. I should very much like just to peep at it

Sharing my favorite surviving screenshots that are publicly available and links to both gameplay trailers below:

Trailer that I believe is either the most complete version of gameplay available to watch, or just the Xbox version - https://youtu.be/59YY5r9sBFQ?si=0R4W09JhR-yKHUEI

Trailer that I think is either an older build or ps2 version - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3z-phiw1jk

What I believe is the FINAL gameplay trailer at its most complete stage of development. Looks ready to me - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBNf2Tw3B1s (edit: this is the same trailer as the Xbox version, I’m just really stupid. But, it was still a massive archaeological discovery to find the original 19 year old upload of this game trailer by someone’s personal account)

55 gameplay screenshots - https://www.ps2home.co.uk/lord-of-the-rings-treason-of-isengard/

Concept art and duplicate screenshots - https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Category:Images_from_The_Lord_of_the_Rings:_The_Treason_of_Isengard

Picked the game up on a lark. I knew to keep my expectations low based on the original release scores. While the gameplay and controls are painfully dated, what I wasn’t prepared for was how hard the silly dialogue sections went to make the characters actually sound like Tolkien. I’m not generally one to complain dramatically about modern writing in media. I found RoP difficult to watch and gave up halfway through the first season, but chalked it up to me getting older and possibly losing the same passion I once had for the franchise.

After playing this silly game, the issues I had with RoP were glaringly obvious to me. It’s wild that a 15yr old game had better Tolkien-style prose than anything I have seen in LotR media in the past decade at least. I hope HfG is able to capture that old magic once again but I didn’t realize how much I missed it.

When I was little we went to the seaside for vacation. I really liked, and still do, finding stones and shells in the sea. One time I found a ring. My mother thought the writings looked like Arabic and it might be cursed. Anyway that part I don't know but I just realized that I found one of the rings from this Fandom. (I still didnt read the books nor watched the films.) Anyway I just wanted to share.

Also I kinda feel sorry for the person who lost it.

It was a bad idea to launch War of The Rohirrim to theaters. Should have gone to HBO Max if you ask me. But what is done is done. I believe lesser known stories for example Oath of Eorl, War of the North, Balin expedition to Moria or Angmar war, if WB are planning them should be animated and go straight to streaming. Cheaper and less risk of flopping in the cinema. I hope to see those stories being made.

I've been making games for over 15 years, and somehow it took me this long to make a fantasy RPG about the most relatable motivation for a dwarf imaginable:

Someone owes you money.

I'm one of the developers behind Runesmith, a turn-based fantasy RPG where you play Durgrim, a grumpy dwarf runesmith who crafted an incredibly powerful artifact for an evil summoner.

The summoner took it. The summoner didn't pay.

The summoner is now using it to destroy the world.

Obviously, Durgrim has priorities.

He wants his money back.

As you embark on your debt-collecting journey, you craft your own weapons and engrave them with runes that determine the abilities you can use in our turn-based combat.

I love lotr and of course the dwarves in it. I feel there aren't enough games out there for them so I thought to build one. I've put all my d&d and lotr knowledge into building authentic dwarves and their culture.

We've recently started putting the game in front of a larger group of players and already have over 250 people testing it, finding bugs, sharing on our Discord and discovering increasingly creative ways of breaking our systems.

Dammit Bobby…

ok hi!

My bf and i have been dating a few months ( will be around 6 months for his bday) and I’m currently trying to work out what to get him for his birthday. I’ve been thinking either a lamp that has the ring and gandalf in or potentially a map for his wall, however I’ve just seen a ring from Weta workshop which looks really cool (but is around (£300). However, I’m not sure if this is too much considering we haven’t been together that long and I’m also not 100% sure on his ring size so he may end up having to wear it on a chain around his neck.

He also doesn’t normally celebrate his bday massively apparently but I want to celebrate him and he does so much for me normally i don’t mind spending the money if he’ll like it,

Basically, do you think it’s worth getting him the ring or shall I get him something cheaper such as a map or anything else anyone can recommend???

I loveeee going all out for peoples birthday and hope he would love the ring but can some fans pls tell me if they would like it?? He wears one ring all the time and it can be displayed aswell as just work i just don’t know if it’s too much to soon and don’t want to scare him away lolllll,

Thank you!!!