How about a sci-fi Gothic?

I suspect it also has something to do with Lord of the Rings..

Which brings up quite a question: Why is there not a single good SP RPG set in Middle Earth? Lots of untapped potential there - 3000 years of good history in a very interesting setting between Isildur and Aragorn.

I suppose the owners of LotR do not want new stories to be written, unlike George Lucas/Star Wars.

Originally Posted by Maylander
I suspect it also has something to do with Lord of the Rings..

That's surely one of the reasons. Another is our folklore, our legends. Maybe it's more easy to most of us to be seen as a warrior fighting with swords than being Captain James T. Kirk with a phaser gun.

Even the stories from the first age and the elder days are epic on a grand scale. And no one has tried to adapt them for games or film, that I am aware of. The tale of Turin, wow, how heroic and sad at the same time. Beats the pants off anything in the War of the Ring, imho.

10 years ago I would have loved to see an epic RPG in a Tolkien setting. Unfortunately, we've been so saturated with LotR stuff since the Peter Jackson movies that the thought is just kind of "meh" to me now.

I still have Battle for Middle Earth sitting unplayed on my shelf, so I know what you mean, sort of, after all it is an RTS.

Well, that's the thing. Anything related to the Ring, Aragorn, Gandalf or Frodo has been used and abused so many times by now it has become somewhat boring. That's why I want something new/fresh, but in the same setting - the setting really is exceptional, I feel Tolkien put a lot more effort into the setting as a whole than the story about the Ring.