Servants of the Secret Fire

Servants of the Secret Fire is currently in rough-draft state.  I am hoping to have a playtest document ready by October 2010 for Con on the Cob.  SotSF is a game rooted in Middle-Earth and the epic stories of J.R.R. Tolkien.

(Update: Ed Greenwood published yet another D&D ripoff fantasy hearbreaker, named The Secret Fire. It has nothing to do with any actual mechanic, and is just AD&D with the serial numbers filed off, but there you have it. For now, Servants of the Secret fire is on hiatus, just shy of an alpha playtest document, but I may pick it up again in time.)

I am a huge fan of Tokien, and have since I read excerpts of The Hobbit in my 6th grade English textbook (which also introduced me to A Wizard of Earthsea).  I've read The Silmarillion and the Trilogy much more than once; I've read and re-read Tolkien's less-known stories like Farmer Giles of Ham and Leaf by Niggle and even The Adventures of Tom Bombadil and The Lays of Beleriand.  I've read Mythopoeia and his essays On Fairy Stories and Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.  I've read his letters and written a graduate final paper on his particular version of virtue ethics.  I've listened to lectures by Tolkien scholars and have read their books.  I've stopped short of actually learning his invented languages, but that is primarily because of laziness on my part rather than lack of interest.

I love Tolkien, and I've found in my gaming career that games that claim to be 'Tolkienian' fail.  They do not come anywhere near to living up to the richness and depth of Middle-Earth - the vast majority are Dungeons & Dragons with the serial numbers filed off.  Others, like Burning Wheel, are excellent derivatives

Servants of the Secret Fire is my answer to this.

The base setting for the game is in the midst of a Second Darkness.  Sauron won, and altered the course of Middle-Earth's history.  As hope fades away, heroes must emerge to resist the final victory of the Shadow, calling upon the Secret Fire to light up the darkness.

Servants of the Secret Fire can also be used to play games set in the First, Second or Third Ages of Middle Earth according to the 'canon' histories without any trouble at all, but I wanted something that I'd only seen before in a diluted form in the Midnight setting, which takes some of it's cues from Middle-Earth but is not Tolkienian in style.  I also didn't necessarily want a game that was only aimed at re-hashing Tolkien's original stories.  The point of his creation, I think he would tell you, is to inhabit Middle-Earth and make it your own.  Add your own stories to the Tree of Tales growing there.

Those are my goals for the game.