Towards a LotR campaign, part I

If you want to play a Middle-earth role-playing campaign set at the times of the Lord of the Rings, you'll be facing a simple dilemma: either you're a member of the fellowship of the ring, or you're out of the really relevant events.
From my point of view, the only solution is to really play the fellowship of the ring, but taking into account that not everything has to go just like in the book (otherwise, it's not a game). In particular, the composition of the fellowship might be significantly different still without breaking the overall Middle-earth flavour.
The main difficulties one would encounter in forming a fellowship of the ring are: the ringbearer, the hobbits in general, Gandalf, and Aragorn; all the other supporting characters are not that mandatory. We'll discuss them in order of increasing difficulty

Hobbits

Hobbits are great characters for the book, but not for the game. From my point of view, it is perfectly reasonable to just have a single hobbit in the party, the ringbearer.

Aragorn

The heir of Elendil, the future King of Men - not such an easy role.
Now, the consistency of the overall Middle-earth history requires that before the War of the Ring starts, the crown of Arnor is held by some sort of Aragorn, and Gondor is ruled by a steward.

If a character in the party wants to be heir of Elendil, he can very well play an Aragorn-like character, even if it will start at the same power level as the others (perhaps in this alternate timeline Aragorn is younger and didn't have time to grow as experienced as he's in the book); the precise details of the character don't have to match with the original one, even if flavour requires him to be somewhere around the fighter, ranger and warlord classes.

If nobody wants to be Aragorn, two options are left to the DM: either some Aragorn NPC exists, and move some of the events behind the scenes (e.g. brings an army in front of the Morannon to distract Sauron), or the two kingdoms of Arnor and Gondor will not be united at the end of the war - the Aragorn of this timeline will just play some minor role in the war, together with the rangers of the north, but won't gain the crown.

Gandalf

A real Gandalf PC is very hard to have, as he would be too powerful and too different from the other PCs; it might be ok only if the character is made just as powerful as the others - a difference from the book which still doesn't break the flavour too much.

Another option, probably easier, is just not to have Gandalf in the fellowship: perhaps he's still in the hands of Saruman, or was deeply wounded in the battle and can't take part to the quest; or perhaps he thinks his presence will be too hard to conceal, and would undermine the secrecy that is necessary for the fellowship to succeed.
In this case, Gandalf is likely to exist as an NPC and take care of some behind-the-scenes events, while the party if the PCs takes care of the Ring.
Having one spellcasting PC in the party is probably still useful (and perhaps even needed for the flavour), but he will be a less powerful one; in such an alternative timeline, the spellcaster might as well have been an apprentice of one of the Istari, or of Elrond.

The Ringbearer

The Ringbearer is of course necessary. And, unless you want to break the story quite a bit, it's very likely to be Frodo Baggins.
In order to make the game enjoyable for everyone, you have two options: Frodo as a PC, fighting in the front line just like in part of the book (e.g. at weathertop or in Balin's tomb), most likely rendered as a D&D rogue; a NPC Frodo that is handled collectively from the players, and mostly takes care of surviving.
The choice between the two is probably forced by whether you have a player that's willing to take a Hobbit character and the burden of Isildur's Bane, or not.

Concerning Hobbits

After having a second look at the Halfling race from PHB 1, we decided that it's not too suited for Hobbits: through the editions of D&D, Halflings have gone a long way to free themselves from their original Hobbit origin and be more in line with the D&D world, which would be a very good thing if we weren't discussing about using D&D for Middle-earth.

To be more in line with Tolkien's Hobbits, some changes are necessary: the ability score bonus should go to Wisdom instead of Charisma; the skill bonuses should be changed to include Stealth and possibly Insight instead of Thievery and Acrobatics; resistance to fear is also probably not too appropriate, so we tried to replace it with a bonus to attacks with thrown weapons (which is stronger, but won't break the game balance significantly)

So, here is the writeup of the Hobbit race

Hobbit

Ability scores: +2 Wisdom, +2 Dexterity
Size: Small
Speed: 6 squares.
Vision: Normal

Languages: Common (Westron); educated hobbits could also speak Quenya
Skill Bonuses: +2 Stealth, +2 Insight.
Hobbit's Aim: You gain a +1 to attack rolls with slings and light thrown weapons.
Nimble Reaction: You gain a +2 racial bonus to AC against opportunity attacks.
Second Chance: You can use second chance as an encounter power.

Magic classes, part I

Now that Player's Handbook 2 is out it's time to think further at the classes for Middle-earth.

Martial classes are of course all ok, providing that the power descriptions are made less flashy and that one stays to the heroic tier - or possibly the paragon one for Silmarillion-era campaigns - epic characters are just too powerful for Arda.

For what matters magic, one can try to subdivide Middle-earth magic into three areas: the magic of elves, but also of dwarves, that more or less comes through the teaching of the Valar; the magic of wizards like the Istari like Gandalf and Saruman, whose origin is not linked to the Valar in any way, and the foul sorcery of Morgoth and Sauron, which comes from the evil that Morgoth imbuebed in the earth and that outlives his defeat.

To render this in D&D terms, and disregarding sorcery which is not for the heroes, the plan is to have two spell-casting classes: magician and wizard.

The magician will be fitted in the rules as a divine leader (although we will borrow also from elsewhere in the choice of powers), and could be appropriate especially for Noldor elves.
The use of implements for spells in Middle-earth is not universal, but there are attested cases (the elven rings, the magical powers granted by the elessar); in game terms, it's probably fair to say that any sort of small magic item can function as implement for magician spells.
It won't wear the heavy armor of the D&D cleric, and it will probably have access to a different selection of weapons (light blades are definitely more plausible than maces and morningstars)

A wizard will instead be an arcane controller. Story-wise, it could have been a student of Saruman or Gandalf, or have learned some arcane arts from ancient books from Numenor in Gondor libraries; even if no such character appears in Tolkien's works, it's not that unplausible.
Secondary roles could be either striker or leader, depends what will be the final power list.
Of course it will use a staff as implement, and will probably have access to most of the wizard's cantrip effects.

A very pleasant surprise from PH 2 is that the Bard class could work reasonably fine for some characters that want to thread the paths of Finrod Felagund or Luthien (at least in the heoric tier). Some changes are of course necessary: the implement should be changed from wand to something less visible (I'd say either an amulet or a musical instrument), powers that teleport creatures should make them shift or slide instead, and some powers might be unappropriate (e..g the "Misdirected Mark" at-will power), but many others are plausible enough at least in the Silmarillion times.

Very few devoted spellcasting characters are expected to be around in Middle-earth, but multiclass feats could be used to provide some magical powers to e.g. an elven warlord or ranger.

The next posts on this issue will hopefully contain the power lists for the magician and the wizard, and the Sindarin race (which won't be very far from the standard elf anyway), so that everything is ready for the campaign to begin.

Dunadan

The Dunedain in our rule set are not a race; they're humans, who use their bonus feat to select Dunadan Blood at first level.

Dunadan Blood [Feat, Human]

Benefit: You gain a +2 bonus to your Charisma score, and can use power of the dunadan as a daily power
Special: This feat can be taken only at first level (using the bonus feat slot for humans).

Power of the Dunadan

Daily
Immediate interrupt – Personal
Effect: You can add your Charisma bonus to an attack roll, skill check, ability check or saving throw. You can choose to use this power after the roll is made, but before the result is announced.

The Noldo

The Noldor (singular Noldo), are the most powerful elves that can still be found in Middle-earth. They are strong-willed and smart, but often less wise than their cousins.

Ability Scores: +2 Intelligence, +4 Charisma
Size: Medium
Speed: 6 squares
Vision: Low-light

Languages: Common, Quenya (High Elvish)
Skill Bonuses: +2 Perception, +2 Craft.
Noldo Weapon Proficiency: You gain proficiency with longsword and shortsword.
Might of the Firstborn: you can use might of the firstborn as an encounter power.

Might of the Firstborn [Noldo racial power]

Encounter
Immediate interrupt – Personal
Effect: You can add your Charisma bonus to an attack roll, skill check, ability check or saving throw. You can choose to use this power after the roll is made, but before the result is announced.

Light of the Blessed Realm [Noldo racial feat]

For those who have dwelt in the Blessed Realm live at once in both worlds, and against both the Seen and the Unseen they have great power [LotR I, "Many Meetings"]
You can use might of the firstborn one additional time per encounter.
In addition, you deal full damage to insubstantial monsters instead of half damage.

Pride of the Noldo [Noldo racial feat]

You gain a +5 bonus to your Will defense against fear effects, and a +2 bonus to Intimidate checks; in turn, you suffer a −2 penalty to Diplomacy checks to influence characters of level greater than yours.

Design notes: this race might be a bit unbalanced, but Noldor were clearly more powerful than the Elves, especially the silvan ones. This greater power should be mitigated by a story factor: the Noldor are a waning race, they have no future in Middle-earth.

Middle-earth with 4th edition D&D

There have been many role-playing games set in the fantasy world by J.R.R. Tolkien, both official and fan created, and many attempts to play D&D in Middle-earth.
Nevertheless, here we are proposing a new one, based on the new edition of Dungeons and Dragons. Contrary to most other works, we aim to make things as simple as possible, keeping to the original D&D rules as much as possible: we don't aim to make "the best Middle-earth RPG ever", but just to provide something easy to learn, that works smoothly and is fun to play.
D&D, being the most popular fantasy RPG, provides a very solid base for the game: character creation, skills, combat, monsters and powers are well designed and playtested. The 4th edition has also many changes that suit well the setting: cleric-less healing, minions, and a more reasonable magic system are the important ones, but overall many features of the races and classes make them better. D&D feels a bit too "flashy", but much of this flashiness only comes from names and descriptions; most of the actions that characters can do are ok for Middle-earth provided the players describe them more in Tolkien's flavour.
But now it's time to close this introduction and go to the real game.

What to keep, what to add

While all the material will be released in many separate articles, I think it's useful to have an overview of what we will keep from original D&D and what we will add. This will also allow people to start playing even before all material has been written. We'll also concentrate at first only to the heroic tier (levels 1-10), leaving the others for the future.
Races: of all the D&D races, there are some which can be used as-is: humans and dwarves are already ok, the halfling can work as hobbits (but the DM should remember that adventuring hobbits are very rare), and the D&D elf can be used for sylvan elves; the Noldor and Sindar elves will have their own race, soon to be written, and the Dunedain will be rendered with a racial feat for humans (Dunadan Blood). Half-elves are very exceptional characters in Tolkien's world, so we'll just ignore them and leave to the DM the problem of people wanting to play Earendil or Elrond.
Classes: fighter, rogue, ranger and warlord are ok; even if the description of their powers is sometimes too flashy, they serve our purpose fine. There will be one additional class, the Magician, which will provide the spells and supernatural powers needed; multiclassing will allow to build characters which are not "full time wizards", a rare role in Tolkien's world; to provide a quick starting point, a first version of the magician will be written just by selecting a suitable set of existing powers from the other classes, and only later we'll try to write brand new powers. The same procedure will be followed also for the rituals.
Skills: the D&D skills are fine, but a few skills will have to be added, Perform and Craft, which are not directly useful in combat but play an important role in Middle-earth.
Feats: the racial feats will need some work, but most likely all the rest is ok as it is.
Items: non-magical items appropriate to the setting will be usable without changes, but some more thinking will be needed for the magical ones. I think it's pretty reasonable to assume that many exceptional quality items can be rendered in D&D terms as magic items, as magic in Middle-earth is less explicit that in D&D; this also makes things easier, as plusses from magic items are needed to keep the game balanced without altering the other rules. In particular, many magical weapons, armour, cloaks, amulets and rings can work fine, provided they don't glow of green light all the time and don't allow the character to fly or do other embarrassing and unnatural things.
Monsters: there are many D&D monsters that can work perfectly in Middle-earth, at least if they're coloured in less eye-catching dyes, and sometimes renamed. Both goblinoids and orcs, and possibly even kobolds, can be used to represent the large variety of Tolkien's orcs and uruks; wolves, worgs, spiders, ogres, some giants and incorporeal undeads will work almost out of the box, and together with evil humans this will already provide a good amount of enemies for low level characters.

Beyond the rules

In addition to providing the rules, we'd like also to provide campaign ideas, short adventure hooks, and playtest records to show rules working.
We'll also encourage any feedback from readers, and if any of you is interested in contributing to the project – either on the rules side or on the adventure one – you're welcome.