The Lord of the Rings film trilogy with live music

This was one of the most enjoyable experiences I’ve had in recent years: watching Peter Jackson’s film trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, accompanied with live music -- in the case of The Return of the King, the FILMharmonique Orchestra, along with the Amadeus Choir, the Bach Children’s Chorus, and soloist Kaitlyn Lusk -- at Meridian Hall in Toronto. One film was shown each January over the past two years (The Fellowship of the King in 2023, The Two Towers in 2024, and most recently The Return of the King in 2025).  

Although I have my criticisms of specific aspects of the films (the portrayal of Denethor especially rankles), overall, they do a great job of capturing the look and feel of Middle-earth, and the spirit of the novels. Visually and musically, they are amazing -- the Howard Shore score is singular. It’s hard to describe just how much live music added to the experience.

Some people were dressed up as characters from the films. A few people complimented me on my "I survived Helm's Deep" hoodie.

My Life in Roleplaying Games: 2024 and 2025

As we head into 2025, here are some brief reflections on my role-playing activities in the recent past and near future.

I've been really enjoying running two Against the Darkmaster (VsD) campaigns, one in Middle-earth (“Against the Witch-King”), and one in my homebrew "Ukrasia" setting (“Against the Court of Urdor”). Both will continue into 2025, although I expect that the Middle-earth one will wrap up sometime this summer (but perhaps not, as these things are difficult to predict, at least for me).

Many of my fondest gaming memories are of the Middle-earth Roleplaying (MERP) and (to a lesser extent) Rolemaster adventures that I ran back in the day. These were mainly in high-school during the mid-late 1980s, but with sporadic sessions later, eventually petering out completely around 2000 (after a brief campaign that was aborted due to a problematic player). In recent decades, my collection largely sat on my shelves or in storage, although I would regularly flip through the books to mine for ideas or simply for the sake of nostalgia.

As I’ve explained before here, Against the Darkmaster plays a lot like a modified and updated MERP, especially with its vivid critical hits and its complex but immersive combat system. VsD streamlines some of MERP’s clunkier mechanics (especially regarding skills, combat, and experience) and introduces “drive points,” all changes I that like and hence my use of it instead of MERP. Nonetheless, the two systems are close enough that it’s easy to use MERP material for VsD. 

This experience made me realize that I was foolish to have ever shelved the original game simply because it was out-of-print. (That’s not to say that there aren’t new games that I like a lot and want to try out – but obviously that doesn't preclude cherishing and playing the older games as well.) My recent experience with VsD reminds me of how I felt almost two decades ago, when the “Old School Renaissance” (OSR) was really getting going, and I realized that it was perfectly fine to prefer “Gygaxian” Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (and “Basic/Expert” D&D) over the then-in-print 3rd edition, despite the widely touted “improvements” of the more recent version. After running two 3e campaigns and finding them to be slogs, especially once the player characters reached fifth level or so, this realization was liberating and exciting. (My recent experience running a 5th edition campaign made me decide never to do so again. If I run “D&D” in the future, I’ll likely just employ a tweaked version of good old Swords & Wizardry. Wanting to share my house rules for S&W is what inspired me to start this blog in the first place, almost fourteen years ago.)

So Against the Darkmaster has made me happy to be a Game Master again. I'm enjoying it enormously and look forward to seeing how things unfold this year!

Outside of my role as GM, I'm always excited to play Mythras, and look forward to (probably) doing more of that later this year. (Last summer I played in Mythic Greece and Lyonesse “one shot” sessions and had a blast. And last year one of my groups wrapped up a long-running Mythras adaptation of the Beyond the Mountains of Madness campaign.)

More generally, beyond the particular games I’m playing at the moment, I very much appreciate the two gaming groups I’m in and am grateful to have the friends who participate in them. I also delight in the ways that players’ decisions can make the role-playing games go off in entirely unanticipated, novel directions – that’s not something you can find in any other hobby of which I'm aware, and it can be magical!

Happy 2025 and some pictures from Scotland

Happy 2025! I hope you all have a year filled with thrilling adventures. 

As I mentioned last September (in my post on the Kirkyard of St. Cuthbert), I spent a few weeks in Scotland last August. Here are a few more pictures from that trip to begin the new year. I think that some of them could be used as visual aids in a fantasy role-playing campaign.

[Eilean Donan]

[Battle of Culloden monument]

[Some ruins of Urquhart Castle overlooking Loch Ness]

[A wall of Urquhart Castle overlooking Loch Ness]

[A hill on the Isle of Skye]

[Mealt falls on the Isle of Skye]

[Some Skye locals]

[A rare picture of the Akratic Wizard (in Plockton)]