I remember when I got Treasures of Middle-Earth for Christmas. I was deeply suspicious. The cover, though a solid Angus McBride affair depicting Celebrimbor forging a ring of power, struck me as more appropriate for romance novel than an RPG book. Beyond that, it is also a giant book of magic items for a game I never really ran for more than a session or two, and that seems boooooooring when it could be a book full of ring wraiths instead.

Young Stu, in this case, was totally wrong. Treasures of Middle-Earth is the best of the core MERP sourcebooks. The selection of magic items is creative and weird and varied – even if most of the stuff that is original to MERP doesn’t feel very Tolkieny at all. My favorite is Bat’s Hood, a hood made of bats with no eye holes that allows you to use sound to move about accurately in total darkness. Super weird. Kind of creepy. But I love it.

Aside of the Tolkien items, all this stuff is compiled from items detailed in MERP adventures. Which means all this stuff is easily ported over to other systems like D&D without too much trouble.