Southern Mirkwood: Haunt of the Necromancer (1983) actually predates MERP by about a year. This, and a handful of other books, were built using ICE’s Rolemaster system, of which MERP is a modified derivative. You can kind of tell that, on some level, they were making these for D&D players to buy and adapt for their homebrew campaigns.

As a setting book, a lot of space is given over to flora and fauna and history, all of it interesting to varying degrees (that is to say, some very, some not at all). The vast majority of the book, though, and the real draw, is the massive, painstakingly detailed exploration of Dol Guldur, stronghold of the Necromancer, Sauron’s guise at the time of The Hobbit.

Dol Guldur is bonkers. A fortress of evil through and through. Players would be insane to venture there and their visit would be very, very short if they did. The place is a massive, elaborate seven level complex, full of traps, orcs, trolls, ringwraiths and worse. In case that wasn’t enough, this book also contains the stats for Sauron himself (first time in print anywhere, I think). It is kind of amazing that they designed it at all, knowing no one would ever go there. But it makes for a fun read and definitely gave me insights for some of my more…malicious dungeon designs for my homebrew game.