This week, I’ve got MERP books that are unified by the fact that Angus McBride did the covers, which is as good a criteria as any. I feel like it’s been a while. Let’s start off with Rivendell: The House of Elrond (1987). As ever, McBride delivers a classic cover painting here. The Black Riders careening through the landscape, unopposed yet cautious, is one of the things I find appealing about The Fellowship of the Ring, and McBride captures their dark allure here. I think he manages this, in part, by presenting Elrond’s house as being particularly cozy-seeming.
This carries through in the interior of the book. Despite the cover claiming this is an adventure module, it is really a regional splatbook, detailing Rivendell, its inhabitants and the resident flora and fauna. There is a very detailed plan of the…for lack of a better description…the estate and its immediate grounds. It all feels very lived in and homey.
I have to say, this is an accomplishment that I don’t think Tolkien achieved. I never really understood why Bilbo was so keen to retire to Rivendell. Elrond, in just about all his incarnations, seems like an utter drag to be around, and that extends to his housemates, with the possible exception of Glorfindel. Here they seem to be quietly fun. Well, not Elrond, but everyone else seems chill and into music and food. It seems like good company, and I like a house with lots of fireplaces.
Denis Loubet is the primary artist. There are some Liz Danforth illustrations as well, but my suspicion is that they were first published elsewhere. There is a portrait of Bilbo that doesn’t seem to be by either of them, where he looks like a very specific sort of non-verbal English drunkard and I find it amusing and jarring in equal measure.
“Very specific sort of non-verbal English drunkard” – I’m going to have to use this as an insulting descriptor at some point.
Please do!
OMG YOU’RE DOING MERP!!!!! My fondest TTRPG history desires have been fulfilled. We played so much MERP back in the day (I think I may also have a complete, or near complete set of products; I think some are hard to find these days).
Thank you for this!!
You’re very welcome! Some of them are rare and pricey (especially, weirdly, the later stuff, a lot of which was pulped when they lost the license). I’ve got lots of MERP posts previous to this week, too!
I think that Bilbo looks like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Borgnine
HA!
The Hobbit’s glimpse into Rivendell was influential on me in inverse proportion to its length. The Elves in the trees jeering the Dwarves as they crossed a bridge painted a fun and somewhat dreamy picture of the place. These and the Mirkwood Elves were the “fun” Elves that Tolkien didn’t spend much time on after The Hobbit, the ones getting drunk and having midnight parties in the woods. I wish Tolkien had devoted a few more paragraphs to those guys. Anyway, it was enough to give me a mental picture of a lot of fun, rowdy Moriquendi Elves, unburdened by millennia of strife, kept in line by the older, wiser, maybe even PTSD-suffering Sindar, Noldor, and Elrond. Gandalf’s admonishment of those cajoling Elves was akin to a teacher trying to bring teenagers into a semblance of civility, I pictured Elrond’s house as the center of a twenty-four hour party, with the hillbilly relatives getting high and dumb out in the yard, while grandpa and the older relations sat on the porch and talked about the old days and who all was dead and when.
I love this idea A LOT. When I read The Hobbit to the kid, I am going to try very hard to have this idea overwrite my previous impressions.