Greater Harad (1990) features one of Angus McBride’s oddest covers for MERP. It doesn’t feel at all like Middle-earth, though that doesn’t mean it isn’t awesome. The buildings in the background, in their sunset pastels, are absolutely gorgeous. And, I mean, come one, black-clad assassin with a cobra cowl riding a war camel with red eyes? The Art of Angus McBride book claims that guy is just some cultist, but my head canon is that it’s Akhorahil, the fifth Nazgul, and that’s just what Black Riders ride down south.
This is one of MERP’s big setting books. There are some adventure ideas in the back, but for the most part this is gazetteer of important people, places and things in the gigantic region south of Mordor. It forms the backbone of half the MERP product line, which developed the region for play as a way to avoid the preconceived notions that accompanied games set in the same region as the books. As such, this amounts to a cornerstone for a sizable “expanded universe” or an elaborate fanfic, depending on your predisposition.
I used to really dislike the Harad material. It was too big, it doesn’t feel like Middle-earth to me at all and lacks the plausibility that makes Star Wars EU stuff generally work. I’m a little more positive on it now, though. It’s so preposterous that I find it hard to dislike, and I think a lot of the design work winds up informing Shadow World in interesting ways. I also think it is a massive improvement over Tolkien’s depiction of the Haradrim. While he doesn’t position them as inherently evil (a common and understandable mistake) he does have them firmly and totally under the heel of Sauron’s boot. Here, though, there are plenty of Free People struggling against the Dark Lord, and many do so effectively. And while the Harad material often strays into tedious fantasy analogs of real world cultures, it is also kind of nice to have the kind of cultural diversity that’s on display here, which is unusual in RPGs. Like, all of them except maybe Talislanta and RuneQuest.
Interior art is by Ellisa Martin, who I am unfamiliar with. It’s fine, but she doesn’t reimagine cultural garb in a way that is anywhere near as interesting as McBride’s paintings.
“It’s so preposterous that I find it hard to dislike” also pretty much sums up my feelings about the other classic “expanded universe” MERP setting, The Court or Ardor, with it’s weird tarot card thing and completely un-Middle-Earth like content.
Ardor is coming up later in the year! Love that bootleg Amber RPG!
Could you elaborate on how this influenced Shadow World?
I’m too far out from the last point I read any Shadow World books, so I can’t be super specific, but when I read the earlier LoreMaster books, I was struck by how MERP-y they felt, in that they were obviously Tolkien-influenced but warped by Terry Amthor’s genre splicing and general weirdness, which is even more pronounced when LoreMaster becomes Shadow World proper. Since then, I’ve viewed most of the MERP world building in non-Tolkien lands to be a kind of half-step or dry-run for Shadow World material. Maybe most clearly in Court of Ardor. Its a vibes thing, mostly.