Gates of Mordor (1987) is an adventure module for MERP. It doesn’t seem to set a time frame, but I think it is ostensibly set before the fall of Minas Ithil, which makes sense, since the opening action involves the wineries in fertile lands extremely close to Mordor. Normal people wouldn’t live there after the ring wraith’s transformed Minas Ithil into Minas Morgul, but I can see foolish ones doing so while the city was still in possession of Gondor.

The module boils down to orc problems. They massacre a winery and some other sites and the players are meant to wipe them out. There are some complications and such, but that’s the basics. The orcs linger at the winery searching for hidden treasure, which is interesting (they know it is hidden in water, but there are a lot of local water features). The second scenario involves killing orcs holed up in an abandoned tower, which is pretty to the point, though made more interesting due to the involvement of some NPCs. The final scenario…is also pretty by the numbers: finish off the orcs and their leader. The leader is cool, the werewolf sorcerer Gaurhir.

Jason Waltrip did the interiors, some of which are quite nice, others don’t do much for me. Nice Angus McBride cover. That orc is effed. And then that dude is probably effed. That’s a lot of orcs!