Retrospective: Bree and the Barrow-Downs

I started work on this week's Retrospective post under the misapprehension that I'd already written one, years ago, about Middle-earth Role Playing published by Iron Crown Enterprises. When I did a search of the archives, I discovered that the closest I'd ever come to doing so is this post on an advertisement for MERP and that must have been what I'd misremembered as a post about the game itself. Therefore, I briefly considered setting aside the work I'd done on this post and starting a new one on MERP, since I think it's a game well worth discussing here. In the end, though, I decided that, since I owned Bree and the Barrow-Downs before I owned Middle-earth Role Playing, it made more sense to talk about it first. I'll save MERP for next week's Retrospective. 

Published in 1984 and written by Heike Kubasch, this 32-page book describes Bree-land, a civilized area of central Eriador consisting of four settlements inhabited by both Men and Hobbits. Bree is, of course, the largest and most significant of these settlements and plays a role in The Fellowship of the Ring as the location of the The Prancing Pony inn, where Frodo and his companions first meet Aragorn. The book includes maps of Bree and the neighboring villages of Archet, Combe, and Staddle. The maps don't include a lot of detail but all four places are small and have relatively few buildings anyway. Still, I must confess I was disappointed, somehow thinking that Bree at least would receive more extensive detail. Indeed, I bought the book precisely because I was so interested in Bree after my reading of The Lord of the Rings.

This isn't to say there's no information on Bree and the surrounding villages. Rather, the information is mostly "high-level," which is to say, focusing on matters of history, agriculture, and economy, as well as the prominent people and families of the region rather than on each and every building in the town. It's an unusual approach, one I didn't expect at the time but that I've come to appreciate a little more in recent years. Having a good sense of the inhabitants of Bree, their relationships, and their place in the town is just as important to making good use of it as a detailed key. Still, it would have been nice if we got something more akin to The Village of Hommlet – at least that's what I wanted.

Much more interesting is the treatment of the Barrow-Downs, which is extensive. We get some history, in addition to an overview of their overall structure and the wights that inhabit some of them. Twenty-one of the barrows get not only individual descriptions but also maps, showing their layout for use in game. Their descriptions identify who is buried in the barrow and, where pertinent, who they were and their place in the history of Middle-earth. As a kid, I loved the Barrow-Downs section of The Lord of the Rings and so was glad to see the loving detail provided in this lengthy section of the book.

Bree and the Barrow-Downs is a strange product and clearly reflects the early days of Iron Crown's publication of Middle-earth materials, in that it seems to have been written with traditional RPG "adventuring" in mind. The amount of detail given to the Barrow-Downs when compared to Bree is, I think, evidence of this. The Barrows, after all, are full of monsters and buried treasure and are thus of more immediate interest to players used to dungeon delving and similar activities. Perhaps that's unfair but, having re-read the book for this post, I find that my youthful disappointment in this book remains. I had such high hopes for it and, when they were dashed, I became skeptical of the other books in the Middle-earth line of game products (though, as we shall see next week, I eventually overcame that skepticism).