I love Alt-History! Especially the fictional kind!
There was a game (LotR: Conquest) that allowed a rather grim Bad Ending if you followed the Evil Campaign. It's rather upsetting to watch, actually, if only because it doesn't make you feel good about being bad. I'd suggest either playing that, or watching the cutscenes.
Disclaimer: This next bit will sound mean. It isn't. I'm just explaining a few things I think you didn't catch with regards to the Tolkienverse as a whole. Skip past the "Train Metaphor" to where I'll offer more...constructive advice.Also I have never read the hobbit but I am going to assume they end up killing the dragon and the necromancer, in my world they do not.
You...haven't read the source material? Oooookay. Well. If the Quest of Erebor (The Hobbit + Necromancer business) ended in a TPK, then there isn't a Lord of the Rings. The Necromancer (read: The Dark Lord Sauron, The Abhorrent, Lord of Gifts and Lord of the Earth) has just killed Gandalf, Elrond, Galadriel. Literally the most powerful beings in the world. He has made an alliance with Smaug, the Last of the Dragons, a race of beings created by his own Dark Master Morgoth (AKA: THE DEVIL'S DEVIL!). And he's also killed Bilbo Baggins, Thorin Oakenshield and Company, possibly Legolas and his father King Thranduil, along with thousands of Elves and Men of Lake-town.
That means he has the One Ring. He is now a match for the Valar. He is now PUN-PUN. Everything in Middle Earth that has willpower or a soul is now his eternal mindslave. Everyone dies. Everyone everywhere forever. Bad Guys win. Rocks Fall. Everyone mindslaved.
Again, if the Hobbit ends differently, nothing here makes sense because Sauron won. Forever. Hell, there wouldn't be a Frodo to lose the Ring if the TPK occurred in the Hobbit.The Ents are defeated atInzenguardIsengard, and Helmsdeep is no more then a hole in the ground. Elves have all but left the lands, the few that had stayed are in hiding. Dwarves and hobbits (mix of gnomes and halflings alike) are the only real dominant races left. And humans have become completely whipped of the face of middle earth when Frodo lost to the will of the ring and instead of throwing it into the fires of Mt. Doom instead climbed the tower and presented the one ring to Sauron, thus granting him once more his full power.
Sauron is unstattable. He cannot be given stats because then the Players will think they can kill him. They can't. It isn't possible. Sauron is the Divine Rank 30+ GOD with a single thing holding him back from roflstomping an entire world where the highest level character was Gandalf, someone usually statted around Level 6-10 at BEST.My first question is How should I make Sauron? They describe him as an illusionist, shapechanger, and even The Necromancer from the Hobbit (Wiki does have useful stuff in it who would have guessed). I was thinking for race perhaps a demigod or maybe even a Doppleganger Paragon.
Imagine Sauron as a train and the players as small sheep (with a whooping cough and a case of leprosy) on the tracks. And the train is a Nuclear Missile someone lashed to the front of a bullet train someone else filled with napalm tanks and 1,000,000,000,000,000 copies of War and Peace someone filled with Explosive Runes.
And the train has no breaks.
You need 2 things, as I see it:
- Where is the moment of departure from the source material? This'll tell you what characters and events from the books still happened, and give you an idea about what most of the Main Characters will do if nothing gets directly in their way.
- What happened? What is the exact event that changed everything? Did Sauron get his Ring back when Frodo caved at the Crack of Doom? How? Did Gollum live beyond a certain point to do anything about that? Did Frodo and Sam try the Black Gate and got caught? Did Gollum win the Riddle Contest, keep his precious and doom Middle-Earth by proxy?
Answer those first, and I swear the pieces will fall into place.