The Lord of the Rings Mod

The Lord of the Rings Mod is a huge expansion for Minecraft that aims to add the world of Middle-earth into the game.
This will include content from J. R. R. Tolkien’s most famous work, The Lord of the Rings, and from other related tales such as The Hobbit and The Silmarillion.
The mod has been in development since December 2012, and most recently began a porting process to the latest Minecraft update.

I joined the development team late 2015 as an advisor and tester.
I also produced YouTube videos for the fanbase to inform them of new Updates and the most important additions and changes we made.

In the summer of 2018 I took up the role as writer for the Mod, focusing on Speechbanks (Barks for NPCs) and Quests for each update.
Since then, I have written +35.000 words for several factions in the mod, and produced over 40 videos for the community.

Harad Speechbanks (Update 34)

The Harad Update was the first update where I solely wrote all the speechbanks.

Each NPC comes with a “Friendly” and “Hostile” condition. Traders and Captains having a “Neutral” condition based on the Player’s alignment before their interactions are available.

Harad already existed as a single faction in the mod, but with this update we expanded them into 5 sub-factions. This was a region Tolkien didn’t have extensive notes on. So we had to carefully research and add to what was already written.

For each sub-faction we decided to add certain characteristics, giving them each a unique element. I took those elements alongside their surroundings to highlight any further external effects and how they would respond in their speechbanks.

The video on the right shows the process I went through in an unscripted format at the time. I did this to provide the community some insight into how I approached writing the speechbanks.

In the end, 26.5k words were written for the NPCs. Including the Harnedhrim, Coastlings, Umbar, Gulfings, Nomads, and the Morwaith Mercenaries (a faction from further south) and Corsairs.

The document was 83 pages long in the end, so for future updates I decided to rely more on Excel.

The last faction we added before beginning our port to the new version of Minecraft was the long anticipated Men of Bree.

Using the index in The Lord of the Rings and every other book that mentions Bree, I collected all the notes and lore available of Bree, and compiled that list of information to write speechbanks with.

I also wrote the Quest templates for Bree, which vary in details when the Player interacts with Bree-folk. For example, different kinds of food can be asked for, or slaying a different number of enemies from a particular faction. All these alterations have to fit within a specific template without the formatting falling out of place.

In the end, this update had 8 different NPCs with Friendly, Hostile and Neutral categories, as well as 14 unique Quest templates.

Lore Videos

As mentioned in the Harad section, Tolkien never got around to finishing every single detail of his universe. This meant that with limited information, and a couple of loose references, the mod team added some content with personal liberty and intepretations. Of course, for them to have a space in the world, we also had to write out some history and lore on their role in the world.

I worked together with a team of researchers and writers from the community and the mod team to create consistent and plausible stories for a few of these factions. Namely; The Half-Trolls of Pertorogwaith, the Morwaith, and the Taurethrim.

These videos are meant to give an idea of who these people were and what happened to them while history was focussed on Middle-earth. In essence, they are an honest attempt at adding to the canon information we had available.

Future Plans

In process of porting to the newer Minecraft Version in The Lord of the Rings Mod: Renewed, we have also decided to rework the dialogue system. Our aim is to allow for more detailed/specific barks, instead of a generic line to be printed each time you talk to an NPC. Using extra conditions or prerequisites, this should improve the immersion for the Player.

We are still figuring out the details of this new system, but in the meantime have already done research into an obscure faction from the Appendix of the Lord of the Rings; The Lossoth. Snowmen of Forodwaith.