That said, it's a blast if you want to develop detailed plots & characters full of life.

We always tried to keep things as close as possible, & I continue to do so as a DM today. Accurate games probably mean eliminating some D&D staples, & some gamers may not feel comfortable with that. It all depends on how close you want to keep things to the books. That's where you run into problems, IE: if your players love the rules verbatim & enjoy power-gaming, metagaming, et al, whichever terms apply, they may not enjoy the restrictions if you try to keep things canon & reduce the magic to a more Tolkien like feel. We tweeked D&D & it seemed to work just fine, IF you modify the magic & such accordingly. MERP is a great system if you like that type of minutia in your battles, however, for all of their beautiful modules & maps, they never quite captured the 'feel' of Middle-earth, IMHO.

The other posts are right on concerning the latter. as each incarnation of the game evolved, as well as a little bit of MERP. Hands down, one of the richest & most rewarding fantasy settings. Yes, we played in Middle-earth for years & loved it.

Magic lantern canon sl1 2016