Greetings from the blackest reaches of Ungoliant’s foetid etherwebs, it is I, Eugene Pendergrass, here again with a Middle-earth-sized missive aimed directly at you Matt Leacock who, frankly, should have known better. As everyone knows, my standards for ludographic adaptations of The Good Professor’s work are as lofty as an eagles’ eyrie atop Thangorodrim itself. Whether it is the [implied] Moria-Fangorn hyperloop in The Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation, or the shoehorning in of D&D’s The Underdark™ to the Middle-earth CCG, my grievances on past Lord of the Rings games are as many and as varied as there are ways to simply walk into Mordor (which, contrary to popular opinion, one can quite easily do on the eastern frontier). But what you have done with the map on Fate of the Fellowship is a full on cartographic 9-11 that has completely ruined what could have been yet another passable tabletop romp through lands from long ago.
First off, I understand that spaces on the board are offset from actual map locations. I was there in the begin-times for Pandemic’s inland-Beijing-gate. And while you have neglected to include reference lines on this map I will give leeway to problems like what would otherwise be a ludicrous location for The Carrock. I can also let go errors of omission like the occlusion of the southern Nargil Pass in the Mountains of Shadow–I understand even a game designer like you can not possess the depth of knowledge necessary to include such deep lore in your populist board game. I can even forgive the sheer idiocy that suggests travelling to the dark tower of Lugbúrz is somehow the least watched path in Mordor as we all know the dark lord’s attention was affixed elsewhere.
What I can NOT forgive is your choice to use a Gall-Peters projection for this map. Yes, I too have long said the lands or Harad, Rhun, and Oronto (The Dark Land of the Sun™) have been woefully undercut in both size and importance when compared to the richer northern lands of Arnor on traditional projections of Middle-earth. And, while I would never want to racially disadvantage the black skinned folk of Harad with their “red tongues and white eyes” via map projection, that is not my chief concern here. Obviously a Dymaxion projection with the triangles arranged according the migratory routes of the elves would be ideal, but, as is my wont, let’s focus on what you did wrong, and not how it should have been done correctly.
Due to the massive distortion of the lower latitudes, with Tissot’s most extreme indicatrices of deformation being centered on Mordor itself, the horrific implications for this projection go beyond racial and cultural misrepresentation, and into the the much more problematic realm of narrative distortion. One look at this map and the countless hours and pages of the Fellowship walking through various woodlands, thickets, forests, wealds, and copseses of treeses of Eriador are reduced to a quick Sunday stroll when compared to the gargantuan wasteland that confronts them at Mordor. Not only that, due to Mordor’s ACTUAL present day location of Turkey, you didn’t even distort your latitudes correctly!
So what now? I’m afraid it is too late for a Total Recall of all copies until this can be updated, rather, like a floater in Farmer Maggot’s tub, it’s all of our problem now. My solution is threefold:
- A full apology for egregious map projection based narrative insensitivity.
- A full expansion of overlays, correcting the worst of the distortions, specifically in the narratively pivotal Old Forest section.
- A sworn statement to never again use a cylindrical equal area projection on any future board game maps of Middle-earth.
If this is not immediately addressed, I am afraid my only recourse will be to sell my original copy of Pandemic at a reprehensible markup on eBay as a punitive measure. The ball (rendered flat through, at the VERY LEAST, a proper equirectangular projection) is, as they say, in your [High] Court [at the citadel of Gondor].
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