[growamitt]

Epic, yes. I hope. I've been playing D&D off and on (mostly off) for a long time (I'll be 50 my next b-day), so I'm a late bloomer as a DM. I love a good story and I've been a Tolkien fan forever. There's a lot there to pull from for a good campaign. I also have a lot of ideas drawn from fantasy and science fiction novels - C. J. Cherryh, Frank Herbert, and Roger Zelazny, etc. I have a copy of Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials, which is like a biology book of possible life forms from other planets. A little imagination gives them the stuff needed to make great D&D monsters. I need those sources as most of the people I play with have all the Monster Manuals and Fiend Folios pretty much memorized.
For this campaign, I made a 'big story'. The Valar no longer interfere directly in the world. However, evil is again tipping the scales in its favour. The One has decided that the world may need to be destroyed. He will give it time to sort itself out, but only so much time. The Valar don't want it destroyed, and so they're trying (quietly) to gather up a band of heroes to go about destroying evil and so restore the balance in the world.
Because of the vast history of the area, there are all kinds of places and things one can drop in there, beyond what is 'recorded' in the Silmarillion. Mind you, what's there is vast enough.
Next-size smaller stories - the PCs are characters that will, over time, discover their 'true' heritage/nature/raison d'etre. The players are discovering it just before the PCs do, as I don't want to alter their characters - just give puzzles to solve that intrigue the players. Everything I do involving a character's history is done with their agreement. For example, one PC is a rogue who used to be a bouncer in a bar. His only memory of his childhood is being in a hot place watching his family being slaughtered. For my purposes, he is discovering the he is the sole surviving heir in a long line of kings of men who, for 800 years, have dispersed and scattered. Clues are left all over the place. (Sounds like an Aragorn copy, except that this character doesn't know what he is when the game starts.)
The player is still working his character in the stories, doing the usual things (they roll their own dice), but he's aware that there's more going on than just a dungeon crawl or bringing law to a border town. The modules are adapted with names and bits of information that blend them in with the 'big story'. It's a really open-ended thing.
Who knows? Maybe I'll write a book when it's all over. Sorry I wrote another long one. I'm working on that. If anyone sees an idea they like, go for it.

[Raven Bloodmoon]

Don't worry about the long posts. They will shrink naturally as you get more lazy about typing. At least that is what happened to me.