That pretty much says it. I was watching the Two Towers and they mention the Duna-whatevers, and i was like, "That would be cool to play in SR, some human who's like 87yrs old (or more like 49 if you're playing SR3) but is a Duna-whatever"

Dúnedain.

Yes, I used Tolkien's world as a backdrop for the history of my SR games for a while. I dug it a lot, but I really didn't get as far into it as I wanted to. Ended up moving away from my gaming group.

If you're interested in doing the same, the Encyclopedia of Arda a pretty indispensable tool.

The problem is it is so well known that you are pretty much asking for trouble from gamers.

Assuming the folks you play with are hardcore into the LotR

Like so hardcore they would have an hour long debate on the proper pronunciation of some obscure dwarven word for fart. Then, yeah, you'll have problems...

Personally I've have only read the first book and seen the movies. (I don't know if that lowers my nerd cred at all) But i am aware of some of the background based soley on the first book, like the dunedain.