Middle-Earth: Too easy or too hard?

[machfront]

Unfortunately, not really.
I've made the barest bones of notes and listed all the spells from Fifth Ed. so that I have it right at my fingertips to go through them and delete, rearrange, rename, etc.

I've got a couple more Middle-Earth books on their way to me. Mayhap they'll help me/inspire me a bit.

I'm always doin' a hundred things at once when it comes to anything rpg related, and as you know my head somehow will work it's way right up my...well...you know.
That, and I'm wondering if Hack-n-Slash may be a better fit. We'll see.

[quoghmyre]

I also have that fine book and map from ICE. It inspired me to add many new things to my world. But I lost my way for a while and added rules and charts and all manner of useless facts that detracted from the fun of fantasy role-playing.

I'm so lucky, I not only live in New Zealand but on the West Coast of our Southern Island. Walking out my back door and into the forests that surround us, is like stepping into Middle Earth. So both Peter Jackson's vision and my The Southern Most Realm share the same inspiration.

gallery.me.com/ilikecomputing#100111&view=grid&bgcolor=black&sel=1

And I think that's the important point, use these sources as inspiration, rather than becoming slave to crunchies.

[Aramis of Erak]

Middle Earth seems utterly lacking in priests, so it really does fit beautifully with T&T.

The old ICE stuff is excellent; a fan site (with the tacit benefit of being actively ignored by ICE and the Tolkein Estate) has made scanned PDFs of much of MERP.

[quoghmyre]

Got a link there???

[Aramis of Erak]

Jul 30, 2009 21:30:53 GMT -5 quoghmyre said:

Got a link there???

www.merp.com

[machfront]

Unfortunately the files at merp.com have been down for an age.
Well, unless they're back up. They weren't when I checked yet again a couple of months back.

[Aramis of Erak]

Were you logged in? You can't see them if not logged in.

Some are broken (like 2E Rulebook)
Some are not (1E Rulebook)

[machfront]

Yep, I was logged in. In fact, the first time I went there a coupla years ago, I actually signed up there for the very purpose of grabbin' some of that stuff. Couldn't get them then, either.

I'll try again. We'll see what happens. I take it you've looked recently and seen that the files themselves are downloadable instead of being dead links? 'Cause I've seen the links. It's just that attempting to download them was a no-go since the files weren't present.

[Aramis of Erak]

just before I posted

[machfront]

Nope.
Every single thing I clicked on I get a "Not Found".
The only thing still up out of the scores of things I clicked on was the rulebook itself.


That's ok though. They're pretty much all on Scribd.

[hrrrothgarrr]

If you can find it Gary Gygax had an interesting article on "Tolkien in D&D" reprinted in Best of Dragon vol1.

He claimed Tolkien made for lousy RPGing. I disagree. The Hobbit especially is great stuff. Real faery tale adventure. Even LotR can pull out a lot of hints and setting.

The lat lamententably unfinished Decipher LotR RPG had some good ideas, although they never released the Return of the King sourcebook and the system had some serious flaws. The message boards for that game had much discussion of magic users in Middle Earth etc from an RPG perspective.

Men, Elves and Dwarves all seem to have started out much more powerful and then declined. So Men need not be a washout if you don't want them to.

I think the best thing to do for a ME campaign is not to tell the players that it's Middle Earth. Let them figure that out as they go along. Tends to solve mad dashes after Rings of Power and such...

[machfront]

I've read the article and I agree with you. It can be done. It all depends on the assumptions the group wishes to make, since so much of Middle-Earth is up for debate (magic, especially) and also how willing the group is to make concessions for the sake of gameplay.

Still, I hold that one need not worry about mad dashes for The Ring if one plays in the time-span set for the MERP materials (hundreds of years before the War of the Ring, if I recall correctly), and though the One Ring is present, if any characters wish to get involved with what would be a piece of the Trilogy's eventual timeline or an alternate timeline concerning the Ring, then there's been either a breakdown in communication within the group or someone's not mature enough to play in a Middle-Earth game, or indeed any game if they're going to use player knowledge as character knowledge.

Playing in the Second Age would work well, too and there's just as much open space to play in that isn't guided by the hand of canon, just as the Third Age timespan in the MERP materials are.

[Hogscape]

Off topic, kindof, but I'm reminded of a D&D (3.0?) game that a friend of mine ran using maps from the Iron Crown Middle Earth range and some of the MERP modules. It was kind of a mish-mash of Middle Earth and the default D&D world, the D&D gods and races were there and the GM did not worry about canon - it was good.

[machfront]

I've read lots and lots of threads on many forums about gaming in Middle-Earth in the months since I started this thread.
While there are those folks who seem to think it's impossible, most believe it is, and not difficult to boot.

In fact, interestingly enough, if there was one consensus, it was this:
As long as the group is all on the same page, it works out quite well.

That can be an assumption that magic is "low" or that it is excessive and mighty or the same, but hidden for fear of attention from the Dark Powers.
It could be that the group looks at the tale of the heroes from LotR as exceptions. It can be looked at by the group that it's simply one tale of many.
Some groups take the alternate timeline approach and/or playing out some "what ifs" to the max.
Some play it quite straight with whatever system they please despite the fact others think said system is "too cinematic" or "too magic heavy" and so on, with the thoughts that much that is put out in the source material is either behind the scenes, basically with the view that: "just because this-and-that wasn't 'on show' in the books, doesn't mean it absolute wasn't there/couldn't be (such as typical D&D monsters and such, perhaps).

There's actually enough materials and enough ambiguity built in and enough ground and time to cover that as long as the group agrees more or less what Middle-Earth (or at least gaming in such) is and agrees on the feel and tone of what will be played...it works a charm for a whole lot of gamers.

[ydars]

I haven't used T&T to run something in Middle-Earth but one thing I did do once worked enormously well.

It says in Lord of the Rings (at least it hints) that other parties were sent out from Rivendell after the Ring arrived, both to check the safe ways out of Imladris and also to throw off pursuit. Indeed Elrond's own son's: Elladan and Elrohir travelled to Rivendell over the pass of Caradhras and found it safe.

So I ran a campaign, using the Palladium rules, where the PCs carried an object that drew evil to it. Their destination was to go North towards the Withered Heath, to draw off all those "eyes of Sauron" that might be watching for the Ring-bearer and his party.

We had a blast: I had the PCs find one of the fabled Lost Blue Wizards and they also met some of the Dragons of Old.

I remember that one thing I did to make the power levels of all races equal was to only allow players to play Dunedain and not normal men: that way the equal power of the races did not grate since my human PCs could be 80-90 years old (like Aragorn was at the time of the War of the Ring)