Quote from: One Horse Town;813598Ooh, which ones?

Thieves of Tharbad, Lost Realm of Cardolan, and the Arnor books.  Basically, there were three of us (myself, Rich Meyer and Walter Hunt, who went on to be a noted military SF author) who were the remaining writing core of the old Gamelords, and ICE wanted our spin on things, particularly on Tharbad, which they envisioned was a den of thieves if anywhere in Eriador was.

Quote from: Ravenswing;813846Thieves of Tharbad, Lost Realm of Cardolan, and the Arnor books.  Basically, there were three of us (myself, Rich Meyer and Walter Hunt, who went on to be a noted military SF author) who were the remaining writing core of the old Gamelords, and ICE wanted our spin on things, particularly on Tharbad, which they envisioned was a den of thieves if anywhere in Eriador was.

Well, good to have you here, be welcome, and Thank You!

Thieves' Guild was one of my absolutely favorite set of supplements from the early D&D days.

Quote from: artikid;813765Played MERP for a while, not really my cup of tea but a solid game with tons of support.
I think it does tolkien-like fantasy better than it does Tolkien.
Fooling around with RM's Spell law you could actually have it mimic Tolkien quite decently.
The second revised edition (the one with the weathertop scene by McBride) added a few interesting appendixes with additional rules for Beorning shapechangers, corruption, and the fact that magic attracts Sauron and his minions.

I GMed Decipher's game for a grand total of five or six sessions: my take is that it is a horribly broken system that tried to imitate d20. On top of it it does not simulate Tolkien very well IMHO.

Haven't played The One Ring, however I know the author. It is ironic someone mentioned Pendragon as it is one of Francesco Nepitello's favorite games.

I just read the Decipher game and I think it does the best job (compared to MERP) with Tolkien. At least with Magic.

The Decipher game (have rulebook to sell or trade!) died on the vine before we ever got it to play. The mess that was character creation completely took the wind out of our sails and so we never actually got around to playing.

I've not played ToR yet, but having read the material for it, it just oozes with Tolkien, especially the fairy story style of The Hobbit moreso than the epic mythological feel of The Lord of the Rings.

I remember MERP from High School gaming group, and we had one friend who loved the game and always wanted to play it and no one else ever did. I don't recall the details, but I remember being non-plussed with it as a Tolkien Fan.

Quote from: GameDaddy;813856Well, good to have you here, be welcome, and Thank You!

Thieves' Guild was one of my absolutely favorite set of supplements from the early D&D days.

Thank you kindly!

And they were mine, too; let's just say I went all fanboyish when Rich invited me to join the Gamelords' stable.  And it's why when people ask me how best to become a RPG writer, I respond "Make friends and have connections."  Rich had just relocated to the Boston area, and stumbled into the APBA dice baseball league at the gaming club that Walter Hunt ran, whose wife was a friend of my first wife's college roommate.  From such tenuous chains of introduction, things happen.

Quote from: Ravenswing;813846Thieves of Tharbad, Lost Realm of Cardolan, and the Arnor books.  Basically, there were three of us (myself, Rich Meyer and Walter Hunt, who went on to be a noted military SF author) who were the remaining writing core of the old Gamelords, and ICE wanted our spin on things, particularly on Tharbad, which they envisioned was a den of thieves if anywhere in Eriador was.

Thieves of Tharbad is the only one i have of those.

I occasionally look to improve my MERP collection and then see the prices they go for.

Quote from: Ravenswing;813846Thieves of Tharbad, Lost Realm of Cardolan, and the Arnor books.  Basically, there were three of us (myself, Rich Meyer and Walter Hunt, who went on to be a noted military SF author) who were the remaining writing core of the old Gamelords, and ICE wanted our spin on things, particularly on Tharbad, which they envisioned was a den of thieves if anywhere in Eriador was.

That's cool, I have Thieves of Tharbad and the first big black Arnor book as well as a bunch of the other older books in that area. All good stuff. I ran a few sessions of MERP/RM using Dark Mage of Rhudaur recently and will hopefully come back to it soon.

I only ran a fairly short MERP campaign, years and years ago.  I quickly figured out that Middle-earth was really not my kind of setting for playing in.

One might argue that the true tone for playing in Middle Earth is sitting around sighing about past glories and the failings of Men while eating English cuisine, taking hot baths and making up poetry.

Quote from: David Johansen;814621One might argue that the true tone for playing in Middle Earth is sitting around sighing about past glories and the failings of Men while eating English cuisine, taking hot baths and making up poetry.

And drinking beer.

Quote from: David Johansen;814621One might argue that the true tone for playing in Middle Earth is sitting around sighing about past glories and the failings of Men while eating English cuisine, taking hot baths and making up poetry.

U R doing it wrong!

I have trouble understanding how people can't wrap their head around role-playing in Middle Earth. As usual, with the right GM, it's a phenomenally good campaign setting for some truly epic swords and sorcery roleplay.

The trick is, is you have to stay away from the canon, and place your game in a part of the world lacking the certainty of Tolkiens' prose. In the third age, everyone knows what is going to happen, and I mean everyone at your gaming table. Just about every fantasy fan I know of has read The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. Peter Jackson made a series of movies that reached so far into the popular culture that it is one of the top 20 movie franchises of all time.

Most of my third age games are set on the Southern Coast of Gondor, in Harad, in Mirkwood, The Misty Mountains, or somewhere close to the Iron Hills. My earlier games are usually set around Gondolin, right around the time it was attacked by many Dragons and a horde of Balrogs.

If anyone remembers the old Iron Crown Enterprises Middle Earth map, they would know that the known lands covered in the book only cover about 1/4th of Middle Earth and that there are wild lands with forests that are larger than the entire epic journey that Sam and Frodo took to reach Mount Doom to the South and East of Mordor.

https://edocs.uis.edu/hadleyiv/www/images/Middle_Earth_Iron_Crown.jpg

Quote from: GameDaddy;814648The trick is, is you have to stay away from the canon, and place your game in a part of the world lacking the certainty of Tolkiens' prose.

Then why bother setting it in Middle Earth? You've put the familiar and much of the interesting off screen and out of scope which in essence turns it into just one more Tolkienesque fantasy world. And those are already a dime a dozen.

I actually think the ideal way to game in Middle Earth is to insert yourself into the canon. This is the approach of The One Ring, and, whatever you make of the system rules, I haven't heard anything but wild-eyed, foam-flecked praise about the resulting adventures and setting books. The supposed problem with this approach is that you all know the hero of the story (Gollum) will destroy the ring. So what? You also know the earth will be swallowed by the sun some day but that doesn't stop you from living your life. I've run tons of middle earth campaigns with a half dozen different systems, and I've never had a problem at the table. This is a theory-craft issue, not a gaming issue.

I never did get to run the game where Sauron made dozens of decoy rings when he returned to power, just to screw with his foes.

Also, I forgot the canonical dancing down forest paths singing nonsense.

But I find that players want to meet the characters from any media source.  The want to bed Legolas or pants Aragorn or take a walk through the Shire with Bilbo.  They feel cheated when they don't get to do those things.  Licenced games are largely about tourism and the players tend to get mad when you stray from cannon.

Quote from: David Johansen;814621One might argue that the true tone for playing in Middle Earth is sitting around sighing about past glories and the failings of Men while eating English cuisine, taking hot baths and making up poetry.

You forgot puffing on a pipe.