Anyone ever run a long campaign in Middle-earth? My group really wants to run a campaign there. When I was in high school we played MERP a whole lot but I was never a big fan of how MERP handled the world. I loved the product but when it comes to simulating the feel of Middl-earth I found it wanting.
Has anybody played the Decipher system or the One Right RPG system? From reading online it seems that the One Ring RPG is very abstract when it comes to simulating the world of Middle-earth.
The Decipher system I ignored when it was released because I thought it was based on the movie.
Well, if you think about it, there are tons of source material out there. You can readily adapt things to your favorite system.
The Decipher system was pretty similar to d20 but with 2d6. It had issues in the core that were fixed in later books. I don't remember much more about it.
No experience with The One Ring.
ICE's Lord of the Rings Adventure Game should have been the ultimate lite Middle Earth game sadly they made some bad presentation choices that made it seem too childish. Solid rules though.
Look, I have never played "The One Ring. However, just making a character online with friend, felt like it was a Middle Earth thing.
I've owned MERP (and played it), I've played Decipher's game (and concur with Dan Davenport's old review of it as it was my elf in the example!)
Yet neither of them made me feel like I was truly making someone that fit, pretty much only Middle Earth.
Now it is a little off center from hard core traditional from what I've seen, but I think Middle Earth needs something with a few, I guess, soft elements that flow like a dream.
That's my feeling so far on "The One Ring"
Really, I wonder if something more directly medieval would work. Prince Valiant or a modified Pendragon, for instance.
Considering how easily Gimli and Legolas mow down orcs, I'd have to think something heroic would be best.
Pendragon (or for that matter, BRP games) tend to be somewhat deadly.
That was actually my problem with MERP. Every time we'd try to play, we'd all die in the first few fights thanks to the Rolemaster style combat system.
Eventually we just used D&D with some tweaks, dropping clerics in favor of the "healer" class from one of the old Dragons (#3, now that I look)
We did it for a one-shot campaign using BX D&D. Dropped clerics and magic users and worked out a cleric version of the elf. Thus magic was very limited indeed.
Monsters were down to orcs, goblins, worgs, ogres, and spiders. Virtually no magic or magic items.
It played well enough really. Though I only got in on two sessions due to conflicting schedules.
MERP: I think that even the simplified rolemaster rules are way too tables-heavy ( at least for my taste) and found the system to play quite slow, especially on higher levels. The implementation of the setting isn't that bad, with the exception of magic. It is not a horrible game, but neither is it a great one. It also works much, much better if you don't allow any spellcasters as characters and just use magic as a deus ex machina NPC power.
Decipher's Lord of the Rings RPG looks horrible. Pretty much all the artwork consists of stills from the Lord of the Rings movies, and that doesn't work nearly as well when the pictures are moving and so on. So the book is also quite ugly. The system is also a bit incomplete - the original production plan considered several "important" splats which were eventually written but never published, mostly because one of Decipher's staff stole so large amounts of money from the company that they could no longer afford its licenses. The system has some few minor problems and quirks as well, but for the most part, it works okay. From the three officially licensed Middle Earth RPGs, it is probably the best, but it has these problems. Unlike the other two, the system isn't unsalvageable, however: If you are willing to review and edit the rules here and there, you'll get a pretty good game. Without this additional effort, I found it a bit clumsy at times. There is a decent collection of house rules here (https://sites.google.com/site/ambarquenta/home/the-offical-games/rpgs).
The One Ring has great artwork. That is also the best thing about the books. It is also a horribly frustrating game, which shows that it could have been good or worthwhile but it almost never actually gets there (there is a new, revised edition. Perhaps it has changed everything that is wrong with that system, but I highly doubt that). Basically, it is a great example of how deceiving artwork and production values can be, because content-wise, the system is pretty bad.
The One Ring works great as a sourcebook for a Middle Earth RPG (similar to Trail of Cthulhu for actual Call of Cthulhu games) but as a standalone game, it isn't worth it: The rules are horribly organized, gimmicky for the sake of introducing unique, gimmicky rules, needlessly complicated in some areas and overtly abstract in others (there is no balance between these two, so instead of a game of medium complexity, you get one that is both too abstract and too complicated for the respective audiences at the same time). The enforced balancing between the various free people of middle earth ruins the implementation of the background as much, if not more, than the unfitting magic system of MERP. Apparently, only lazy, slightly depressive and not particularly bright elves ever become adventurers. But even this balancing (as dogmatic and destructive as it generally is) has been implemented horribly: the game has aspects (specialties) that you can ever only choose during character creation. So, what are you going to choose: Swimming, Healing arts or smoking pipeweed? (and yes, you cannot learn how to really smoke later on).
There are also dozens or so homebrew rules for Middle Earth; I think there is a more than decent one for Runequest/BRP, which is the one I would suggest to play. From the official ones, the Decipher game is probably the best, but requires a few adjustments. MERP works, but not necessarily very well. The One Ring looks pretty and as far as I can tell, includes decent adventures and so on, but the actual game system is mostly disappointing.
I ran a MERP / Rolemaster campaign in which Thorin hedged his bets and hired PCs to take down Smaug for their weight in gold. The campaign lasted about two years, playing every other week or so.
I handed out copies of the weapon tables to players, and each player was responsible for handling info about the weapons in their stack. It worked pretty well, even though the group ranged from 8-12 players. Everyone was familiar with the rules and that helped a lot.
The One Ring contains a dogs breakfast of sub-systems but deserves better than the mini review above. Some things about it are exceptional. Actually, most of it. The setting books and adventures are very good. It is the only official middle earth game that really strives to immerse players in the world of the novels. The character archetypes are quite good. The rules for travel, 'down time' between adventures, and the struggle between Hope and Shadow are very good. The treatment of magical powers and objects is very setting appropriate. The only problem is that you have, like, 50,000 different little sub-systems each with its own variables and related but not quite unified mechanics. It is the sort of game you would write if you were a huge fan of Burning Wheel but didn't want to use the extended metaphor of the wheel.
The One Ring is a system that requires a lot of investment, but it looks to me like the payoff is worth it. Everyone I know who has played it raves about it.
That's probably the best concise take on the thing. If you really want to roleplay in a satisfying version of middle earth, and you don't want to create the material from scratch, you should just suck it up and learn to play TOR. It would probably take 2-3 sessions for a brand new group to really get the hang of it.
As far as MERP goes, I wrote for MERP; four of the books have my name on them.
That being said, ICE didn't do a good job on the line. The typefont on their books is microscopic, and there's a Monty Haul dungeoneering approach that for too many of their products have scanty information on personalities and places, and exhaustive information on every room in ruins and castles, loaded down with traps, and stuffed to the windowsills with magical items. Beyond that -- and this is admittedly the doing of the Tolkien estate, which is inexplicably bitchy about licensed writers creating details -- most of the adventures and settings are set many centuries before the events of LotR, because the estate didn't want us mucking around with that time period. A lot of the feedback I've had over the years was that this turned off many folks who were wishful of questing in the time of the War of the Ring, and for whom ICE provided almost no source material.
Quote from: Ravenswing;813569As far as MERP goes, I wrote for MERP; four of the books have my name on them.
Ooh, which ones?
I love MERP. Then again i love Rolemaster, so the two go hand in hand, even if i can admit that MERP has very little Middle Earth flavour to it.
Quote from: Ulairi;813337When I was in high school we played MERP a whole lot but I was never a big fan of how MERP handled the world. I loved the product but when it comes to simulating the feel of Middl-earth I found it wanting.
Quote from: Silverlion;813411Look, I have never played "The One Ring. However, just making a character online with friend, felt like it was a Middle Earth thing.
Quote from: One Horse Town;813598I love MERP. Then again i love Rolemaster, so the two go hand in hand, even if i can admit that MERP has very little Middle Earth flavour to it.
What is this flavor that's so unique to Middle Earth that everyone is after?
Is it that the world seems full of magic but the core characters themselves are not overtly magical (except for a few powerful movers and shakers)?
What magic there is often seems very subtle and not something that would be well served by game rules.
Is it the atmosphere of being a small part of a greater epic? Big powers and ancient history.
Is it the inner struggles of the various characters to rise above their petty greed and fear and be capable of great, historic deeds?
I think if I were to play it I'd prefer smaller stories that let me explore the setting vs. EPIC tales that involved vast powers and big important NPCs.
It also seems like everyone should be willing to sing...
The One Ring is an excellent RPG for Middle Earth RPGing IME. A few people have taken issue with it, such as diehard MERP fans, but on the whole it is very highly regarded. It also plays better than it reads.
Quote from: One Horse Town;813598Ooh, which ones?
I love MERP. Then again i love Rolemaster, so the two go hand in hand, even if i can admit that MERP has very little Middle Earth flavour to it.
Thieves of Tharbad 1985
Arnor: The Realm (2nd ed.) 1994
Arnor: The People (2nd ed.) 1996
Arnor: The Land (2nd ed.) 1997
I work with
David Woolpy. Didn't know he did
Dul Guldur until I was looking up Roberts' design credits today.
As for rules set, I guess it could depend on your vision. If you want to play Gimli and Legolas, and you have the view of their combat efficiency mentioned above, then some rules sets might not work very well.
Pendragon, however, does make it easy for highly skilled figures to mow down masses of inferiors. One possible amendment would be a defense roll vs. missiles.
I have not run a long campaign, but found Pendragon a fine fit for my own vision. Another game (post-War of the Ring) used Warhammer FRP.
Quote from: Simlasa;813606What is this flavor that's so unique to Middle Earth that everyone is after?
It also seems like everyone should be willing to sing...
There is a feel, a flavor as I said. Its not easy to put into words but its like choosing the right words for a poem, in how all the pieces of the game fit and flow forward into constructing game play that settles into the world in a way like a perfect fitting jigsaw puzzle. There is a quality on the setting of dualities, and flow of good versus evil, but not always in combats but in choices and actions the heroes make. From the redemption of Boromir from his own fall, and walking out to fight a battle he likely couldn't (and didn't win) win--he made a choice to stand up and do what was right in the end, to the intense struggles of Frodo versus the ring, and the fact that a simple gardener, Sam, who isn't a warrior, isn't a hero, just a friend, uplifts him and keeps giving him strength and support to go on and when that fails, physically aids him to get there.
The duality of Hope vs Shadow is explicitly a game mechanic for this...
Those choices, those personal pivots amidst a backdrop of mythological battles, that is the feel of Middle Earth.
I bought ToR when it first came out and played/ran some playtests with some friends and it was god awful.
The rules are all over the place and clunky as hell.
I hated the travel mechanic, as they felt traveling from one place to another wasn't really Roleplaying (or something like that).
There's lots of pointless specific rulings that you just "have to know" even though they don't make any sense.
Character gen was a pain in the ass. I remember having to flip pages all over the book back and forth to complete a character.
All in all I just stopped caring and gave up.
I'm told the revised edition cleaned things up somewhat, but I generally hate the mechanics of the game, so making it more readable won't improve anything for me.
Either way, ToR felt really pretentious anyway and I didn't like the feel of it.
Still, a lot of people like it so I must put it down to it's just not to my tastes.
I'm not going to talk any more smack about ToR because I think its a cool game. But if anyone wants to play in middle earth and kick it really old school, I wrote a Basic-D&D knock off that is pressed into a middle earth mold, and as far as I can tell the few people who have seen it like it. It's called Balrogs and Bagginses and its pretty easy to find online.
Quote from: Larsdangly;813658I'm not going to talk any more smack about ToR because I think its a cool game.
For me, I'm only expressing my personal opinion and experiences with ToR.
I don't like it and have stated as such, but I also said as it's quite popular it's probably a matter of taste.
For some people it's a great game, I respect that and I suppose it is a great game for them, but not for me.
It does LOOK very nice though. One thing they did well was the first glance presentation. The art is really nice. That is has a slip cover is really nice too.
It's just too bad I didn't like much else about it.
I quite liked the gimmicky specialty D12s for it as well. They looked pretty cool.
I played a lot of MERP in my day. It works just fine. There is a ton of magic in Middle Earth. I have no idea where this notion that it is magic light comes from.
The spell lists are generally pretty well-flavoured to Middle Earth up to level 5 or so, then they get more d&d like.
Quote from: danbuter;813661I played a lot of MERP in my day. It works just fine. There is a ton of magic in Middle Earth. I have no idea where this notion that it is magic light comes from.
Spellcasters don't figure as much in the most widely read works (The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings) as one might find in the MERP products, if memory serves. The frequency of portable magic treasures may also have seemed a bit excessive.
The tales of previous Ages (Silmarilion, etc.) seem to me riper inspiration for something along the lines one might infer from the rulebook and setting modules as I recall them.
It is perfectly valid to play the magic issue either way. There is a shit ton of every kind of magic and many references to all sorts of people who learn all sorts of magic for all sorts of reasons. Not all of it is laid out on the table in front of the reader; much is mentioned in passing or implied. But that's just because the books are well written. So, if you want spell casters and tons of items go wild.
On the other hand, the point of view of the stories is mostly through the eyes of sensible, mundane people who aren't special in any obvious way but become important because of their inherent goodness and personality. If that is the sort of PC experience that gets you off, then obviously your PC's should be mundane and the magic should be something they barely understand that is part of the wild world outside their doors.
I still have a collection of MERP supplements...as background, its awesome. Took a lot of liberties from Tolkien in numerous ways, but I can't think of many other games besides Harn that provide resources on that scale...Certainly not for a licensed setting. Basically all of Middle Earth can be played Sandbox style just from the supplements.
As for Rolemaster, I will never play it again. Or, to clarify: I will never make a character that I then have to level up in that system again. I appreciate that some people like it very much, I found it excruciating.
I want to give The One Ring a goodly try. If it doesn't fit my tastes, then I think my fallback would be Runequest 6th.
The problem with the magic issue is that Tolkien struggled with it himself and changed his mind from time to time. There are many references to minor magics in the books but one might write them off as superstition for all the good they do.
Played 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 played a mid-length campaign using Decipher's Lord of the Rings. I would agree with most that it is pretty broken. It might be salvageable, but you're probably better off using your favorite generic system. Here's my page on it, including my review of the core book:
http://darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/lordoftherings/
When I tried again for a Middle Earth campaign later, I used the Action System. (But that game group fell apart.)
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.
Quote from: David Johansen;814661Also, I forgot the canonical dancing down forest paths singing nonsense.
I do seriously think that anyone who wants to play an authentic game in Tolkien's setting ought to be prepared to sing once in a while.
QuoteLicenced games are largely about tourism and the players tend to get mad when you stray from cannon.
Actually, after the accident downtown with 'old bess' we decided it was best to keep the tourists away from the cannon.
Quote from: RPGPundit;815178You forgot puffing on a pipe.
Puffing on a pipe can have that effect...
Regarding canon: the campaign my brother GMed was set before the war of the rings (can't remember exactly when I'm not a LOTR fan), after the kingdoms of the north had fallen: no Angmar, no Northern Numenoreans.
We were agents for Elrond, walking around the land bashing orcs and recovering items of lore/books to be kept out of the Necromancer's hands.
At some point one of the books we recovered had a map showing were a Numenorean prince had been burried with a Lesser Magic Stone that could be used to control winds. So we went in the Barrow downs, we had our ass saved from a Nazgul showing up after we had collected the stones when an Elven Noble from Imladris came to our rescue.
In Imladris Elrond decided that the stone was too dangerous to be kept around and we were sent north to Forodwaith and throw it in the ocean in a sort of Mariana Trench, all the while hiding from the Necromancer's spies now on our tracks.
The campaign had a follow up with the same villain (the main agent of the Necromancer was a Black Numenorean from Umbar) leading a sauronic cult trying to subvert the north.
To me (as i said not a great Tolkien fan) it all worked out in a believable manner and was very fun.
As I said we played with MERP, so the magic sometimes was very D&D-like.
There was few of it however (and mostly in the GM's hands) as the group was composed of a Sylvan Bard, a Woddman Scout a Beorning warrior and another Human warrior (a Rohirrim maybe? A Haradrim? Can't remember).
Quote from: TristramEvans;813713I still have a collection of MERP supplements...as background, its awesome. Took a lot of liberties from Tolkien in numerous ways, but I can't think of many other games besides Harn that provide resources on that scale...Certainly not for a licensed setting. Basically all of Middle Earth can be played Sandbox style just from the supplements.
I agree about the MERP supplements. Back in high-school I ran a year-long MERP sandbox campaign using the books on Eriador (Rangers of the North, Bree, and Trollshaws). Not that we knew what a 'sandbox' campaign was in the mid-1980s, of course.
Good times!
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.
Cool! I really liked those books.
I also was a fan of Thieves Guild and Haven.
But regarding:
Quote from: Ravenswing;813569The typefont on their books is microscopic, and there's a Monty Haul dungeoneering approach that for too many of their products have scanty information on personalities and places, and exhaustive information on every room in ruins and castles, loaded down with traps, and stuffed to the windowsills with magical items.
I'm a bit surprised by this comment. Not the part about the loads of traps and magic items in MERP adventures -- that is true. But I thought that the MERP campaign modules generally did an excellent job in describing the regions they covered, especially their geography, history, politics, and so forth. The information on the major NPCs generally was pretty solid as well.
At least when I was gaming in the 1980s I was impressed by all the background information in the MERP books.
Quote from: Akrasia;815509I'm a bit surprised by this comment. Not the part about the loads of traps and magic items in MERP adventures -- that is true. But I thought that the MERP campaign modules generally did an excellent job in describing the regions they covered, especially their geography, history, politics, and so forth. The information on the major NPCs generally was pretty solid as well.
At least when I was gaming in the 1980s I was impressed by all the background information in the MERP books.
Well ... to a degree, I'm shooting myself in the foot here, because the geography, flora/fauna and politics for the Cardolan and Tharbad books were my bailiwick. (Let's just say I nearly fainted with happiness at the notion of being
paid to
canonically flesh out Middle-Earth.) Heck, the origin of the "Beffraen" name came because Walter and I kept calling the aboriginal indigs of the Cardolani coast "BFFs" -- for "Barbarous Fucking Fisherfolk," I never thought of a name I liked better, and I wound turning it into a genuine term. True story.
Anyway.
But most players aren't all that interested in the grand national politics that ICE pushed. They're interested in stuff which affects the PCs at
their level. Instead, look at what NPCs were detailed in book after book. In
The Court of Ardor, the NPCs are the Lords of Ardor itself, over a dozen of them: beings of staggering power with whom PCs couldn't contend without many levels and buckets of items. In the Lorien/Eregion book, the detailed NPCs feature Celebrimbor, Celeborn, Galadriel ... and
Sauron himself -- 'nuff said.
It's safe to say that not too many MERP players are going to take on Sauron or Galadriel. But those are the NPCs, with every item and every spell list and every stat listed, that are the types presented in too many books.
The same thing with history, which repeatedly fell into that old wasteful trap so many RPG products do of wasting bunches of pages on long history lessons of ages past, often with only passing relevance to the timeframe given in the scenarios. Honestly, I don't need four pages of recap of every nasty thing the Witch-King's pulled over a three hundred year period: a single paragraph explaining that the Witch-King is the longstanding enemy of the Dunedain, seeks the overthrow of the northern Realms and is in reality the Lord of the Nazgul is all most players need.
I think it goes back to the notion that the people who buy setting books are mostly detail freaks and that everyone wants to know whether Elrond could take the Witch King. The assumption being that players don't buy books. ICE's MERP line was largely before the splat book revolution that the industry is still recovering from.
Mm, but the problem with that approach is one of the great weaknesses of licensed games: for every player who loves the result of the fleshing out, there are two who hate the daylights out of at least one addition not hitherto present in canon. This also heterodynes with the syndrome of stone fanboys thinking they know a lot more than they do, and there you have it.
Judging from posts I've seen over the years, there are gamers -- and possibly a good many -- who just loathed the Ardor and Rhun books, not for the content, but that they existed at all: if it wasn't in JRRT's head, seemingly, ICE had no right to create it.
I always feel that licenced games are pretty much a bad deal all around. If it does poorly, its an added expense. If it does well, the licence holder raises the rate when its time to renew. So the fans wind up with incompatible games and retreading of core material. Game masters have to listen to the canon pedant telling them why they're wrong. Players get to face ridiculously over powered key characters. I think Steve Jackson's approach of only doing one offs might be the best way to go about it. Here's GURPS Conan, don't expect to see it again.
Personally I like MERP, stuff like the big Arnor book is just awesome. And the RM system works well enough. People keep forgetting, what with the movies and all, that most people in Middle Earth aren't Bruce Lee/Rambo clones. That the place is bloody dangerous, and, like in oldschool D&D, chsracters should keep their wits about them. I remember the MERP and RM systems being a revelation to me when I got Into them in my late teens. Just awesome.
The decipher game's broken. Stay away from it. Seriously. It's Made of suck, with a Combat system that doesn't work properly, Made to profit from the movies yet failing at Even that.
Don't really know TOR but it doesn't seem like my kinda thing. It looks kinda twee.
Quote from: David Johansen;815866I always feel that licenced games are pretty much a bad deal all around. If it does poorly, its an added expense. If it does well, the licence holder raises the rate when its time to renew. So the fans wind up with incompatible games and retreading of core material. Game masters have to listen to the canon pedant telling them why they're wrong. Players get to face ridiculously over powered key characters. I think Steve Jackson's approach of only doing one offs might be the best way to go about it. Here's GURPS Conan, don't expect to see it again.
It increasingly seems that way.
Quote from: Ravenswing;815725 Heck, the origin of the "Beffraen" name came because Walter and I kept calling the aboriginal indigs of the Cardolani coast "BFFs" -- for "Barbarous Fucking Fisherfolk," I never thought of a name I liked better, and I wound turning it into a genuine term. True story.
Ha! I always wondered about the Beffraen, since there was no reference to them in any of Tolkien's writings.
Quote from: Ravenswing;815725
But most players aren't all that interested in the grand national politics that ICE pushed. They're interested in stuff which affects the PCs at their level.
...
It's safe to say that not too many MERP players are going to take on Sauron or Galadriel. But those are the NPCs, with every item and every spell list and every stat listed, that are the types presented in too many books.
The same thing with history, which repeatedly fell into that old wasteful trap so many RPG products do of wasting bunches of pages on long history lessons of ages past, often with only passing relevance to the timeframe given in the scenarios. Honestly, I don't need four pages of recap of every nasty thing the Witch-King's pulled over a three hundred year period: a single paragraph explaining that the Witch-King is the longstanding enemy of the Dunedain, seeks the overthrow of the northern Realms and is in reality the Lord of the Nazgul is all most players need.
I guess this is fair. Myself, I
loved reading all that history stuff, even if it had little impact on the game itself.
Quote from: The Ent;815890Personally I like MERP, stuff like the big Arnor book is just awesome. And the RM system works well enough. People keep forgetting, what with the movies and all, that most people in Middle Earth aren't Bruce Lee/Rambo clones. That the place is bloody dangerous, and, like in oldschool D&D, chsracters should keep their wits about them. I remember the MERP and RM systems being a revelation to me when I got Into them in my late teens. Just awesome.
Good to know that I'm not alone in feeling this way.