Middle Earth Role Playing

[Chainsaw Hobbit]

My mother's boyfriend recently visited his childhood home in the states. Knowing that I enjoy both tabletop roleplaying games and eighties things, he brought me back a pile of his old D&D books. Among the modules was a book called Tolkien Quest: Night of the Nazgul. It appears to be a solo adventure for MERP, and contains the basic MERP rules.

I opened up Night of the Nazgul, and tried to read the rules section. Emphasis on "tired". The rules section was not only rather thick, but was written in just such a way that my eyes glazed over after a couple of paragraphs. It did, however, spark my interest.

Could someone please explain MERP to me? What are its basic principals? Is it any good? Does it make for games that feel like Tolkien novels? How would I go about learning it?

Thanks in advance!

[valadil]

I was raised on MERP. Nothing bug fond memories of that system, although I'm not sure how well it's aged.

How it feels depends on the GM. It can be played like a generic hack and slash. If the GM knows his Tolkien, it works pretty well for LotR. Every party is going to have a wizard though. The book emphasies that wizards are rare, but players are going to play them anyway. IMO if you're a purist and object to that, don't play a wizard.

Most of the ideas should be familiar if you're used to modern D&D. First thing of note. Everything is a skill. Even fighting and movement. Skills are broken down into categories. Each class gets a different number of skill points in each category. So a warrior might get 5 points towards weapon skills each level, while a scout gets 3. There are 5 or 6 such categories and buying across categories is doable but expensive. I like this because it guides your character's growth without totally pigeon holing it based on his class.

The other thing of note is that there are tables for resolving combat. You roll d100 plus your offensive bonus (OB) minus your target's defensive bonus (DB) and look that up on a chart. The chart will vary depending on your weapon and your target's armor. If you hit, that chart will give you the amount of HP damage and possibly a critical. On a critical you roll against a separate table and usually inflict status effects on the enemies. It sounds tedious, but the descriptions are fun.

I can probably answer more if you have specific questions, but it's been I haven't played regularly since the early 90s. I should also point out that this game comes from a generation where the players didn't know all the rules and quite a bit was left up to GM interpretation. If the rules seem ambiguous, you're reading them right. You gotta roll with the ambiguities and resolve them in a way that makes the most sense for your game.

[Khedrac]

A few extra points.

MERP was a cut-down version of Rolemaster - and pretty much 100% compatible (indeed MERP contained no rules for levels over 20, the adventures had characters over 20th level). Iirc the only dice you need are D%.

If it also both a level-based system and a critical based system - this means combats tend to end with a critical not from hp loss, so it is very easy for PCs to die when they are not expected to - such as to a warm-up encounter.

Personally I found the system far too magic-heavy for my reading of Tolkein, but that's personal take on flavour, not on the system.

The system, like the rest of the Rolemaster system can run like a lead brick flies, equally with a good DM it can be fast and exciting - it is that variable (It's been years since I played but I met both forms).

Finding the books should not be too hard, there was a fresh print-run sold mass market not too long before ICE folded so I would expect it not to be that uncommon in the second had shops. Beyond the basic books will be harder.

It is a very complex system in a lot of ways - and there is lots of keep track of (you get XP for each hp of damage taken, each crit taken, each crit dealt, each skill crit rolled etc.) but get it right and it is fast and fun.

Also there is no concept of race balance - based on Tolkein certain races are far more powerful than the others (such as the Noldor elves) so you need to be careful when assembling a party than some people won't be rendered useless.

[hymer]

@ Khedrac: Regarding race balance, I've never actually played a whole session of MERP, but there's something called background options (IIRC), where the least powerful races have more (I think Hobbits get most with something like five background options, and Noldor get one or none - again IIRC). While some of these options, like a magical weapon, are obviously only balancing in the short term, some of them are permanent bonuses or entirely new abilities.

[Joe the Rat]

Most of the points are covered.

MERP is RoleMaster Lite with a Tolkein setting.
Hits (concussion) and wounds (broken body parts) are separate. Armor reduces damage taken (some) and the severity of criticals.

Magic is RM, so it's not really Tolkeinian. Also, separate healing "spells" for bones and muscles and organs. Gory.
%ile based, tables for everything. The Critical Tables are quite amusing.

So what's the selling point of MERP: The lore. They wrote the stuffing out of it. details on the various races, peoples, languages, herbology, monsters... supplements of exceeding detail (we basically ran a campaign around Moria). Notes about playing in each of the Four Ages. Grab the supplements, drink from the fire hose, divide bonuses by 5, and you're most of the way to porting Middle Earth into a d20 (or similarly scaled) system.

[Rhynn]

They covered the main points, but I have to chime in that I, too, loved the lore and the setting - it's not just pure Tolkien, it's a lot of elaboration and detailing things only vaguely mentioned by Tolkien.

The adventure modules are largely fantastic, too. No other game ever so evoked the sensation of being there, in the wilderness or the cave or the dungeon. It's a combination of the detailed descriptions, the large proportion of natural inhabitants and dangers, and the awesome maps.

[GoatToucher]

The criticals always seemed unbalancing. One good roll and the BBEG or your PC would be disintegrated or have his organs explode.

[valadil]

The criticals always seemed unbalancing. One good roll and the BBEG or your PC would be disintegrated or have his organs explode.

More like two good rolls. You needed to score the crit first, then to roll it. And if you only get an A crit (criticals are ranged from A-E depending on severity) you need to roll 100 to get the instant kill.

[Rhynn]

The criticals always seemed unbalancing. One good roll and the BBEG or your PC would be disintegrated or have his organs explode.

How is that unbalanced, though?

For a start, that only happens on (going off memory, here), exactly 80, 90, 100, 110, and 120, and then some results in the 91-119 range. 60 is usually some nasty result. (Generalized - large and huge monsters are tougher, etc.)

The idea, obviously, is that sometimes when you get hit, you die.

What's unbalanced, though? It's the same for PCs, NPCs, and monsters. It's just deadlier combat than your standard (later) D&D. You can't go in thinking you have X hit points before death.

Generally, I've found it far too hard in Rolemaster (and to a lesser extent in MERP) to land a fatal blow. Fights will drag on for freaking forever. That's the entire reason I abandoned Rolemaster - tedious, over-long combats. (Of course, I was kind of running it wrong - combat shouldn't be the meat of the game.)

[obryn]

I used to run MERP back in middle school. The system is okay - as mentioned, it's basically Rolemaster Lite - but it's fairly non-standard for Tolkien. As mentioned, flashy and regular spellcasting is a biggie. Criticals are (IMO) another - the heroes in LotR, Silmarillion, and the Hobbit tend to face physical danger to degrees which would be fatal in a MERP/RM game.

But seriously, although non-canonical, MERP's sourcebooks and maps are stellar. The cartography in particular is damn near impeccable - evocative, flavorful, consistent in style, and as true to the source material as possible. (They add non-canonical stuff, too, but it's largely well-done and considered kind of semi-canonical by some folks - like the names and origins of the Nazgul.)

ICE also made the wonderful decision to set the game something like 1400 years (IIRC) before the War of the Ring, so as not to bump up against the canon too horribly. You can run it before or after, but by and large, Middle Earth was a more interesting (and much more populous) place back then.

There are some great sourcebooks for it, too, but they tend towards the ridiculous in some cases. The Lords of Middle Earth series in particular is a mix. I mean, Lords of Middle Earth I is good fun and attractively presented, but I don't see a point to statting out Tulkas as a 360th level Fighter.

-O

[Rhynn]

1640 TA is for suckers!

1409 TA is where it's at! (Granted that's like 1/10 as many modules, pretty much just some of the Arnor material and Dark Mage of Rhudaur...)

Naw, seriously though, both periods are excellent. I want to run a generational game spanning the entire fall of the North Kingdom (from 1350 or 1400 to 1640 or so), using MERP material but probably using One Ring or the movie-license Lord of the Rings RPG. (Both much better at doing Tolkien, although even LotR RPG has magic, if much better suited to the setting.)

I usually just figure, well, 1600 years is a long time - back then, there was more magic and more magicians (even if they were still rare). It makes some sense, too - clearly the arcane arts were among the things lost to history with the fall of Arnor and the degeneracy of Gondor.

[valadil]

That's the entire reason I abandoned Rolemaster - tedious, over-long combats.

So that's something I've been wondering about lately, but will probably never get around to. The mechanics aren't that slow. The descriptions aren't that slow. But looking stuff up in a table is. I've been wondering how an app for MERP/RM would speed things up. All I imagine it doing is looking things up on a table, but putting that table at your fingertips. I think that would speed up the game quite a bit.

[Rhynn]

So that's something I've been wondering about lately, but will probably never get around to. The mechanics aren't that slow. The descriptions aren't that slow. But looking stuff up in a table is. I've been wondering how an app for MERP/RM would speed things up. All I imagine it doing is looking things up on a table, but putting that table at your fingertips. I think that would speed up the game quite a bit.

Yes, it was pretty much entirely the tables (and partly the fact that you had to look up results so many times. I don't think The Riddle of Steel is slowed that much by table look-ups, because you need to look them up maybe 1/10th as often.

I never really had a problem with MERP, though - it was fast enough. All the attack tables were on one page, and the critical tables took up, what, another 2-3? Rolemaster, though - a full page table for every weapon, and pages and pages of critical tables... and this wasn't even the optioanl Arms Law (and, of course, there's Claw Law or whatever it was for monster attacks).

Gah! Rolemaster!

And yes, some kind of app or tiny roller program (you'd only need maybe a few radio boxes to choose the type and severity of critical, a button to "Roll", and a text area big enough to display the result) could help a lot. That won't entirely solve Rolemaster's problems, though, because combat is relatively slow and tedious anyway.

[valadil]

full page table for every weapon, and pages and pages of critical tables... and this wasn't even the optioanl Arms Law (and, of course, there's Claw Law or whatever it was for monster attacks).

We solved that. We never actually finished character creation for RM, but we did import Arms Law into MERP. Give each player the table for his own weapon. He's resonsible for rolls and lookup. There's no reason why that should be on the GM's plate. And the players really get a kick out of reading their own results.