Lord of the Rings and MERP - Iron Crown Enterprises [review]

Today, in the "whats hot in rpgs today" section of our program, I present you a small review on two games that are 40 and 30 years old respectivelly.

I was reading this blog the other day, and I remembered the days of my highschool in which ICE's Rolemaster and Middle Earth Roleplaying was what the cool guys were playing. Not a trace of D&D back then. I even bought the book eventually, but never managed to actually run it because I was probably busy worrying about lots of other stuff. One of my friends at the time "borrowed it" for a time (20 years and counting). But I achieved to learn the game between classes from the cool guys, and eventually I made my first character: a human bard that I imagined like this: 

I remember that the session featured skeletons, a riddle for crossing a bridge, being thrown in the cell of a coliseum and managing to get out by enchanting the guard with my only spell (some sort of confusion or sleep, can't remember). I was fucking excited with how awesome it had been. 

One thing that the game did very differently than D&D is the nature and importance of critical hits. Basically on combat you rolled your percentile dice, and there was a "VS armor" table telling you how much HP you dealt to your enemy, and wether you scored a big critical, a small critical or none at all. If you did, you rolled on a secondary table that had tiny descriptions in small letters of what happened descriptivelly; depending on the weapon used and the armor they wore. Some of them narrativelly killed your foe instantly (or your character) no matter their remaining HP

For example, rolling a 40 in the crush criticals table (for example by using a mace or falling into a pit) gives you "blow to forearm, +5 hits. If no arm armor, stunned for one round". Rollng a 110 on the slash critical table is "Impaled in heart. Dies instantly. Heart destroyed. 25% chance your weapon is stuck in foe 3 rounds" On retrospective, I think that this tables made combat a lot of fun, helped with the combat narrative and made use of otherwise aesthetic things (suddently, having your character wear arm armor was important, even if for a marginal case)

Magic and Unarmed attacks had their own tables too. When the setting "monk" equivalents got some levels they got to roll in the "big creatures" critical table, which was the one the balrogs used, instead of raising their chance to hit.

shit quality, but you get the idea

Unlike D&D, it is not centered on stealing loot or delving into dungeons, but still uses advancement through XP. Which is very interesting because I'm always trying to run away from XP=Gold for some reason or the other. MERP awards experience in eight ways, some of them worth a thought:

1. HP loss. Every HP you lose translates to 1 XP

2. Criticals. Every critical you deal has a value in XP. The most interesting is that you get double that amount when somebody deals a critical to you. This means that theoretically you and a friend could level up ad infinitum dealing criticals to each other in a dirty alleyway.

3. Kill points. Depending on your level and the monster's level, you get an amount of XP after dealing the killing blow

4. Maneuver points. When you overcome the classic "roll vs a TN" challenge, you get XP depending on the challenge difficulty (picking locks, convincing guards, all that classic shit)

5. Spell points. You get XP = 100 - (10 x Caster level) + (10 x Spell level) when casting in combat.

6. Idea points. Basically give a random amount to somebody who had an idea to overcome something.

7. Travel points. 1 XP for each mile on an unfamiliar area. Half in civilized areas, x2 or x3 in dangerous areas, and divided by 10 if flying or sailing.

8. Miscellaneous. As long as XP is pre-assigned to specific goals, and not used as "I give you XP for that cool thing you did before" it seems to me like an idea that I find underused on the OSR. The book sadly seems to encourage the latter.

To finish my review, I'd like to say that the book works as Race and Class, and now I realize its heavy parallel to D&D (the 6 stats under other names, using levels, saving throws, etc). It has a LOT of subraces, some of them I don't remember at all being in LOTR (Where do the woses appear in the movie? WTF is a dorwinadan?) and has a nice bestiary:

(WTF is a Dumbledor? wasn't he from another franchise altogether?)

Searching for the old MERP manual, I've managed to find their publisher's second attempt at Lord of the Rings rpg, called simply "Lord of the Rings Boardgame", dating from 1991. And of this one I want to talk a little more, because from the design point of view, it feels very tempting to use, to learn from and to modify.

While MERP (1982) is percentile based, ICE's Lotr (1991) is entirelly 2d6 based. It is much more basic than its older counterpart, which can be bad or good sometimes. But from the "design" point of view, there are some points that caught my attention.

There are 12 skills: 

1. Strength

2. Agility (balance and nimbleness, also initiative)

3. Intelligence

4. Movement (Speed, MV per turn)

5. Defense (adds to armor)

6. Melee Bonus

7. Ranged Bonus

8. General (covers climbing, riding, etc)

9. Subterfuge (thief checks. Too many dexterity divisions, or its just me?)

10. Perception (do I see the trap?)

11. Magical (you get 2 spells per bonus, also adds to the casting roll)

12. Endurance (your HP). 

skills from 1 to 11 can be as high as +3, and as low as -2

skills from 6 to 11 are "bought". You get +5 bonus to divide between them, but any skill that is not raised gets a -2 instead. I like that this makes a great gap between casters and non casters, fighters and non-fighters, or sneaky hobbits and clumsy human. I would go even further and make it so the first +1 only applies to a favored weapon, which is more in line with the original books (Legolas=bow, hobbits=slings, for example) but using another of the same type (ranged/melee) only drops you to 0, not to -2

skills from 1 to 5 and Endurance depend entirelly on your "class"

There are nine "race and class" packages that you can choose. They all come in a pregen sheet with weapons, equipment and certain skills raised or lowered. The classes and examples it cites are:

Hobbit Scout (Bilbo, Frodo)

Elf Scout (Legolas)

Human Warrior (Eowyn, Boromir)

Dwarf Warrior (Gimli, Thorin)

Elf Warrior (Glorfindel)

Human Ranger (Aragorn)

Half-Elf Ranger (Elrond)

Human Bard (Gandalf)

Elf Bard (Galadriel, Arwen)

I love how the wizard word is totally out of the question. Wizards in this game are treated as bards. The spell list is kind of short, there are like 20 spells with the classic ones (sleep, fireball, identify shit, etc). Anybody can cast spells providing they raise their "magical" skill, so classes are little more than archetypes that help players to get into the character.

Combat is done in a grid, with movement, attack and half attacks. Depending on the action you take (spells go first) you act in a given order, with same actions acting in order of agility. Attack rolls use a small table modified by offense/defense of those involved, with the high results resulting in straight leaving your opponent unconscious (a natural 12 always does, at least, knock out your opponent) or maybe even killing them. Armor adds to your Defense bonus and substracts from subterfuge, magic and movement.

Too basic when compared with the MERP one, maybe. I see the simplicity of the 2d6 as a great excuse for complicating it using the critical tables of the original one!

Strength doesn't affect combat in anyway, which is plainly stupid in a game that uses it as a factor. Seeing that weapons are differenciated by modifying damage done, but with two handers and  unarmed combat having penalties to hit, I think that a good way to fix this is to have Strenght offset those penalties by a proportional amount. 

The resting 8 of the 28 pages ruleset is dedicated to an oddly specific set of questions. My copy is in spanish, but I found a screenshot that will speak better than my words:

The choice of 14 situations that are thoroughly covered by the rules is very interesting, it says a lot about the challenges that the PCs are supposed to face and about the world they tread on. In which other fantasy game did you see a page dedicated to SNEAKING THROUGH TOWN BY NIGHT?

 None of the books have anything such as "procedural challenge generation" or anything that drives the game forward other than the GM's work, but LOR makes up for it as it was originally printed in a book alongside a module (bigger in pagecount than the actual game), so you could say that the first module was part of the game itself. 

(Skimming through it it seems that it features at least Gandalf and Merry as NPCs, as well as a couple of Stone Trolls)

It is cool to know that if somebody decides to play it after all this years, after lots of iterations and games on the Middle Earth that have been published, s/he can find some help with My_GaMe_FiXeS in this small corner of the blogosphere. Nice coming into spring for everybody. 

Eowen at the doors of Meduseld

Dagger (a review)

I like to skim through obscure manuals a lot, and I though on making some reviews in order to remember what I like of each thing, and because it might help this people to visibilize their work. This is a review for Dagger, allegedly an OSR game for kids, and I was curious on how it was adapted from common retroclones. And I found a game with the nice simplicity I love in gaming rulesets (Curiously, I feel that kids are conversely capable of learning any kind of complex rules when they want to, if its by their own initiative. It is us, grown ups, who love simple things because we lack the patience and the sense of endless time we had as kids, but what the hell, this is not an entry for deep thoughts!) 

The game is free at drivethru, and the link gives you the revised and the original version. 

The game has no attributes, but uses just classes. Fighters get 2 attacks: that's their combat advantage (all characters start with the 15 hp, which seems like A LOT even for a kid-aimed game. I would stick to class based hp myself) and it makes them get double advantage for +1 swords (which add to damage instead of to hit)

All rolls are done with 2d6, magic and combat, and something I love is that all spells are resumed into four: 

Blast (choose the way it deals damage), 

Heal (all forms of healing, curses, etc) 

Protection (armor, but probably could work to protect against evil, etc) 

and Charm (charm, sleep and somehow manages to include Web).

I find very curious that 1 of the 6 pages is dedicated to combat fumbles, magic fumbles and fumbles in general (It tells a lot about the author's objective with the game XD) 

The most stealable thing I found was the nice way it handles monster Treasure Type: d6+monster HD VS this table:

1-3 no treasure

4-5 coin purse

6-7 sack of treasure

8-9 treasure chest

10+ treasure horde

With each treasure having a specific GP, Gems, Magic Items, etc. honestly I find this system much more attractive at first sight than the classic B/X one.

The monster list is very concise (one line description) and one thing that is inspiring is that surprise is never rolled: it happens if the GM sees it fit. And by this rules, bugbears ALWAYS surprise unless you do something about it.

Advancement increases HP only, all the rest happens diegetically (through items found, etc)

Saving Throws are fixed at 8 but dwarves, elves, etc have bonuses for certain situations. Interestingly enough every monster has their own saving throw rate listed, not based on anything. It is very simple but I like its adjusted with love by the author, not just calculated by their HD size.

This is all about the revised version, but, as the download also gives you the original version, I also read it, and found something cool too: the spell list.

The book states that it is a sample list and that you can use the TSR original, but I like to imagine that this was the "official, complete list" (which ties nicely into the game being that the top level is five). Four spells for level, and having Charm and Hold Monster and no Charm of Hold Person, which means that you have to be really high level to use that game-breaking charm spell. I would try to tie protection from evil into Cure Light Wounds and bless into an optional variation for Light.

This early game version uses d20, evolutionary Saving Throws and Monster to hit matrixes (which I think that were wisely removed in the final cut)

Finally, as a catch all, attempting uncovered risky situations as sneaking, jumping, etc is covered by 1d6 vs a TN fixed in the moment (hell yeah!) fast and fair, and very appropiate seeing that there are no attributes to use for that. That puts the weight on using inventory or alternate approaches to avoid doing that risky roll, or to increase the chances somehow.

It is a little odd, but what I find most lacking in this game is a reaction table (which is trivial to add, anyways), and double being a game for kids wich would benefit a lot in my opinion from monsters being talkative or neutral.

average damage comparison, on the way to single roll combat

 I leave this here for me to consult thereafter

They are tables that compare the average damage of a strike VS ascending ACs, assuming d6 damage, d6+1 or d8 damage and d6+2 or d10 damage. 

Below is the same table if we assume a 2d6 to hit roll, with the roll excess over AC being the damage done. This rends that the most accurate ACs to convert would be base 5 to plate 8; or using instead 2 types of armor (light and heavy) and make it base 6, light armor 7, heavy armor 8. Shields would either be straight up better than in d20 or can be used as "shields shall be splintered" only (though I really dislike that approach)

Same table, but using ACs from 0 to 6, with attack rolls being made with d6, d8, d10 and d4. Again, excess over AC is the damage dealt. 

I'm uncertain on this one. The most obvious port would be to use d6 as common weapon damage, then 1 as base ac, light armor as 2 and heavy as 3, with 4 being the additional shield. Then using increments in damage die size as the equivalent of character bonuses-to-hit on level ups. According to this sophisticated charts, just using a d8 would increment as much average damage as a +6 to hit in d20 (which is a level 10 fighter in S&W). D10 and d12 would be reserved for monsters.

There is also option 2, to use d8 as the common martial weapon damage, and then make it so Base AC is 2, +1 leather. +2 plate, +1 shield. 

This method, however, only deals with averages, but the theory says that this will make combats have less "miss" results, but hits will normally deal less damage than with separate rolls for hit and damage (even if in the end the monster takes the same amount of turns to drop). 

2d6 under ability score: A system sketch

Expanding from the last entry, and opposed to all the other previous entries, in this one I devise a system without levels, classes, hit dice, etc. But the weight falls over the ability scores, and uses 2d6 for resolutions. But there are no +mods involved, only the scores themselves.

A good curve seems to be to roll 2d4 at the start to generate the scores. 6s are meant to be greater than average; and anything over 7 carries implicit superheroic feats. Saves are rolled with 2d6 under relevant stats, with only super-heroic characters able to stastically save more often than not.

The basic combat rules are that you roll 2d6 to attack, everything that exceeds the monster's AC is damage dealt. Longer weapons attack first. Over this premise, I explain some uses of each attribute:

STRENGHT: 

-When you attack with a heavy weapon, and roll your strenght or less, you can re-roll the smaller die.

-When you have strenght 7 or higher, you get a save vs death when at 0 hp

-The score is also the amount of big things you can carry

DEXTERITY

-Spend a turn aiming with a bow and roll 2d6: If under this score, you add +2 when shooting after.

-If you use a light weapon and roll less than your dexterity, you can diss your roll but get +1 AC this turn.

-You roll a save to catch or flee from a monster with higher dexterity. It doesn't have to roll anything, only the one with lowest score does.

-Over 7 you can perform acrobacy feats.

WISDOM (the magical stat)

-At 6, roll under it to use magical tools, detect magic and other minor magical skills 

-At 7 you can cast level 1 spells, at 8 you can cast level 2 and so on.

INTELLIGENCE (the mundane knowledge)

-At 6, you can use one set of specialist tools (Specialized kits detailed in the inventory: doctor bag, thief's tools, artificer, etc) or know an extra language.

-At 7 you can attempt to produce something you've been working on (state what it is at the moment) related to the tools you carry (poison, chemicals, a small gadget), and maybe more times per day at 8+

CONSTITUTION (which really just says how well a fighter you are, or a measure of you will to live): 

-The score is your HP. Armor adds to your AC, but some armors also add some HP.

-At 6 you always act before your opponent in combat providing there are no other substantial differences in leverage.

-At 7 you get +1 attack per round with any favored weapon

-At 8 you get +1 AC for free

-At 9 you get an extra attack regardless of weapon

CHARISMA

-I like to conceive it as a save vs manipulation, fear or some measurement of "self-integrity"

-Also the classic hireling numbers and their morale checks.

-If you use animal companions, you also use this for complex rapport with them.

-On monsters (because with this system, numeric values from monsters are also rolled like this as there is no other math) this can represent how many allies they have in an area. For example an undine with 7+ charisma might use this to command friendly animals or entangling vines in the encounter area. This is the score that a Disney Princess would max out.

Advancement rules: 

When you level up using whatever method you prefer (as there is no need for numeric levels, I'd try to avoid using them for advancement and probably use sandbox milestones) you roll 1d6 against one ability score you want to increase.

If you roll less than it, raise it by 1, to a maximum of 9 or maybe 10

If you roll equal or over than it, raise it by 1 and raise any other stat by 1 

In this way, people who rolls bad stats at creation can increase them slightly faster than the others, and there is some risk/reward between raising "dump stats" and maybe not getting what you wanted, or raising your main ability score straight.