Curse the Baggins!

I've long been a defender of amateurish old school art, but even I have limits. 

While re-reading some old Dragon magazine issues from the mid-1980s, I came across an advertisement Riddle of the Ring, a Middle-earth boardgame originally released in 1977. The ad mentions that a new edition of the game, from Iron Crown Enterprises, which, at the time, held the Middle-earth license, was in the works. However, a limited number of the original edition was still available from its original publisher, Fellowship Games of Columbia, South Carolina.

The only reason I even paid any attention to this full-page advertisement is that it included examples of the artwork found in the original edition, like this:

Or this:

To paraphrase the great philosopher David St. Hubbins, there's a fine line between charming and just bad and I find it difficult to judge either of the examples of Riddle of the Ring's artwork above as anything but the latter. Maybe that's unfair, given the relatively early publication date of this game and the likely limited resources of the publisher. I understand that they're not going to look as awesome as the Brothers Hildebrandt Tolkien calendars of the same era, but, surely, they should be better than this.

Am I wrong?

Retrospective: Southern Mirkwood

The series of Middle-earth sourcebooks published by Iron Crown Enterprises during the early 1980s occupy a strange place in my personal history as a roleplayer. Like nearly every other gamer I knew at the time, I had, of course, read the works of J.R.R. Tolkien and I liked them well enough, though I'm not sure I'd have called myself a huge fan of them. That would come later, thanks in no small part to I.C.E.'s products, whose advertisements in the pages of Dragon I can still vividly recall.

The reasons those advertisements still linger in my memory decades later is their artwork, which is wonderfully evocative. They made me want to know more about the region of Middle-earth detailed in the associated product, which, in turn, helped fuel my appreciation for Middle-earth as a setting. (It would still be a little while longer before I'd come to a similar appreciation for Tolkien's storytelling, much to my embarrassment.)

My very first I.C.E. Middle-earth purchase was Bree and the Barrow-Downs, primarily because the hobbits' visit to the Barrow-Downs is one of my favorite sections of The Lord of the Rings and I therefore assumed the book detailing it would be similarly great. Unfortunately, I was disappointed and this dampened the enthusiasm those Dragon ads had elicited in me. Despite this, I decided to give the series another try, this time selecting Southern Mirkwood as my next purchase. I did so for the flimsiest of reasons: I liked the cover. I might also have been influenced by the book's subtitle, "Haunt of the Necromancer," since I was keen to know more about Sauron's hideout in the region, Dol Guldur.

Written by Susan Taylor Hitchcock and first release in 1983, Southern Mirkwood is 60-page softcover book covering not just southern Mirkwood but also southern Rhovanion, the region of Middle-earth commonly called Wilderland. Much like Bree and the Barrow-Downs (and Moria, which I'd acquire later), the pages of Southern Mirkwood feature a dense, two-column layout using a very small typeface that is occasionally broken up with a piece of spot art or a map. The overall effect, even when I was younger and had more patience – and eyesight! – for such things was mildly intimidating. This effect was made even more potent by the dry way that information was conveyed. This was not a book that one read casually; it took real effort to make it through even a couple of pages.

I began to feel some of the same disappointment I had felt about Bree and the Barrow-Downs creep back in. When I bought the book, I had hoped it'd present some frightening and exciting things about this part of Middle-earth. I remembered Mirkwood well from Tolkien's tales, particularly Bilbo and the dwarves' encounter with its spiders, so I expected the book to contain all manner of similar nastiness. Likewise, the presence of Sauron, in his guise as the Necromancer, certainly piqued my interest, since I remember wondering what he might have been up to while hiding in the forest from the prying eyes of the White Council. By all rights, Southern Mirkwood should have been a really good sourcebook, one that commanded my attention for a long time – but it was not.

A large part of the problem lies with the presentation of the material it contains. As I alluded to above, the prose is dull and focuses too much on minutiae and trivia. There are thus pages of history, enumerations of flora and fauna, people and places of note – all good in principle and precisely the kind of stuff one you'd want and expect to find in a book like this. But rather than detail all of this with an eye toward how to use them in adventures or campaigns set in and around southern Mirkwood, we get encyclopedia-style entries that do little to inspire. Toward the end of the book, there are some short suggestions for scenarios but they're quite sketchy and, frankly, boring ("Acquire 5 crates of Dwarven nails for renovation of Tree-town," "Trap and cure or kill as need be a trained mountain lion which has gone wild," etc.).

The banality of it all is really evident in the sections relating to Dol Guldur, the Necromancer's lair within Mirkwood. The book provides eight maps of the place, along with keyed descriptions. One would imagine – or at least I did – that such a place of supreme evil would be compelling and frightening. Instead, it comes across as little more than a run-of-the-mill dungeon filled with traps and orcs and storage rooms. It's all so dull and predictable, with only a few hints that suggest it's located in Middle-earth rather than in some vanilla fantasy setting. 

It's a shame, because I still think there's great potential in this region of Middle-earth, especially during the time period in which I.C.E.'s books are set (Third Age 1640 – nearly 1500 years before the War of the Ring). I can easily imagine fun adventures or exciting campaigns dealing with the growing corruption of the area and the Necromancer's role in it all. That's not what Southern Mirkwood provides, sadly. 

At least the full-color poster maps by Peter Fenlon are terrific, as always. 

White Dwarf: Issue #66

Issue #66 of White Dwarf (June 1985) is once again graced by a Chris Achilleos cover illustration. I've always been very fond of his artwork and this piece is no exception. This issue also marks another step, albeit a small one, down the road toward Games Workshop's transformation into an all-Warhammer-all-the-time company. Ian Livingstone's editorial opines that "there is obviously a resurgence of interest in wargaming," with the growing popularity of Warhammer Fantasy Battle being offered as evidence of this. I suspect his prognostication would ultimately prove correct. Warhammer's success was real and lasting; it played a huge role in revitalizing the field of miniatures wargaming, a segment of the larger hobby that continues to be very successful (and profitable) today. 

Speaking of miniatures wargaming, this issue's "Open Box" kicks off with a positive (7 out of 10) review of FASA's Battledroids, the earliest iteration of the Battletech line of games. Slightly more glowing (8 out of 10) is its review of the second edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battle Rules. There's also a review of the 48K Spectrum version of Talisman (7 out of 10). Rounding out the reviews are The Halls of the Dwarven Kings (8 out of 10) and not one but two Fighting Fantasy gamebooks: House of Hell and talisman of Death (both 9 out of 10). I owned and enjoyed House of Hell, which has a modern day haunted house setting. It also included a Fear score that increases as the reader's character deals with more frights within the titular locale. Once the score reaches a high enough number, the character is "scared to death." The mechanic introduces an interesting dynamic, as the reader tries to avoid encounters, since each one contributes to the Fear score and its inevitable consequences.

Dave Langford's "Critical Mass" laments the "fantasy explosion" in publishing with words I could almost have written: "SF is my true love ... Fie on fantasy: for me the highest literary values consist of megalmaniac computers, hyperspatial leaps and colliding black holes." He then goes on to review multiple fantasy books he considers "consistently better than the SF." Interestingly – or perhaps simply indicative of my own cramped tastes – the only one of these great fantasies he mentions that I recognize is Piers Anthony's On a Pale Horse, the first of his "Incarnations of Immortality" series – and I don't count myself a fan. Langford nevertheless does review a few SF books, including E.C. Tubb's twenty-second Dumarest of Terra novel, The Terra Data. In his review, he notes that "beyond rotten sentences [it] has a plot resembling the previous ones: hero Dumarest tepidly pursued by omniscient yet inept Cybers, fights through unconquerable barriers of padding to obtain secret whereabouts of lost Earth, only to suffer his 22nd failure. Soporific." Cruel but accurate (and I say this as a fan of Tubb).

"The Road Goes Ever On" by Graham Staplehurst is a very nice overview/review of Iron Crown Enterprise's Middle-earth Role Playing and some of its supplements. Reading it again almost made me want to dust off my copy of MERP and give it a whirl again. Part Four of the "Thrud the Destroyer" saga continues, as the evil necromancer To-Me Ku-Pa employs dark sorcery to summon "the essence of evil throughout time." Behold!

"A Web in the Dark" by Simon Burley presents rules suggestions for adapting Spider-Man and similar superheroes to Games Workshop's Golden Heroes (which I need to review one day). "Once Risen, Twice Shy" by Steve Williams and Barney Sloane is a fun collection of documents – news clippings, handwritten notes, reports – that outline a grisly scenario for use with Call of Cthulhu. It's all quite well done and evocative. My only complaint is that the layout of the issue would make it difficult to easily photocopy and use the documents in play. Meanwhile, "Ambush!" by D.P. O'Connor is a three-page treatment of how best to simulate ambushes in Warhammer miniatures battles. 

"The Horse of the Invisible" by A.J. Bradbury is an excellent Call of Cthulhu scenario adapted from the William Hope Hodgson story of the same name. The adventure is lengthy, detailed, and, above all, dangerous – as the best CoC adventures are – well done. "The Philosopher's Stone" by David Whiteland is another lengthy and detailed scenario, this time for AD&D characters of levels 1-2. As its title suggests, the adventure involves alchemy and quite cleverly makes use of alchemical mixtures and reactions as part of resolving it. I loved this scenario in my youth and used it to good effect in kicking off a new campaign in my high school era setting.

"The Silent Hater" is a well done installment of "Fiend Factory," which strings together five different AD&D monsters and a map to create the outlines of an adventure for the enterprising referee to drop into his campaign. This is "Fiend Factory" at its best in my opinion and I was always glad to see them. On the other hand, "The Rings of Alignment" by Graeme Drysdale does little for me. There are five such artifact-level rings – one each for Law, Chaos, Good, Evil, and Neutrality – each with their own powerful guardian and special powers to those who wear them, either singly or in conjunction with others. I suppose such magic items have their place in certain kinds of campaigns, but I've rarely found them all that useful.

"Open House" is Joe Dever and Gary Chalk's report Citadel Miniatures' "Open Days," which attracted over 2000 gamers to the company's factory to participate in miniatures battles and painting competitions. The article includes photos of some of the winners of the latter and they are, of course, quite impressive. I find myself, as always, wishing I'd taken up miniatures painting when I was younger. Oh well! Closing out the issue are new episodes of both "The Travellers" and "Gobbledigook."

All in all, this is another worthwhile issue, filled with several excellent articles. That said, the increasing presence of Warhammer and related things is quite clear. I can't say that I blame Games Workshop for emphasizing their own products, especially at a time when they're growing in popularity. However, never having been a miniatures wargamer of any kind, let alone a player of Warhammer Fantasy Battles, I could see the writing on the wall. It wasn't too much longer before I ceased reading White Dwarf and turned my attention elsewhere.

MERP UK

One of the things I remember most about Games Workshop of old was its publication of UK editions of American RPGs, often in a better and more attractive format. Unfortunately, most of these editions never made it across the Atlantic, so I only ever had the chance to see photographs of them rather than physical copies. In the years since, I've rectified this somewhat, as in the case of the 1987 version of Stormbringer, and these UK editions are every bit as remarkable as I hoped they'd be. 

One I have never seen, though, is the 1985 version of the Middle-earth Role Playing boxed set, which boasted this cover:

I only even know of the existence of this version because of advertisements I saw in the pages of White Dwarf. The artwork really grabbed my attention in a way that the US ICE version did not and I hoped I might one day be able to see it in the flesh, so to speak.

Did anyone reading this ever own or even see a copy? 

White Dwarf: Issue #50

Issue #50 of White Dwarf (February 1984) is an important milestone for the magazine, marking nearly seven years of continuous publication since its premier in June 1977. The cover, by Terry Oakes, is an odd choice for such a momentous issue. It's a re-use of an earlier painting used as the cover for the 1980 UK paperback edition of William Hope Hodgson's House on the Borderland. Why it was chosen in this instance, I have no idea, though the swine-things from the story are sometimes cited as possible precursors to the pig-faced orcs of which old school D&D fans such as myself as so fond.

Garth Nix's "A Few Small Formalities …" kicks off the issue proper, with a humorous discussion of the use and abuse of bureaucratic red tape in Traveller. Accompanying the article are four sample forms the referee can inflict on players when their characters must interact with meddlesome local planetary rules and regulations. I've always enjoyed articles of this kind, but then I'm also fond of scenarios like the infamous "Exit Visa" from The Traveller Book, too, so perhaps I'm a poor judge of such things.

"Open Box" reviews a large number of interesting RPG products in this issue, starting with Steve Jackson's Sorcery!, which receives a rating of 7 out of 10. There are also reviews of several Middle-earth Role Playing supplements: A Campaign and Adventure Guidebook (6 out of 10), Angmar – Land of the Witch King (7 out of 10), The Court of Ardor (7 out of 10), Umbar – Haven of the Corsairs (7 out of 10), Northern Mirkwood – The Wood Elves' Realm (8 out of 10), and Southern Mirkwood – Haunt of the Necromancer (8 out of 10). Reading these reviews fills me with a great deal of nostalgia for the days of Iron Crown Enterprise's series of Middle-earth sourcebooks, only a few of which I ever actually owned. The issue's last review is Tarsus for Traveller, which receives a much deserved 9 out of 10 rating.  

Dave Langford's "Critical Mass" is fascinating to me in that it regularly reviews books I never heard of, let alone read. This installment of the column is no different. The only book Langford discusses with which I am directly familiar is Helliconia Summer by Brian Aldiss, of which he thinks very highly (I was less impressed; my favorite of his novels has always been Non-Stop). Meanwhile, "White Dwarf Personalities" by Phil Masters and Steve Gilham is a fun little piece in which people and characters associated with the magazine, such as Ian Livingstone, Thrud the Barbarian, and the eponymous White Dwarf are given RPG stats for either AD&D or RuneQuest (sometimes both). 

Speaking of Thrud, we get new episodes of his comic, along with Gobbledigook, and The Travellers. "Divinations and the Divine" by Jim Bambra is a workmanlike article on clerics in AD&D, focusing on the role of the class both in play and within the fictional "society" of a campaign. It's fine for what it is and clearly geared toward newcomers, but it's vastly better than many of the beginner's articles that White Dwarf ran in its early issues. "The Watchers of Walberswick" by Jon Sutherland is a short introductory scenario for use with Call of Cthulhu, dealing with the Deep Ones along the Suffolk coast of England. It's a solid, straightforward piece of work that could easily serve as the start of a new UK-based campaign.

"RuneQuest Hardware" by Dean Aston is a collection of new equipment for use with RQ. The items in question are an odd group, running the gamut from the mundane (nunchaku – hey, it was the '80s) to the exotic (magic talismans) and downright weird (hollow panel detector). Part 2 of "The Key to Tirandor" by Mike Polling brings a part of AD&D characters inside the titular city. The city is a very strange place, even by the standards of a fantasy roleplaying game, but there's an explanation for its many oddities – the city is an illusion, a projection of an insane dreamer's imagination – and discovering this truth is what the scenario is about. I have mixed feelings about this myself, though I recognize that there's a lot to be said in favor of breaking the usual mold of D&D adventures. 

"Have Computer, Will Travel" by Marcus L. Rowland presents a couple of BASIC computer programs to aid in the creation of vehicles in Striker. I can't rightly comment on their utility, but, like the inclusion of nunchaku earlier, the inclusion of a computer program in a RPG magazine is a hallmark of the 1980s. "Going Up" by Lewis Pulsipher presents a new system for advancement in D&D that dispenses with experience points altogether, opting instead for tracking the number of sessions in which a character participates as a gauge of advancement. It's an interesting idea, especially for it time, though I am unsure of how it would work in practice. 

"One Ring to Rule Them All" by Charles Vasey is a lengthy examination of Iron Crown's Fellowship of the Ring fantasy boardgame. Part review, part strategy guide, it's the kind of article that would probably appeal most to those who've played the game in question. Since I have not, there's not much more I can say about it. "An Assassins Special" by M.J. Stock, on the other hand, describes four new items for use by assassins in AD&D, ranging from the garotte to a dagger of slaying. It's another workmanlike article whose utility depends almost entirely on whether or not a referee sees the need for more specialized equipment in his campaign. Finally, there's "Baelpen Bulletins," which collects news items from the far-flung corners of the hobby scene, including several tidbits that never came to pass (such as FASA's Battlestar Galactica RPG and Close Simulation's Road Warrior RPG).

Milestone issues are always a challenge, I suspect, because there's a natural expectation that their content will necessarily be "special" in some way. That mostly wasn't the case here and that's no knock against the issue. For the most part, issue #50 is simply another decent, if unexceptional, issue of White Dwarf. The main thing that it does well is present a wide variety of content covering many different games from many different companies, which is no small thing. Here's to the next fifty issues!

RIP: Terry K. Amthor (1958–2021)

Terry K. Amthor, one of the original founders of Iron Crown Enterprises, has died, according to the following announcement from the ICE website:

To all in the ICE family

It is with the greatest sadness that we must inform you that the incomparable Terry Amthor has died. We extend our most heartfelt condolences to his sister Tamara, his family and his friends.

The cause and circumstances of his death are still under investigation, so we cannot provide any details on this and will defer to his family on what they choose to disclose in due course.

Terry was a founder member of the original ICE and a cocreator of Rolemaster and Spacemaster, writing and contributing to many of its most iconic products, and to some of the most exceptional 1st edition Middle-earth modules. Most of all, he has shaped our imaginations with his masterful Shadow World epic fantasy setting. He continued to develop Kulthea through his own Eidolon Studio company, before joining forces with Guild Companion Publications to create new sourcebooks and adventures bringing ever more of Shadow World to life, and working as our layout guru for most of our other products.  

Author, designer, world builder, and friend, Terry’s genius has enriched our lives for decades. His creations will continue to inspire us all for years to come.

Rest in peace, Terry.

Nicholas, Colin, John and Thom

In recent months, I'd begun to delve into the Shadow World setting, which was largely the creation of Amthor, so this news is strangely affecting. I now wish I'd had been more familiar with his work and other contributions to the hobby over the years. I now have added impetus to correct this oversight in my gaming education. Rest in peace, Mr Amthor.

Retrospective: The Iron Wind

My direct experience of Iron Crown Enterprise's Rolemaster during my youth was limited. I'd dabbled with Arms Law & Claw Law but that was the extent of my exploration of this venerable fantasy roleplaying system. (I was much taken with its "little brother," Middle-earth Role Playing, which occupied a weird sweet spot in terms of its presentation of both rules and Tolkien's setting.) Nevertheless, thanks to the advertisements appearing in the pages of Dragon magazine, I was reasonably well appraised on ICE's releases for the game – and sometimes cast an envious eye upon them.

A good example of this is The Iron Wind, whose second edition was published in 1984 (its first edition appeared in 1980 and predates the existence of Rolemaster, but I have never seen it in the wild). The subtitle of the book is "a series of adventures in the world of Loremaster," but that's not truly accurate. Yes, The Iron Wind does include some scenario outlines within its 50 pages, but those are brief and take up less than a single page. Instead, the bulk of the book is devoted to an overview of the Mur Fostisyr, an island cluster northwest of the setting's main continent of Jaiman. 

As one might expect in a product of this sort, we're given discussions of the geography of the island cluster (including maps, both color and black and white), native flora and fauna, its people, and "places of power" – locations of mythic and/or magical importance, aka potential sites for adventures. All of these places of power are then detailed extensively, providing the referee not just with maps, but also keys indicating their inhabitants, treasures, and traps. Each is also given context within the larger history of the Mur Fostisyr islands. The titular Iron Wind is a malevolent force associated with the Unlife – the main antagonists of the Loremaster setting – that swept down from the north, bringing with it cold, demons, and corrupted elves who seek to subjugate the entirety of the region and enslave its peoples. Clichéd though it may be, it's nevertheless a decent set-up for a campaign set in the region.

Never having seen the first edition of The Iron Wind, I can't speak to its contents. The second edition, though, looks and feels very much like a MERP regional sourcebook – which I mean in a positive way. One of the things I always liked about those MERP books of old was the way that they provided plenty of low-level detail, like what the terrain looked like, the kinds of animals that could be hunted nearby, and the types of medicinal herbs available to characters who take the time to seeking them out. The Iron Wind is much the same. When combined with the extensive maps, NPC descriptions, and local magical items, it's a solid collection of tools for the referee setting up a campaign here (or even just a series of adventures).

From our vantage point of the present day, what stands out to me about The Iron Wind is how much it leaves open to the referee to decide. This is stated explicitly in the "Adventuring in Mur Fostisyr" section of the book, which points out the areas an enterprising referee can decide for himself. Back in 1982, I wouldn't be surprised if some buyers saw this as a cop-out; now, though, I find it very refreshing and strangely inspiring. In some ways, The Iron Wind feels a lot like a MERP module whose contents are largely unconstrained by a singular vision. Mind you, I know next to nothing about the larger Loremaster setting or its subsequent development; this one may well be an outlier in this regard. Whatever the case, I saw a lot to like in The Iron Wind. Had I read when it was first published, it might well have tempted me to give Rolemaster another try.

Retrospective: Moria: The Dwarven City

I owned – and enjoyed – the first edition of Iron Crown's Middle-earth Role Playing. I also owned several of the Middle-earth setting books published by ICE, such as Bree and the Barrow-Downs. Those supplements were a mixed bag for me, both in terms of how well they were produced and in how much they inspired me when I first read them. Among those of which I thought particularly well was 1984's Moria: The Dwarven City by Peter C. Fenlon, who was also responsible for most of its many maps.

While I remain firm in supporting Gary Gygax's contentious assertion that The Lord of the Rings had little direct influence on his conception of Dungeons & Dragons, it's hard not to waver on the matter when someone brings up Khazad-dûm. Better known as Moria ("black chasm" in Sindarin), it was once the greatest city of the dwarves in all of Middle-earth. This was before its inhabitants famously "delved too greedily and too deep," awakening a Balrog that had hidden itself beneath the Misty Mountains after the War of Wrath. Now a ruin of subterranean chambers, passages, and labyrinths, Moria is filled with orcs and trolls under the command of the Balrog – not to mention untold riches. If ever there were a prototypical D&D dungeon, Khazad-dûm is it.

That's why I readily grabbed a copy of Moria as soon as I came across it. At 72 pages in length, it contains a great deal of information on the dwarven city, starting with descriptions of the land surrounding its location. Everything from topography to climate to flora and fauna are exhaustively detailed, followed by an equally exhaustive history. Looking back on it now, I'd say that both these sections are probably too long for gaming purposes, but, at the time, I didn't care. I had a great deal more patience for voluminous background information. The dwarves of Khazad-dûm, their society, culture, and language get a similar (though shorter) treatment, which ought to give the referee a good sense of what Moria was and is like and why it is constructed in the way that it is.

It's the city itself that is the main attraction in this book and, much as I enjoyed the other sections, it's why I bought it in the first place. About two-thirds of Moria consists of descriptions of the city and its sights, complete with digressions into dwarven architecture and engineering (as well as the philosophy behind them). The reader is treated to details of every conceivable aspect of the city – doors, chambers, chasms, bridges, stairways, and even traps. In almost every case, we're also given drawings and sample maps to illustrate what these features look like and how they are used. It's frankly amazing stuff and precisely what I'd hoped it would be.

As described in Moria, the city is divided into seven levels proper and seven "deeps" – the portions of the city shrouded into darkness used for mining, forging, and related endeavors. It's in these latter areas that the Balrog and his evil minions dwell. Because of how vast Moria is, each of these fourteen layers is given a high-level schematic map, on which certain notable locales are definitively placed. The rest of the layers are detailed by the referee making use of random tables, with the structures and other results correlated to just where one is on a given layer. It's a complex and slightly cumbersome set-up, but, truthfully, I'm not sure how else one could describe a locale as large as Moria without inducing tedium. To its credit, Moria is filled with useful inspiration throughout, which ought to relieve the referee of some of the burden of describing this place.

As a whole, Moria impressed me greatly as a younger man, so much so that I suspect it played a sub-conscious role in my eventual design of my mountain megadungeon Dwimmermount. It's certainly one of the most ambitious "dungeon" products I'd ever seen up to that point and the wonderful maps for which MERP products were known cemented it in my mind as worthy of praise and emulation. Even now, re-reading it in preparation for this retrospective, I felt some of the same awe – and a little sadness, too. I never got the chance to use Moria back in the day. My MERP campaign didn't last long and the player characters never dared venture in the direction of the dwarven city. It's a great pity and one I doubt I'll remedy, but, at my age, I likely only have so many campaigns left in me. Such is life!

Retrospective: Future Law

Though I write a great deal about topics related to fantasy and fantasy roleplaying games, science fiction is actually my preferred genre. Consequently, I've amassed a fairly large collection of SF RPGs over the years and I still take an interest in new ones as they appear (despite my desire to keep my gaming library reasonably small). Iron Crown Enterprise's Future Law is among those I own and, though I have never played it, I often find myself idly flipping through its pages, for reasons I'll discuss presently. 

Published in 1985, Future Law is the first of two volumes making up SpaceMaster, ICE's sci-fi counterpart to RoleMaster (on which I've touched previously). The 88-page volume focuses primarily on character generation, but also includes information on creating and running a campaign, as well as a sample adventure. As a derivative of RoleMaster, I doubt anyone would be surprised to learn that the rules in Future Law are complex and employ multiple charts and tables, just like its predecessor. That said, the rules are fairly well presented and, in re-reading them for this post, I didn't have too much difficulty following them. Based on past experience with RoleMaster, I've learned that the game plays reasonably well if each player has copies of the charts his character needs (e.g. weapon and spell charts) at hand. 

Even so, there can be denying that the character generation in Future Law requires more time and attention than, say, Traveller or Star Frontiers (though it's vastly simpler – and more coherent – than Space Opera). Characters possess a profession and a collection of skills, the ease with which they are learned determined by the former. Among the professions is that of telepath, which provides access to psychic powers called psions. There are a number of race options, ranging from Terran humans, mutants, eugenically enhanced Terrans, androids, and aliens. Of the latter, only a few examples are given. I say examples, because Future Law presents itself as a generic system the referee can use to establish his own setting. Even so, the book presents a sample setting, that of the Terran Empire some 10,000 years from now. The Empire is authoritarian and feudal, divided into territories governed by noble house. Little more detail is provided in this book; the Empire is fleshed out at greater length in the game's many adventures.

To aid the referee in creating his own setting, or simply fleshing out the sample one, Future Law provides a system of generating star systems and planets. It's not an especially complicated system in absolute terms, though more so than the system in Traveller. The sample adventure is set in the Terran Empire and centers on conflict between two of its noble houses. It's nothing memorable but it does include plenty of useful maps of starships, planets, and installations. More interesting in many ways is that the book is illustrated by James Holloway in "serious mode," which is to say, without any of the goofiness or sly humor for which he is more well known. 

Even though I've never played it, I have a strange fondness for Future Law because of its particular mix of elements. Every science fiction RPG picks and chooses which aspects of prior sci-fi it includes. Future Law leans heavily into the "far, far future" end of the genre, evoking Frank Herbert's Dune, Asimov's Foundation, and similar kinds of decadent Imperium settings. I have a great weakness for these sorts of settings, though I've never actually used one in all my years of refereeing SF roleplaying games. That likely explains why I own a nearly complete set of SpaceMaster adventures: they're inspiration fodder for the day when I finally get to run a campaign in a setting like this one.

Retrospective: Middle-earth Role Playing

While working on last week's entry in this series, I realized that I had never written a post about Iron Crown Enterprise's Middle-earth Role Playing, despite the fact that I had, long ago, written one about the notorious The Court of Ardor. This frankly surprised me, because I not only owned the game – having purchased it by mail order – but ran a short but intense campaign set in and around the Trollshaws (as I recall, though my memory is hazy). Having now been made aware of this oversight, I have no choice but to correct it by presenting my thoughts about MERP.

Originally published in 1982, Middle-earth Role Playing is an odd game. As the cover of the first edition proclaims, MERP is "a complete system for adventuring in J.R.R. Tolkien's world," that system being based on Iron Crown's Role Master system, with which I was already somewhat familiar. Had I been asked beforehand, it's not the system I'd have chosen for gaming in Middle-earth, but I doubt I could have explained why at the time. Role Master always struck me as much too complex and finnicky, especially in the area of combat, and this seemed at odds with the overall feel Tolkien's works evoked. Furthermore, it was supposedly set in the middle of the Third Age, some 1500 years before the events of The Lord of the Rings, which is not what I had been expecting. I imagine the period was chosen for maximum freedom, since it's not as well documented as other periods of Middle-earth's history.

The cover image accompanying this post is quite instructive. Depicting a multi-racial adventuring party looting what appears to be a tomb, it looks more like a scene from a D&D game than something one would find in Tolkien. At the time, that didn't bother me very much, because I was much more a fan of Tolkien's world than I was of Tolkien's stories. In that respect, MERP did its job well enough: it provided all the things one would expect to find in Middle-earth – dwarves, elves, hobbits, orcs, etc. – and didn't worry too much about the tone. For example, MERP had extensive rules for magic, as well as allowing characters of every profession, including warriors, to learn spells. As Gary Gygax famously complained, Middle-earth is notably low-key in its magic, but not so MERP. It's a very peculiar decision on the part of the game's designers, if fidelity to Tolkien were one of the game's key principles. On the other hand, if their goal was to use Middle-earth as the backdrop for more typical fantasy RPG activities, it makes perfect sense.

Since my friends and I weren't overly concerned with fidelity to Tolkien's literary works, none of this bothered us in the slightest. Much more important was the fact that we could create hobbits and elves and Dúnadan rangers and visit Mirkwood and Moria and all the other amazing locations described in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. There were orcs and spiders to be fought and great treasures to be won, all against the backdrop of a rich setting for which ICE provided some truly inspiring maps. Sure, our adventures didn't materially differ all that much from what we'd done in our Dungeons & Dragons sessions, but what did it matter? At that point in our roleplaying development, we were simply enamored of being able to use Tolkien's words, names, and locales and any more sophisticated concerns would have to wait.

In that respect, Middle-earth Role Playing gave us just what we wanted at the time, even if, in retrospect, it seems clear to me that MERP wasn't particularly well suited to its source material. I know many gamers of a certain vintage have great fondness for the game, in part, I think, because of the aforementioned maps and the Angus McBride artwork that graced the covers of the second edition of the game (which I never owned). There are worse reasons to have affection for a RPG, honestly, but I can't help but feel that MERP was something of a missed opportunity. Middle-earth holds so much potential as a fantasy roleplaying setting and one day I'd love to play in or referee a campaign set in it. 

Retrospective: Bree and the Barrow-Downs

I started work on this week's Retrospective post under the misapprehension that I'd already written one, years ago, about Middle-earth Role Playing published by Iron Crown Enterprises. When I did a search of the archives, I discovered that the closest I'd ever come to doing so is this post on an advertisement for MERP and that must have been what I'd misremembered as a post about the game itself. Therefore, I briefly considered setting aside the work I'd done on this post and starting a new one on MERP, since I think it's a game well worth discussing here. In the end, though, I decided that, since I owned Bree and the Barrow-Downs before I owned Middle-earth Role Playing, it made more sense to talk about it first. I'll save MERP for next week's Retrospective. 

Published in 1984 and written by Heike Kubasch, this 32-page book describes Bree-land, a civilized area of central Eriador consisting of four settlements inhabited by both Men and Hobbits. Bree is, of course, the largest and most significant of these settlements and plays a role in The Fellowship of the Ring as the location of the The Prancing Pony inn, where Frodo and his companions first meet Aragorn. The book includes maps of Bree and the neighboring villages of Archet, Combe, and Staddle. The maps don't include a lot of detail but all four places are small and have relatively few buildings anyway. Still, I must confess I was disappointed, somehow thinking that Bree at least would receive more extensive detail. Indeed, I bought the book precisely because I was so interested in Bree after my reading of The Lord of the Rings.

This isn't to say there's no information on Bree and the surrounding villages. Rather, the information is mostly "high-level," which is to say, focusing on matters of history, agriculture, and economy, as well as the prominent people and families of the region rather than on each and every building in the town. It's an unusual approach, one I didn't expect at the time but that I've come to appreciate a little more in recent years. Having a good sense of the inhabitants of Bree, their relationships, and their place in the town is just as important to making good use of it as a detailed key. Still, it would have been nice if we got something more akin to The Village of Hommlet – at least that's what I wanted.

Much more interesting is the treatment of the Barrow-Downs, which is extensive. We get some history, in addition to an overview of their overall structure and the wights that inhabit some of them. Twenty-one of the barrows get not only individual descriptions but also maps, showing their layout for use in game. Their descriptions identify who is buried in the barrow and, where pertinent, who they were and their place in the history of Middle-earth. As a kid, I loved the Barrow-Downs section of The Lord of the Rings and so was glad to see the loving detail provided in this lengthy section of the book.

Bree and the Barrow-Downs is a strange product and clearly reflects the early days of Iron Crown's publication of Middle-earth materials, in that it seems to have been written with traditional RPG "adventuring" in mind. The amount of detail given to the Barrow-Downs when compared to Bree is, I think, evidence of this. The Barrows, after all, are full of monsters and buried treasure and are thus of more immediate interest to players used to dungeon delving and similar activities. Perhaps that's unfair but, having re-read the book for this post, I find that my youthful disappointment in this book remains. I had such high hopes for it and, when they were dashed, I became skeptical of the other books in the Middle-earth line of game products (though, as we shall see next week, I eventually overcame that skepticism). 

Humorlessness

Last night, before bed, I was reading my recently-acquired copy of Character Law & Campaign Law. Now, Rolemaster, as has been noted many times, has a reputation for being dry and abstruse and I don't think that reputation is entirely unearned. But I will defy any man who thinks Rolemaster humorless (as will anyone who's used its critical hit charts will as well). Within the first few pages of the book, I came across multiple examples of play that brought a smile to my lips, such as this one from Section 7.12:

Snidepucker the Rogue dies after eating a poisoned bagel.

I'm not sure whether I was more amused by the character's name, his manner of death, or the fact that the whole thing is right smack in the middle of a rather detailed discussion of the deterioration of stats due to death. Then there's this one in Section 7.21:

Bandring is fleeing from the dreaded Malevolent Moose.

As with the previous example, this one appears as part of a larger discussion of game mechanics, in this case "movement maneuvers." I can't help but find this charming, as I always do when I find quirky little bits of text that suggest a real person rather than the Design-o-Tron 9000 has written the book. I think such bits are especially important in games like Rolemaster which might otherwise be mentally painful to read.

Mind you, when I was a younger man, I was, believe it or not, even more dour and humorless than I am today. Back in those dark days of yore, I didn't like this sort of thing in my game books. Roleplaying, after all, was a serious hobby and serious hobbies didn't include puns and anagrams and goofy examples. This attitude all looks terribly pathetic in retrospect, but you must remember that it was not an uncommon one (then or now) and many of my gaming mentors inculcated a number of prejudices into me, many of which had to do keeping things "serious."

I look forward to finding more examples like this as I make my way through Rolemaster. Heck, it wouldn't be a bad thing if I found more examples like this in every RPG product I read.

Comments to this post can be made here.

Descent into Madness

As I've noted on more than a few occasions, I have, in addition to face-to-face gaming, been playing in and refereeing several different RPGs via Google+ Hangouts. If anyone among my readership hasn't already given this a whirl, you really ought to, because it's a lot of fun. These days, it certainly seems as if the center of gravity in the old school world has shifted to G+, due in no small part to the exceedingly large numbers of games being run there. This hobby, after all, is about playing games, not merely talking about them and, as I said, there are a lot of games for every taste being run on Google+.

Among the games I'm playing is Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game, refereed by the awesome Shawn Sanford. Among my fellow adventurers are the equally awesome Jason Sholtis and Will Douglas, though we've recently had an influx of several more stalwart souls to add to our company. That not only improves our chances of survival but also the fun. One of the many lessons Google+ has taught me is that roleplaying with only two or three players is a pale imitation of what it's like to play with six or more players. My online Dwimmermount sessions, for example, typically have at least six players and I've sometimes had as many as eight. Yes, it requires a bit more coordination to deal with the presence of so many players, but it more than repays the effort in terms of dynamism and chaotic creativity.

Back before DCC RPG was released, I remember that one of the big knocks against the game was that it used "too many dice" and had "too many charts." Having actually been playing the game for months now, I can honestly say that neither of the critiques holds much water. In play, one only uses a few dice types or charts at any given time and, as time goes on, their use becomes second nature. Moreover, the presence of these dice types and charts adds a lot of delightful unpredictability to play, so much so that I found myself thinking (as I often do) that what many RPGs need is more, not less randomness.

As it happens, Shawn Sanford is a huge Rolemaster aficionado, having used that system for years with great success. He's also currently involved in Iron Crown Enterprise's open playtest of the next iteration of this venerable game system. Consequently, we often talk about Rolemaster, a game with which my past experience has been decidedly mixed, but that, I freely admit, I've long been intrigued by. So, I've been slowly acquiring some of the old Rolemaster products I remember from the early '80s and examining them, not so much with an eye toward actually playing the game -- though I wouldn't shy away from doing so if an experienced referee made himself available (hint, hint) -- but in order to get a less biased understanding of it.

As I've noted before, "old school" is not synonymous with "rules lite" and we do the larger hobby a disservice when we talk as if it were. For that reason, expect to see more musings on some of the more complex RPGs of the '70s and '80s, since they're very much on my mind these days.

Comments on this post can be made here.

The Ads of Dragon: Middle Earth Role Playing

In my younger days, I was largely limited to buying RPGs that I saw on game store shelves. I knew I could use mail order to get games I never saw locally, but I never did so -- never did so, that is, until I saw this ad in issue #85 (May 1984):

Back then, I liked to think of myself as an admirer of Middle-earth, but, in truth, I had only the most superficial appreciation of Tolkien's works. So, when I saw this advertisement, showing a dwarf, a pair of hobbits, and two Men (unless the woman is actually an elf -- it's hard to say for sure) looting some forgotten tomb of its riches, I knew I wanted to buy this game. Middle Earth Role Playing was the first RPG I ever ordered through the mail and my friends and I had a lot of fun with it, even if the adventures we played out would likely have horrified Tolkien.

Every now and again, I find myself wishing I still had my copy of this game, but it disappeared long ago. On eBay, most of the copies on offer are later versions with the Angus McBride artwork, which I've never much liked -- heresy, I know!

The Ads of Dragon: Middle Earth Campaign and Adventure Guidebook

I've probably mentioned that, as a kid, I didn't actually have all that much love for Tolkien or Middle-earth. Sure, I watched the Rankin/Bass version of The Hobbit (and its awful "sequel," The Return of the King), along with Ralph Bakshi's flawed animated masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings. I even owned -- and read -- his books, but I can't say that, aside from a few surface details, I thought much of the good professor's creative output. It would be many years before I'd changed my opinion on this matter. Better late than never, I suppose.

Consequently, you'd think that I wouldn't care much about this ad, which appeared in issue #67 of Dragon (November 1982), announcing several Middle-earth gaming products from Iron Crown Enterprises, most notably a Campaign and Adventure Guidebook.

And you'd be right. For the longest time, I didn't care about these products, having plenty of others to hold my attention. I don't think it was until the publication of The Court of Ardor that I actively made an effort to hunt them down and buy them (and I'm glad I did), but there's no denying that I found I.C.E.'s ads incredibly evocative. Even now, looking at this one from nearly three decades ago, I found myself intrigued by the prospect of a "Tolkien-ish" fantasy campaign as a palate cleanser after so many years of being immersed in swords-and-sorcery. If that's not a compliment to this ad, I don't know what is.

Retrospective: The Court of Ardor

As a younger man, I read Tolkien, of course; everyone I knew did. Being a fantasy roleplayer meant that you dutifully read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings at least and many also read The Silmarillion (Christopher Tolkien not yet having published any volumes of The History of Middle-earth when I entered the hobby). I read them all, but I can't say I was much enamored of them. In fact, as stories, I found them all, The Hobbit included, rather boring. Now, I loved Middle-earth as a setting -- all the little details, languages, etc. But I didn't think much of the stories Professor Tolkien decided to tell about his world, which only goes to show, I think, how shallow my love for Middle-earth was back then.

Consequently, when Iron Crown Enterprises started producing RPG supplements describing the various lands and peoples of Middle-earth, I had very mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, I looked forward to reading even more details about the setting, but, on the other, I wondered, "What's the point?" I was never going to set a campaign in Middle-earth. The setting seemed much too focused on a particular set of stories that, at the time, didn't really excite my imagination all that much. I also wondered how many new details could possibly be included in these supplements. After all, Tolkien was dead and I already owned all the books he wrote about Middle-earth. What more could there be?

So, I ignored ICE's Middle-earth products initially. It wasn't until I saw advertisements in the pages of Dragon in 1983 for a supplement called The Court of Ardor that my interest was piqued enough that I considered buying a copy. Based on the ads, The Court of Ardor was filled with "ancient swamp ruins & island citadels held by dark elven lords and their fierce minions." That didn't sound like anything I remembered from Tolkien, yet here it was and released under ICE's Middle-earth banner, no less. So, I went off to the bookstore and picked up a copy, both excited and confused at the prospect of some place in Middle-earth that I'd somehow never heard of.

The Court of Ardor was written by Terry K. Amthor and filled with 62 pages of dense text and some gorgeous maps by Peter C. Fenlon. The supplement described a land far to the south of Middle-earth called alternately Ardor or Mûmakan, which was home to number of elven lords who had cooperated with Morgoth during the First Age. I remembered nothing of this from The Silmarillion and, though I'll admit my appreciation of the finer details of Tolkien's world were shaky at best, it struck me as strange, if not impossible, to imagine evil elves in Middle-earth. Stranger still was that these evil elves used magic associated with a Tarot-like deck of cards supposedly created by Morgoth himself. There were also peoples and places that had no connection to Middle-earth in the supplement as well, not to mention an epic plot line involving Morgoth's half-elven children and the continuation of their father's plan to destroy the Sun and the Moon.

As a kid, I was baffled by all this. The Court of Ardor was undeniably cool, but it was also undeniably inappropriate to Middle-earth. I couldn't figure out then (nor now) just how this product was ever released under the Middle-earth label, since, except for names here and there, it was seemed like it took place in its own fantasy world rather than in Tolkien's sub-creation. But it was also strangely compelling and while, in retrospect, I find it a little too over the top for my liking, it is quite well done and I can easily imagine how someone who took it up and ran with it would have a great campaign using it. I myself did not, mostly because, while I liked many of its ideas, I somehow found myself in the odd position of simultaneously thinking it didn't belong in Middle-earth and finding it too strongly associated with it to be able to use it.

I am led to understand that many elements from The Court of Ardor were later incorporated into a different ICE product, a non-Tolkien setting for RoleMaster called Shadow World. I've never seen that product, so I can't speak to how close the connection is, but it's interesting to consider that, once upon a time, a game company could even imagine inserting a wholly original setting into an existing one without any qualms. IPs tend to be much more tightly controlled nowadays; I doubt we'd ever see something like this again. Of course, I still have very mixed feelings about the fact that this was ever done. My appreciation of Middle-earth has increased greatly since 1983 and the inappropriateness of The Court of Ardor is even more apparent to me now than it was then. Yet, as I say, there's a strange power to this supplement and, like the various alternate takes on "Star Wars without the saga" making the rounds, there's a part of me that remains intrigued by a Middle-earth where Mûmakan, its evil elves, and epic plot lines fit right in.

Retrospective: Claw Law & Arms Law

Along with last week's retrospective, another product -- well, set of products -- I remember seeing relentlessly advertised in the pages of Dragon was Claw Law & Arms Law, one of several rulebooks that would, in time, join together to create the game system known as Rolemaster (as, as my friends and I called it "Rulemaster"). Back in 1982, though, (when the boxed set pictured here was released) products like Claw Law & Arms Law were initially sold as add-ons to other RPGs. Certainly, one could buy all the various Law books (such as Spell Law and Character Law) and combine them to play a wholly different game (or simply buy the boxed Rolemaster set that included them all), but there was no way I was going to do that. My friends and I were still deeply devoted to D&D and there was no way we were going to forsake it for another fantasy RPG. We'd house rule the heck out of D&D, of course, but, in our minds, that was somehow different and so it was that we decided to take the plunge and add Claw Law & Arms Law into our campaigns.

You must remember that 1982 was the tail end of the Golden Age. The fantastic realism that carried the day in the early part of the Silver Age was becoming an undeniable force in gaming culture, with lots of our older contemporaries dabbling in games they'd earlier told us were "for weirdos," like RuneQuest and Chivalry & Sorcery. Why? Partly because those other games had more "realistic" combat systems. That's where Claw Law & Arms Law came in: they were designed to make your RPG's combat system more realistic -- and deadly. That greatly appealed to us, as we'd already had solid experience with critical hit tables and, while their results were decidedly mixed, we nevertheless continued to see the appeal in making D&D's combats bloodier.

The big problem was that, for all their advertisements as add-ons to other games, they worked very poorly with AD&D. Like Rolemaster itself, Claw Law & Arms Law used percentiles for its combat system. To use it with Dungeons & Dragons, you weren't merely modifying the existing combat rules; you were completely replacing them. That caught us off-guard and probably ensured that we'd never adopt the rules on a permanent basis. To our way of thinking, it was perfectly fine to add or subtract to the existing combat rules, but to replace them entirely was a different thing altogether. At the same time, we wanted to see what all he fuss was about and so we decided to test out Claw Law & Arms Law.

The result not pretty, not because the new combat system was difficult to use; it wasn't. Indeed, despite our own mocking of Rolemaster by calling it Rulemaster, the game isn't particularly rule-heavy but it is chart-heavy. The new combat rules slowed down play, because we had to keep consulting charts. I am sure that this was because of our inexperience with the system. Indeed, I know it was, as I'll explain shortly. Charts catch a lot of undeserved flak in certain quarters, but my experience is that they're often better at presenting complex rules than are formulae, unless the formulae are very simple. Once one becomes familiar with which charts are needed and when, speed is increased considerably.

But the simple truth of the matter is that, for D&D, the addition of Claw Law & Arms Law just never felt right. We were far too accustomed to the existing combat rules (including weapons vs. AC modifiers, but not speed factors) to change midstream. The additional detail these add-ons provided simply didn't justify the cerebral rewiring necessary to make it all run smoothly. Yet, there was still something about these rules that we did like, which is why, when Middle Earth Roleplaying was released in 1984, we happily played it. MERP felt nothing like Tolkien's novels in my opinion, but the rules presentation was cleaner and more compact than in Rolemaster. We enjoyed playing the game as an alternative to D&D rather than as a replacement for it. That seemed to be the best way to use Rolemaster and its derivatives and we had a lot of fun doing so.