New G.M. - Looking for tips.

Hi.

I played MERP as a teenager, and was eventually put-off when my brother decided to upgrade to the full Rolemaster rules and play slowed down to a crawl - plus with all the options he was expecting to add it was taking days just to generate  a character.

I'm now trying to put together a game with my current friends and family, where I will be GM'ing a game using the basic MERP rules (2nd ed, collectors edition).

I ave inherited this book, along with a couple of campaign and source modules, plus I have managed to download  the modules that relate to the Trollshawls, Rivendell, Bree, Weathertop, Rangers and the surrounding area - I already have an original of Angmar.

I feel this gives me more than enough to provide a open gaming environment for my players.

I do have a couple of questions.

1) I've tried going through the Loons of Longfell training adventure with my wife. There were just the two of us so it was harder to create the right mood. I found I was spending loads of time searching for the right table (I have now created a combat screen and printed off a mini booklet with the other necessary tables for quicker reference)

Any advice on improving game play and flow? or is it a question of practice?

2)

I have a character who is a Wose animist. as a 2 background options he got a +10 Pipeblow which is a +1 spell adder.

This is suggested as being treated as a (RM) light crossbow with darts tipped with "Pûra" a Lv2 conversion poison.

I've looked in the RM books and cant find Pûra anywhere. The poison charts also describe more than just the Level of a poison but also it's severity.

I need to know 1) difficult of finding Pûra (and it's natural source - plant / animal / mineral) it's presumably from Deciduous forests in temperate climates - 'cause that's the Wose's home haunt.

How do I model a Pipeblow in MERP. A crossbow seems inappropriate. The pipeblow would not have the range or penetration power of a crossbow, and it would reload more quickly. I believe a shortbow is a more appropriate base on which to model it.

.... Hmm run out of space in the window and it wont let me scroll down.

Bookmarks are useful lol

Hmmm. So I've discovered..

I've been playing LOTR Adventure game, the d6 version for a few weeks.  We have switched to MERP but I have not converted our characters.  Instead we've picked PC's from the Loons module.  I don't have a full compliment of Player's so I'm running three characters myself (so we can complete the adventure).

The other Player is running Wilhaet Brem. Currently Brem is alone, traveling the Great East Road towards the Last Inn.  He has had a few adventures along the way including finding dog-like tracks alongside wolf tracks.  Very unusual he reckons. About 100 miles from the Inn he encounters a traveling husband and wife coming from the Inn, they were attacked by wolves and barley escaped using firebrands and setting the leader on fire.  They offer Brem 1gp to bring them back to the Inn safely.  He agrees and on the way they are attacked again, unfortunately for the wolves they meet Wolf-Slayer (the player nicknamed it Hipcae).  Brem easily chases them into the woods slaying only one.  On the way the wife relays they a woman named Cigfa is looking for hardy adventures from some task.  Fast-forward to the Inn Brem is eager to hear more and has to wait in the common room while Cigfa interviews a dwarf, elf and two humans. LOL!

I ran this entire adventure in the car while driving.  Although I've read the MERP book twice I still have NO IDEA how to run MERP but I've ran other d100 systems so I just made it up on the fly.  I came to this site today to get some advice.

I want to climb a cliff face, my Climb MM is +11.

I roll the dice, 68 and add 11 = 79.

Now what do I do?

I want to attack a wolf with my broadsword, +53

I roll the dice, 99 and add 53 = 152

Now what?

Thank you in advance.

Ruairi,

Would you mind sharing your GM screen?

I made a screen and character sheet for the LOTR Adventure Game if your interested.

I run games with the detail on story and fun, not on rules. So instead of taking time to look stuff up I just fudge it. Once I get used to the MERP system that'll change.

Climbing a cliff Face: You want to refere to the Moving Manouvers table.

1) take the characters encumbrance penalty and subtract it from the modified roll. - I assume that he would have taken off his pack and left his shield behind. - so his encumbrance penalty should be small or 0

Determine the difficulty of the task - Jumping across the 2" crevice at the bottom of the Long Fell to land dynamically on the cliff face would be a very hard manouvre in my mind - and sheer folly for anyone who did not have climbing experience (i.e no climb skill)

Compaire the final modified roll against the Moving Manoeuvres table in the book all the tables are conveniently located at the back in my edition.

For a medium or Hard Manouvre a result of 79 is likely to give a numerical output say 50, for a very hard it might give a lower figure of about 10

There are 3 options for interpreting the results.

In this situation I would base it on:

Numerical results below 100 are "Near Sucess" and the number can be considered a % of the characters normal maximum movement rate.

An "F" is failure - your character falls off the cliff. - On the MM table this only hapens with a very low roll

As he is climbing vertically is normal maximum movement rate of 50' plus his MM bonus would not apply.

A 300' Cliff could take 2 hours or more to climb for an inexperienced climber. Unless he knows rope-craft and has someone at the bottom belaying, plus has pitons, a hammer and the skill to use them failure means a long drop and possible death (certain death if he falls from too high)

I would consider the skill to climb to be seperate from the ropework skills to tie onto a rope, and use pittons &correctly to ensure that a failed role does not mean death. - also for a long climb Fatigue would set in very quickly - trust me on this I know. the climber will need to take frequent rests..

Previously Larry Moore wrote:

 

I want to climb a cliff face, my Climb MM is +11.

I roll the dice, 68 and add 11 = 79.

Now what do I do?

 

I want to attack a wolf with my broadsword, +53

I roll the dice, 99 and add 53 = 152

Now what?

 

Thank you in advance.

 

Combat:

"I want to attack a wolf with my broadsword, +53

I roll the dice, 99 and add 53 = 152

Now what?"

Subtract the wolfs DB - I've not looked it up but lets say it's 35? - that gives you 117

A wolf is not likely to parry - that makes no sense.

look on the 1HS table against the No Armor or Soft Leather colum (check the stats on a wolf for armor type - his thick fur probably acts like soft Leather.)

117 will be a reasonable dammage plus a crit maybe 15C

15 is the concussion hits dealt, the C is the specific damage inflicted.

your character rolls for the critical

I just rolled a 33 for you. a C gets no modifiers. 33 on the slashing Crit table is strike to the fore arm (I think) minor dammage, +5 hits 1 Hit per round.

... Or something like that I've not looked it up.

A higher crit roll of 80 or so could read "Strike to neck, artery severd, for stunned for 12 rounds, an +25 Hits & 12 hits per round. -50 to activity.

-this foe is alrlready dead, they just might not reallise it yet, and keep fighting anyway (GM's Discression)

These Crit texts give a great, gorey comedy and realism to combat in Merp and Rolemaster... but all the calcs take longer.... Usefull to have a calculator handy.

These kind of crits can lead to single hit kills of a for much higher level than you... and to nice names for weapons that the player has been lucky with...

My Umli player has named her warhammer "HogLauncher" due to a very funny interaction with "Muc" from the Longfells adventure, which left my players learning that just occasionally pigs do fly.

Larry, I'm sorry but we can't post copyrighted materials on this site - especially anything that Tolkien Enterprises keeps an eye on as they are very litigous.

However if you search online for MERP COmbat Screen, you will quickly find downloadable versions... Though the one I ended up with had very poor contrast & I'll be making up my own.... use the templates on the downloaded one, your rule book and a photocopier to produce a set of tables on A4 or Letter paper.

Then take come card - I used some folder files from my office. and Prit-Stick. this let me duplicate the original....

An A3 Printer or copier and you could produce a little booklet with just the tables you need, and leave the basic combat MM & SM tables on your combat screen... the rest go in a 16 page booklet (that's 4 double sided A3 pages, stapled in the middle.) - the first 4 pages are the Crits & failure tables, then the magic tables then the other tables you need.

I would also add a page with Weather tables beside the movement rates and encounter tables.

If you want to include the risks of magic use (risk of notice by Sauronic forces) then this table should be added as well. - remember the Troll shawls is patrolled by orcs from Angmar, and if your people use magic they may come looking for you.

But it's not too bas, I had 3 characters ambushed while sleeping, by 8 Orcs, including 1 Lv5 and 2 Lv3's. (nice patrol with a Liutennant and 2 Corporals in modern military terms)

Our Mage was rendered unconscious, and lost an eye to a Hand-Axe wound (nice Death EXP)

the animist hid in a tree and shot poison darts down at the throng of orcs, and our Umli  Explorer, wearing her boots of leaping initially dispached one who was behind us with her Bolas, leaped over to finish him off, then made great use of HogLauncher, once again getting a very lucky crit against the Liutennant, dispaching him with a single blow to the side of the head, crushing his skull.

Previously Larry Moore wrote:

Ruairi,

 

Would you mind sharing your GM screen?

I made a screen and character sheet for the LOTR Adventure Game if your interested.

 

I run games with the detail on story and fun, not on rules. So instead of taking time to look stuff up I just fudge it. Once I get used to the MERP system that'll change.

 

 

I've now got my game off the ground. I'm looking for an online tool to use to assist players to keep up to date and communicate between game sessions

A mini Forum

A Blog space to let payers or GM maintain a Blog of the game, thereby gradually building a co-authored novel based on our exploits.

Document Storage to place character sheets, and Cultural information etc that players and GM can use and update.

(e.g fleshing out information on the locales where we are playing and characters are from to assist them in playing their characters)

Any suggestions of free to access servers we can use to set-up such a site?

You can already do so from within your own merp.com Member folder, or using the existing structure of forums and such here on merp.com. Let us know if you need any guidance on how to do so.

-Merp.com Volunteer Team.

Great to see there is stil other fans of MERP. I agree to the fact that it can be a little difficult to keep the game flowing as you have to find a lot of tables and rules for almost every action/situation. I copied the most used tables and have them ready - together with my combatscreen it works out pretty good. Some shops still have old MERP-stuff for sale.

Hope to get some good advice in this forum as I try to start as a GM again after many years.

Many MERP greetings to all of you!