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Another useful roleplaying resource for the period is ICE's Robin Hood campaign book: http://www.icewebring.com/ICE_Products/Product_Page.php?product_id=206%20Robin%20Hood

I have only had the time for a quick read of most of it, but it makes a very good impression so far, very clearly written and with all the rules required for a fantasy game. If the playtesting was of the same quali- ty as the representation, I would not hesitate to give it 5 of 5 stars. That said, I am afraid I have already put too much effort into adap- ting Call of Cthulhu to my setting to change the setting's system now. However, I think I will "borrow" a couple of ideas from Age of Shadow, for example I like the way the skills are organized more than the way CoC does it.

Thank you, I downloaded it and will take a look at it.

In my view BRP is what you make of it, it can cover almost the entire range of genres and styles well, and this site is an excellent and very friendly sour- ce of ideas both for new ways to use BRP and for improvements of the tradi- tional ways.

Thank you, I will take a look at them.

I do not remember the precise dates, but it seems to me that there were less than twenty years between the Avalon Hill trademark and the time Greg trademarked RuneQuest, so at least according to our law the trade- mark would not have been dead.

You could "buy" it here: http://catalog.chaosium.com/product_info.php?products_id=6652&osCsid=a31d2fe49fd7590fde7aa05f26195a79 Once you have "bought" it, it should become a part of your account.

For a very different mummy, a wise and friendly one, you could try: Jane C. Loudon, The Mummy ! (1827) Of course, a wise and friendly mummy could just as well be our old friend Nyarlathotep in a new disguise ...

Only Dr Who had a slim chance to stop the Asor ... Looking at the number of additional skills I intend to introduce (for example Etiquette, Housekeeping, Ritual, Perform, Shadow Lore, Spirit Lore and Sur- vival) and the skill values the average Asor will need to survive in the arc- tic environment, I think I will combine some of the other skills - a method I used for other settings, too. Athletics will cover skills like Climb, Jump and Throw, Perception will cover skills like Listen and Spot Hidden, Stealth will cover skills like Conceal and Sneak, and Unarmed Combat will cover Fist, Kick and all that. This should reduce the number of skills enough to make it possible to get sufficient va- lues in the remaining and new skills.

Well, you know, the Asor are an ancient nomadic culture ... They came into existence in the 1980s, where they inhabited the far north of the German Midgard RPG. From there they wandered into D&D's Forgotten Realms, and then on to the real world's Baffin Island during a Classic Cthulhu, a Cthulhu Now and a few pseudo-historical campaigns. And now they seem to feel an urge to visit Middle Earth for a while ... Of course, they are a little isolated in the far north of Middle Earth, with on- ly very few contacts with the Southerners, mainly with the seafaring Elves of Lindon. However, with the revival of Arnor in the Fourth Age this could change, with many new opportunities to travel south and bring back strange things which may prove useful to the clans. Moreover, after Sauron's final disappearance there is now also an opportunity to cleanse the north and to break Morgoth's ancient curse of the land - lots of typical Middle Earth ad- venture possibilities, enough for a campaign. But in the end the hunter Running Fox and the shaman Laughing Seal probab- ly just heard rumours and stories about that place Middle Earth, and now in- sist on visiting it ...

Yes, the main differences are the skill list, which includes many skills typical for a medieval setting instead of the skills of classic Cthulhu, the professions and some additional informations about medieval life, medieval weapons and combat, but the core of the rules remains unchanged. I think I have now finished most of the description of the Asor, the arctic hun- ter-gatherers at the center of the setting, so additional details can easily be added to that basic framework. For the setting beyond the land of the Asor I will use the old MERP material, mainly the Arnor realm book and the originally unpublished material of the Lin- don supplement. It seems that there is little need for adaptations, especially since I will completely ignore the Northern Waste supplement - I strongly dis- like its descriptions of people and events of the far north. Besides, my setting will take place during the end of the Third Age and the be- ginning of the Fourth Age, and there is little "canonical" material about this ti- me in the far north anyway, I am quite free to come up with what I consider as plausible consequences of the previous events and developments. This leaves the skills and professions plus some spot rules as the main tasks for me. I think I will have to add a few "arctic" skills and delete a few others which do not fit into the Asor's culture, and also to define the Asors' four pro- fessions (fisher, hunter, crafter, shaman). Finally I will work on the spot rules mentioned earlier, the shamanistic magic and the "winter phase" stuff. I would upload the material I have already more or less completed, but since it is in German this would hardly make sense - and it is not as good as the material already in the forum's download section anyway. What I can offer is some of the originally unpublished material of the planned Lindon supplement for MERP, which I have found a while ago on a Middle Earth fan website. If you are interested in it, just send me a PM with your e-mail address, and I will send it to you.

If the content of the English versions is identical to the content of the German versions, my answer would be a clear "No", at least there the differences are al- most without exception of a purely cosmetic kind. Unless there is a rules lawyer among your players who insists on the precise wording and literal meaning of each and every sentence, you would hardly be able realize which version you are playing, they are 99.99 % identical.

Yes, I agree. However, in this Middle Earth setting the equivalents of the deities, Eru and the Valar, are so far removed from the world of the Asor that the Asor know of their existence, but do not expect them to directly influence the events in their world. As a result the Asor revere them and worship them on special oc- casions, but they are not an element of the Asors' everyday beliefs or magic.

No, not really. I am aiming for a magic on a "natural level", where all results of magic could also be explained as natural events (although sometimes ra- ther strange ones) and the characters can never really be sure that magic works at all. More powerful and "organized" magic is beyond the reach of human characters.

In a way, my Asor will replace the Lossoth who live on the large peninsula north- west of the Ice Bay, and their society will be a little more structured, advanced and open to outside contacts than the Lossoth society, but the basics are the same - arctic hunter-gatherers on the edge of Middle Earth. Right now I am still mostly working on the setting's "fluff" and have not yet begun to tailor the rules to the setting, so I am not yet sure whether I will have to add any or many options from BRP to the Cthulhu rules to give the setting the "feel" I am aiming for. The shamanistic magic system will be my own design, based upon the shaman's social skills in negotiating with the spirits, and I am also thinking of rules for the "winter phase" of the campaign (mainly rules for social advancement through ser- vice to the clan and rules for crafting useful stuff), and some additional rules for dealing with an arctic environment - but that's it, at least at the moment, other- wise the Cthulhu rules should work well.

Cubicle 7's The One Ring RPG uses the same approach, it describes only the land and the people of one region of Middle Earth and leaves all the rest for the future supplements.

Yep, Mylady was born in the mountains and grew homesick, so we moved to the southernmost town of Germany.

Thank you, this is a very good point.

The examples which come to my mind when looking at the setting I am currently working on are trade negotiations and diplomatic negotiations as well as "politics" of all kinds. In such cases both sides tend to have conflicting interests, and to find a mutually acceptable compromise is a lengthy process which can be difficult and slightly boring to roleplay, but is somewhat too complex to handle with a single die roll or a small num- ber of dice rolls. Here a game mechanic / procedure to deal with this would really be most useful, especially because it would keep the nego- tiations on the character / in game level and avoid the problem that it could turn into a referee - player(s) / out of game conflict.

As mentioned elsewhere, I am currently moving my old Asornok setting to a version of Middle Earth, and now I am wondering which of the d100 sy- stems would fit this setting best. The characters will be members of a tribal society of arctic hunters, their available professions will be hunter (sea / seals and land / reindeer and other game), craftsmen and (female) shaman [see my ideas for the set- ting's spirit magic in the BRP forum thread], the focus of the game will be on dealing with the arctic environment, hunting and social interaction (in- cluding negotiations and trade with foreigners) - there will be only very few combat. It should be possible to use some kind of "winter phase" to give the characters an opportunity to found families, raise children, craft things for use or trade, and all that. My first idea was to use the Middle Ages version of Call of Cthulhu, main- ly because it is more rules light than BRP and can easily be modified, for example by adding some of the BRP options which fit the setting. How- ever, there are now so many d100 systems that it may well be that an- other one I do not know would fit the setting even better. If you have an idea for this, please let me know - thank you.

Rolling a die and swinging a sword are two completely different things, while the words of the player are meant to be identical to the words of the character. In the first case the player replaces the in game action of the character with a different out of game action, but in the second case the in game action of the character and the out of game action of the player are meant to be the same. True, this is not a fundamental difference, but one big enough to han- dle the two kinds of situations differently, I think - perhaps with the same basic game mechanics, but with an additional element in the ca- se of a social conflict situation.

In my view the main problem is that the use of social skills suffers from an "overlap" of game mechanics and roleplaying, character ac- tions and player actions. In a roleplaying combat the player does not swing a sword or use a bow, he has to rely on the game mechanics for all of his charac- ter's actions. But in the use of social skills the player usually acts for his character, he chooses the arguments and does the talking, and so on. A bad dice result with a combat skill only means that the character has failed, but a bad dice result in a social skill can feel like the player has failed, because he roleplayed the social si- tuation. In other words, a roleplaying combat decision by game mechanics cannot contradict or devalue what the player has done, because the player did not fight. But a social conflict decision by game me- chanics can contradict or devalue the player's roleplaying effort - or at least the player can (mis)understand it that way - because the player did roleplay the situation. So, combat and social conflict are not really the same situation, the game mechanics to handle them have to be at least some- what different, taking in account that the player often is or feels personally involved in social conflict situations beyond what the game mechanics rule for the outcome of his character's actions. Just my thoughts, of course.

As I see it, social mechanics work well once the players have agreed to accept the results of the relevant rules for their characters, but are not very helpful when a player insists that his character is beyond the reach of normal human psychology and social behaviour. Therefore I think whi- le good social mechanics can solve most problems like the stand off de- scribed at the beginning of this thread for most players, they would fail to solve the specific problem with this specific player. Thinking of personality traits or alignments, in my view a trait or alignment which includes "lawful" in its meaning should give a character a strong ten- dency to obey the law and therefore a negative modifier for all actions in disobedience of the law. For example, he may well hesitate to attack a re- presentative of the law, reducing the likelihood of a quick and successful attack. He can still do it, but in a "fair fight" he would be at a significant disadvantage, which the player would know.

Well, at least it is a nice song ...

Thank you for many helpful ideas. I think I will use three types of spirits, ancestors (shamans who went to the spirit world on their death), animal spirits (similar to totem animals) and general nature spirits (for example the spirit of a lake or a mountain). The ancestor spirits will be able to help in the "affairs of men", for example to give advi- ce, to heal, and so on. Their individual power will depend on their skills during their life- time, in any case their knowledge will be far more important than their magic. The animal spirits will be the spirits of specific species of animals, with the Owl and the Wolf as the spirits traditionally most friendly to the Asor and their Anganoka shamans. The animal spirits can influence the behaviour of their species of animals, and to a les- ser degree the behaviour of other animals. The nature spirits are very different in character and power, the spirit of a small pond has different interests and powers than the spirit of a high mountain or a spirit of the north wind. Spirits are normally neutral towards the Asor, but they can become hostile when the members of a clan disregard the spirit's wishes. Neglecting the rites of ancestor worship, killing a pregnant animal or harvesting too many herbs at the wrong time of the year can anger the relevant spirit enough to use its powers against the clan. The price the shamans have to pay for the help of the spirits therefore is to act as the spirits' allies, to perform the rites and teach the traditions, to protect the animals from abuse, to care for the environment, and so on. This can be everyday tasks, but also missions requested by the spirits. For example, a shaman could be asked by the spirit of Wolf to deal with the foreign trappers who are responsible for the death of a pregnant wolf and to punish them. Shamans can also enter the spirit world in trance, and sometimes they can take other members of the clan with them. Visits to the spirit world can be necessary to contact a spirit, to ask a friendly spirit for help, to apologize for a misdeed by the clan's mem- bers and to negotiate a compensation, or to carry out a spirit's wishes with a mission in the spirit world - sometimes against the interests of other spirits, which can have unwelcome consequences in the future.