Fergo113

It can pack a punch alright, but if you extrapolate out the guidelines for the Giant Squid in the BRP rulebook, that's the kind of critter where talking about. :eek: Bound to make those poor player character's think twice before setting off on a sailing adventure (hehehehe). I have to say that the new BRP rulebook has made it SO much easier to build these creatures profiles. Quods to Jason and Sam and all those for making the new BRP rulebook and dream come true. :thumb::thumb::thumb: Ah Chaosium, you've done it again

Kraken it is then I have just posted the 5th creature of the week, the Kraken Inspired and moulded off the good old giant squid from the BRP rulebook, but bigger, meaner and with a nasty streak a mile wide (placed into a Middle-earth context). Enjoy! I have also added the Nazgul back into the Wrath's section of the Creatures Chapter for ME-BRP (well, I will when I get to transcribe the creatures beginning with 'W', currently still transcribing the 'S' critters). Cheers, Fergo113

That's the way I am designing and running my Middle-earth BRP game with my rpg group. It's working fine so far. I am also playtesting using a Critical Hit system that is a BRP version of the old MERP Critical charts. That's also proved a success amongst the group. I plan to add this as an optional rule within ME-BRP. Cheers, Fergo113

Sorry PK, I kind of dumped the idea of the Nazgul as really they are not creatures as such but nine NPC characters. I was thinking of including them in something at a later date (campaign setting :confused:) and I felt I was way behind in finishing the chapter so they sort of got flicked. But I guess I could go back to put them in again, but they would be a lot of work. Wraiths as a creatures group will be in the Creatures chapter, but these are less powerful than the Nine. The Olog-hai I'm not up to transcribing yet sadly Trifletraxor. I've just done the Spiders and will soon be around to doing the trolls section. I do have the Kraken done though (both fresh and salt water varieties), if you want me to post that.

It's almost that time of the week again :eek: so anyone got a burning desire to see a particular creature? I've finished up to the Spiders section, so if you look back over the past posts you'll see a list of the critters there. :thumb:

Lol, yeah good point Slade, I'll remember that in future and see if I can do a B&W version sometime. I do intend to do some adventures for this and add a few Villains character sheets but right now the ME-BRP project is taking up most of my time, so it will be a while yet before I get around to it. There is a pdf version of Eden Studios 'City of Heroes quickplay rpg' that has a scenario in it, if your after an idea or two for a scenario. This is what gave me the idea to do a BRP version (that and Superworld ;-(... come back Superworld... we miss you!!!). It was done around 2005 and is free at Drivethrurpg.com. Since then, Eden Studios has sat on its fat dairy-air and done nothing to make the full version of the rpg. When BRP came out, I decided to give a BRP version of CoH a shot, based on the idea of a "quickplay" set of rules like the Eden Studios game. It kind of snowballed from there. :thumb: I'd like to hear if anyone has given the CoH BRP game a go and get some playtesting feedback as I haven't had any time to playtest it with my rpg mates.

I know I said this but.... I just couldn't help myself, so.... I've just posted the fourth Creature of the Week preview for the Creatures chapter for ME-BRP. Its the Orc Ghoul.

Ah, a kindred soul Well, I would have to say then PK that between the both of us Tolkien Ent and Iron Crown can cut us just a little slack as they sunbathe on some tropical beach on the Island that they bought off the proceeds from our two pay checks...lol. I guess you can have a copy of ME-BRP then :thumb:

Ditto mate :thumb: I think I must have personnaly kept Tolkien enterprises afloat over the years with all the MERP/LotR (and other of JRR's works) stuff I have bought. I don't feel that I have slighted anyone as I bought all the rpg material I have used to draft ME-BRP, or its freely available on the web.

Thanks mate, that would be good to have a look at. I have played a lot of D20 stuff when I have been a lamb to the slaughter, oops I mean a player character in someone else's campaign but when I GM a game I always forcefully convert my players to BRP (or Runequest before that). So I struggle a bit with D20 even though I have been a sacrificial lamb tormented by that system.

How did that pan out Wolverine? I always find it hard converting D20 to BRP (or Runequest previously), but then I am a little brain challenged when it comes to D20

I'd be interested in this one as well. Keep us posted. :thumb:

OUCH! How come it took so long :confused:

Oh, sorry man but you are going to hate the Orc entry then... (lots of images) I guess I should explain to everyone that ME-BRP is actually a very selfish piece of work. I'll explain... I have notes, stats and ideas that have been floating around in their various forms clogging up my RPG cupboard for years now as well as a healthy lot of MERP, Decipher LotR and lots of Chaosium stuff. I started working on ME-BRP some years ago and started playtesting various ideas with my RPG mates about two years ago. Over that time now they have been slogging through the wilds of Eriador with me as their GM carrying an unhealthily large stack of my notes/Runequest/BRP/MERP/LotR RPG books to each gaming session, crying "follow me, lads" and throwing together the rules as we went along, using Runequest II as the ship and the MERP adventure/campaigns as the star to sail her by. :thumb: In the interests of preserving my back from snapping under all that load, I decided to compile all the material I wanted into one document. Either that of hire a Troll to act as my packmule, and you know how grumpy trolls can get.:focus: Thus the idea for ME-BRP was born. With all that background material at my disposal, plus my own ideas and notes, I ploughed on to get to about 10 chapters, 2 appendices and a bunch of character sheets all drafted into various states of existence. Then something wonderful happened... Chaosium put together the BRP rule set in one comprehensive book. :eek: (not sure if anyone noticed that book, it kind of slipped under the radar a bit ). So I decided that BRP would be better for the rule set than Runequest II and started to rework my notes etc and the Word documents I was working on. When I found this site and joined BRP Central, people were discussing what they were working on and blogged about ME-BRP. So here we are today, me trying to finish this for myself but finding out that some others would also like a copy of the work. So the intent of ME-BRP has always been a very selfish one... ie to save my spine. So yes it containes a lot of background material from many sources and a stack of images from the internet that I thought I would use to pretty up what I was making and impress my RPG mates as they continued to stumble through the Trollshaws getting sniped by Orcs in Third Age 2740 when there is a massive invasion of Orcs into Eriador (this is several centuries before the timeframe of The Hobbit). So where as copyright is a very important issue, ME-BRP is intended for my personal use only. I know that there are a few others who expressed an interest to have a copy and I am honoured to give it to them (I'll leave how they get it up to the very capable hands of Trifletraxor for distribution because I don't want anyone to get into trouble, least of all myself). Hope this helps clear up the debate about copyright, worthwhile one that it is though. Cheers Fergo113 :thumb:

Thanks Trifletraxor. I'll keep plodding on then. The problem is that there is so much good background material I can utilise that the more I think about it, I can hear the howling of the wolves even now. PeterB makes a good point about the screen shots too. I may stop doing the creature of the week preview for now then, finish the first chapter and give it to Trifletraxor to decide how to distribute it. We can work on a plan from there. :thumb: At least everyone now has a feel for what this is going to look like, which was the reason for me previewing it anyway. Thanks for the input everybody. I'll keep you posted about where I am up to with the project. Cheers, Fergo113

That very thought has been going through my head too Vile. :ohwell: It does worry me just to how much I can post before someone in a suit starts sniffing around. These days they'll slap a law suit on you just for the fun of it. There are ways around this though. Even if its placing it on a temporary file share service and emailing people directly the link. I have a lot of material I can use to produce ME-BRP from products like MERP and LotR. And I don't want to be hampered in putting ME-BRP together by fear of lawsuits. These days though, even if a fan makes a product for free and posts it on the web, the Wargs start sniffing around. In truth I'm not sure how to get around this :confused:

I plan to post it chapter by chapter, starting with the creatures chapter. This is actually chapter 10 for the whole ME-BRP but I feel that with the BRP rulebook already there as the core rules, by releasing the creatures chapter, anyone who is keen to give it a play can start right away. I would then move on to finishing the Free Peoples chapter, which has Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits, Men etc. and would give the racial backgrounds and traits for these races. After doing this, I would release the Magic chapter. This may seem a weird way to do it but when you think about it, the BRP rulebook already gives stats for Dwarves, Hobbits, Men etc (though the Elves statistics in BRP will be different in ME-BRP), and has a compatible Magic chapter. I am trying to produce a package that people could start using fairly quickly if they are already familiar with the core BRP rules and Tolkien's works. By releasing ME-BRP chapter by chapter, it should help keep the pdf's to a manageable size. Having said that, the Creatures chapter is currently around 81 pages and 61meg as a Word document :shocked: Hopefully that all makes sense, but it will be around 10+ chapters (each as a separate pdf) and also some appendices (plus I have a bunch of campaigns and adventures I need to type up and post as well). I know that sounds a lot, but its taking that to produce something faithful to the setting. However, the creatures chapter will be by far the biggest in both number of pages and size of the document. Thanks for the suggestion though :thumb:

I have just posted the third creature of the week preview for the upcoming ME-BRP Creature Chapter. This one is that loveable pet, the Fell Beast :eek: You can find it in: BRP Central > Downloads > Systems & Settings > Other settings Enjoy :thumb:

That would be a bit help if you didn't mind Atgxtg. I could do with any help you can give. So far I have the following critters scheduled for the Creatures chapter of ME-BRP: Aurochs Balrog Barghest Barrow-wights Bats Bears Boar Crebain Crawler Dark-water Dragon-kind Cold-drake Fire-drake Winged-drake Drakes Wryvern Worm Wyrm Dourhand Dwarves (Petty Dwarves) Eagles, Great Earth-kin Ents (Onodrim) Fallen Maiar Bandúrhoth Dindair Helegrog Rogmul Fell-beast Gaunt-lord Gauradan Ghost Giant Gorthorog Great Beast Griffin Huorn Kraken Losrandir (Caru) Lynx Mammoth Mearas Mewlip Morroval Neekerbreeker Olphaunts (Mûmakil) Orcs Goblin Half-orc Orc Uruk-hai Orc, Ghoul Pukul-men Salamander Sabre-toothed Cat Sea Serpent Shade Sickle-fly Skeleton Spiders, Giant Shelob’s Spawn Spirits Fell Spirit Spectre Wraith Stoorworms Trolls Cave Troll Forest Troll Hill Troll Mountain Toll Snow Troll Olog-hai Vampire Warg Watcher in the Water Watch-stone, Ancient Werewolves Wight Wolf Normal Wolf Dire Wolf Zombie Zombie Headless Zombie Severed Arm Zombie I have notes to one degree or another on all of these and am feverishly typing away nightly once my wife and youngest daughter have gone to bed, but I still have to just under half these critters left to transcribed from my notes into the document. I would be keen to see what you have mate, so please feel free to post it or pm it to me. Cheers Fergo113

Wow, THE Steve Perrin!!! :eek: Man, you are the reason I discovered and play roleplaying games! And I mean that with all due respect. :happy: Runequest was my mainstay RPG that I played for years. I dabbled in D&D but when I first played Runequest I was hooked and pretty much all the RPG's I've gamemastered since then I converted over to BRP, using my trusty Runequest 2 rulebook. Thanks heaps for all that inspiration that led to all those great hours that my RPG group has enjoyed over the years thanks in so many ways to your work. :thumb: Cheers, Fergo113

Thanks Trifletraxor. :thumb: For those of you interested, this CoH single pdf has been checked to update it to the final version of the BRP rulebook and had all errata (that I could find) fixed. It replaces the two previous files that were origionally parts 1 & 2 of the City of Heores Quickplay Pack. This file is tagged as 'Final version'. Cheers Fergo113

FunGuyFromYuggoth is right, no there are no Barghests in the Lord of the Rings mythology, but they are kind of cool and are in the Lord of the Rings Online game. This game has been one great source of inspiration (and screenshots) when doing this chapter. I have been determined to only add creatures that would fit into Tolkien's universe, not just add in fantasy based creatures. The Barghest is a creature from Celtic folklore and Tolkien drew on a lot from Norse and Celtic mythology in his works. So I want to keep in the spirit of his works. As such you will read in the creature descriptions (especially under the creatures powers) references to Spot Rules that will appear in a later chapter. These Spot Rules will help to keep Tolkien's feel and flow to Middle-earth BRP. The chapter on Magic will be especially like this. But bleeding heck, it's a big job!!! :shocked: So please be patient. I am about half way through the creatures I need to transcribe, so this chapter will probably be about another month before its completed. Then I have to complete all the rest.

There will be art and formatting, tables and charts. You can get an idea of this fromt the City of Heroes layout in the downloads section. This is one of the reasons that its become such a big job (and a huge file!). I want to produce as professional a looking document as I can. :thumb:

I thought it was high time that I gave an update as to where this ‘little’ project of mine is up to... so here goes! Currently I am about half way through transcribing my numerous notes and ideas into a legible, understandable, and more importantly, playable format. There is a wealth of material for me to draw on thanks to the many excellent Lord of the Rings books and rpg games that have been produced over the years, especially Middle Earth Role Playing (MERP) and Deciphers Lord of the Rings (LotR). I have been promising on this site for some months now to upload the first chapters of this work. Much to my annoyance :mad: I keep falling behind in meeting up to this promise. So I have decided to give those of you interested a sneak preview into what the first chapter will look like. :thumb: I plan to post a sneak preview creature each week until I complete the Creatures chapter for posting here. This will be the first of the chapters for my take on a Middle-earth Basic Roleplaying game. The idea is that at the very least, it will push me harder to finish this chapter for posting and to get on with the rest of the project, but at the same time give anyone interested a chance to have a look into what this will eventually look like. I have opened the sneak peak with two creatures; the terrifying Barrow-wights :eek: and the Barghest :shocked: So for those of you interested, hope this wets the appetite. :thumb: You will find them in: BRP Central > Downloads > Systems & Settings > Other settings Enjoy!

I second that :thumb: