OT: d20 System Lord of the Rings RPG

[hivemind]

Im looking for some feedback on a project I've been working on. It's a d20 system 3.5e Campaign Setting for Tolkien's Middle Earth. It's set in the Third Age, so it's pretty low powered. A group of us at the MVGC are getting ready to finally start playtesting it next Tuesday, and maybe some of you who are tabletop RPGers would see some glaring errors I've missed.

Anyway, it's here as a .pdf: http://www.mvgc.net/Rules%20for%20Arda.pdf

I'd welcome any comments or criticisms anyone has, either here or over at the MVGC forums (http://64.176.95.134/forum/). Thanks in advance.

[Estabin]

I used to play MERP when I was young, me and my friends kinda got dried out on AD&D so we started trying other RPG games, tryed Jorune, MERP and what not... now everyone doesn't like to play anymore *sigh*

I will give it a read always interested in reading stuff on Middle Earth :)

[hivemind]

Thanks, I'd appreciate any feedback at all. :D

[naimex]

I only read the first pages, and skimmed the rest.

so excuse me if it is in there..



You should consider writing, what happens if you die ? do you start over ? from scratch ?




Do you have a timeline up and running, with "historical" events.. and are they planned to be run through at the exact game time, they are supposed to happen.. and do you have a pre- a current and a future story built up ?

so the game will never stop.. ever evoluting, everchanging... ever alive..






This was my comment....

It sounds really good. (what I read and skimmed of it)

[hivemind]

The plan is to start the players about fifteen years before the events in The Hobbit. It's possible that they could stick around long enough to witness the War of the Ring, but unlikely.

Yeah, character death is gonna be harsh in this campaign. Pretty much, they'll be making a new character. But I usually have people make new PCs at one level below the average party level. That doesn't punish them much for dying, and it's enough encouragement to not die.

This game would have to end around the time the PCs hit 20th level, as they're too powerful for Middle-earth at that point. At least, it'd have to end in Middle-earth. No reason I couldn't portal-shift them to another D&D world or something and keep playing I guess, although they'd be really far behind the power curve of another campaign setting...

[Zu (Pluto)]

Rules implementation seems fairly solid. Nothing glaringly bad or broken, but of course these things can only truly be tested in play. I prefer D20 to exist in that region between 4th and 9th (the mid-levels) where I think the balance of capability and skill is about right, so that's what I looked at in your writeup. Of course, that's really subjective and depends on your player group and what they want out of the game.

Might want to have another look at Class Defence Bonus though. The Fighter types will start pulling ahead in BAB and AC. They are the types most likely to wear the most armour too and it might be a bit harsh on the poor Rogue types who don't wear as much armour and will really have less AC now.

Have you had a look at HARP, btw? Waay back with MERP I felt let down because MERP was like part of the RM rules but very incomplete by itself. HARP is ICE's current effort of a RM-lite. Unlike MERP, it's not just a bit of the RM rules cut out - it's actually a proper and complete system. I mention this because D20 tends to have it's own feel, which I feel is not really Middle-Earthly-feel. But that's just my opinion. Maybe I did too much MERP back then.

Zu

[hivemind]

I'm pretty determined that it needs to be d20. That's what everyone knows now, so to make things simple at the club we try and run everything d20 now. For us the game's not about the mechanics anyway, it's about character development and story, so the mechanic is secondary.

The idea with the class based AC bonus (it's been done in other games, like d20 Modern and Star Wars) is to help make up for the lack of magic items. The fighters are supposed to pull away a little at high levels. They're the guys up front. But your right, it may become a problem. Only play will show...

[Zu (Pluto)]

There was something we tried once but we didn't play enough to really see how well it worked - universal level defence bonus. i.e. every single class has the same AC bonus due to level. This may seem a little strange at first but the idea is to negate the always hit hit-point attrition effect of mid-high level D20 and keep a level playing field. Remember fighters are better at "reducing damage" already due to better HPs.

I seem to recall it went up by 1 every 2 levels, and I think it started at +2 at 1st level (so the progression was 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, etc). We only gave this to "Named Characters" such as the PCs. The idea is people who want to be defensive can then take the defensive feats, etc, and match the tank-fighters (who wear armour, have huge HP, and don't "waste" feats). Fighters still have a definate advantage if they want to go high AC due to their bonus Fighter feats. 5th level Figher in Leather, 16 DX, Expertise, Dodge, etc, was happily in about 20ish AC, comparable to Mr Plate next to him, who took "Kill Bad Guy" feats instead.

But we only played for a few sessions that time (one off scenario) so can't tell how well it would work in the long run. This was for a Swashbuckling-style game, btw. In the mook-fight scenes everyone could pull their own weight though the fighter-types obviously mowed through everything. Against the Named enemies (henchmen and the villain), the main fighters took those on while the rogue/noble types danced with the mooks to keep them off the Swordsmans' backs (they tried to ignore the mooks at first and take out the main bad guy, then I have like 5 mooks leap on the heros and instead of attacking perform Aid Another actions to give the villain bonuses to attack and AC - scared the PCs silly when the bad guy started having +4 bonuses attack/AC).

Anyway... must stop rambling. Hope the game goes well.

Zu