Tuesday 26 March 2013

Using AD&D for 3rd age Middle Earth roleplaying – a quick and dirty guide.

A short collection of thoughts on running a Middle Earth campaign using AD&D rules.

Character creation
  • There are no clerics, except for elven magic-user/clerics, who are restricted to magic-user weapons and armour usage, but may also wield longswords, shortswords and bows.
  • Pure magic-users, illusionists and druids must be human and derive their powers from the same source, given to them by the Valar and is spiritual in nature. They are nominally lead by the 5 Istari Wizards (Saruman, Gandalf, Radagast, Morinehtar and Rómestámo ) who train all types by tend to favour certain classes, Saruman favouring magic-users, Gandalf favouring magic-users and druids, Radagast favouring druids, Morinehtar favouring magic-users and illusionists and Rómestámo favouring illusionists.  There is no magic-missile spell!
  • There are no gnomes or paladins.
  • Half-elves are considered High-men and half-elves are usually elves.
  • Half-orcs are considered Uruk-hai, evil by all other races, and maybe challenging to play unless the party are in league with Sauron or Saruman. 
Bestiary
  • Goblins, hobgoblins, orcs, bugbears and ogres are all types of goblins and orcs.
  • Undead of all types. Nazghul are fighter/magic-user spectres.
  • Will'o'wisps.
  • Wyvern's without stings are fell beasts.
  • Giant spiders of various sizes. Shelob being one of the largest.
  • Hill giants are trolls.
  • Stone giants.
  • Balor demons are Balrogs. Other demons are hinted at throughout the books.
  • Were-creatures.
  • Dire wolves are worgs.
  • Treants are ents. They can be used for evil or angry tree spirits.
  • Faerie spirits are related to Tom Bombadil, and can be dryads, nymphs etc,.
  • Creatures like carrion crawlers are hinted in the dark caverns of the world, and should be used as singular entities.
  • The watcher in water could giant squid or even a hydra aka cold drake.
  • Dragons and dragon like giant lizards.
Magic items
  • These should mainly be arms and armour, often of elven manufacture and all individually named.
  • Avoid very D&D themed miscellaneous items. 
  • Herbs, properly harvested and applied can count as healing spells of various sorts.  Rangers, druids and elves are able to recognise such herbs on a % roll of 5x their level.



No comments:

Post a Comment