Play as Lord of the Rings?

[Guk73]

Does anyone know where to find accurate stats for the LOTR characters? A couple of posts have 'guessed' the stats but it would be cool if you could use actual stats and create each character and play them in BG2.

There is an actual game by Games Workshop but I can't decifer the stats on the gameplay sheet available on their website:
http://www.games-workshop.com/lotr/LOTRplaysheet.pdf

If someone had the rule book, it may help.

[oaxaca_dan]

Those stats are for warhammer's tabletop miniature/strategy game (e.g., warhammer 40,000K) - which, though, i've never played before, the stats i believe do not really translate into ad&d or other rpgs.

as for stats, sorry, i don't have the info - not sure if the d&d based games were ever allowed to produce LOTR material (licensing issue). Instead, the untill-recently defunct but-soon-to-be-born-anew Iron Crown Enterprise (I.C.E.), which sold Rolemaster and Middle Earth Role Playing (MERP) had the license for tolkien material (though they no longer have it). I have the material but don't believe it will be useful for you, since the system uses 10 character attributes which are based on percentile dice (d100)

a page to check out is the forums on the Guild COmpanion site, which has discussions on the old merp stuff, rm, and some threads about converting to the new D&D

www.guildcompanion.com

good luck
oaxaca_dan

[Mourn Yauntyyr]

Nope, TSR was never legally allowed to anything from Tolkien Enterprises. All the rights were sold to Iron Crown Enterprises; they published them in their Middle Earth Role Playing Game which came out in the early 80s (I believe). So the guy above is correct, to get "offical" stats you'd have to find the old MERP rules and then use a conversion to AD&D. However, if you can't find anything satisfying on that, I wrote a LOTR campaign setting for my group a while back, I can dig it up and post what my stats were for the Nine Walkers if you want. Just lemme know.


Mourn Yauntyyr
Tolkien freak extraordinare

[fable]

...And if you really want to get down & dirty, JRR Tolkien never thought about stats: back in the 1950s, when LOTR was published, pen & paper games were pretty much limited to very abstract strategic representations of historical battles. Tolkien's wizards, for example, don't fit into contemporary AD&D stereotypes: they were nearly immortal, but possessed little offensive spell, and worked instead *through* reality, rather than above it as super spell generators.

Not that you can't create a LOTR character set, but just don't expect it to fit well. A shame in a way that Interplay never negotiated for the rights with Tolkien's oldest son and estate to produce a game set in the LOTR world. We've gotten some pretty cheesy games based on Tolkien, and nothing remotely approaching the original.

[Tancred]

It'd be WEIRD, wouldn't it. Like, Frodo and company get lost on the Barrow Downs and stumble upon Bodhi's Tomb. Or Gandalf encounters Irenicus while seeking Dol Guldur. Or Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli track the Uruk-Hai all the way to Amn. Or Boromir just dies again. You might just as well do a Beowulf party, or a Sense and Sensibility party. It wouldn't be any less strange.
What you COULD do - wait for Neverwinter Nights, and try to transcribe Lord of the Rings into an Infinity Engine game. Now THERE's a quest, eh?

[ 01-14-2002: Message edited by: Tancred ]