MERP: Dawn of the Fourth Age Session 1

 Battle Against the Troll

This is part of an ongoing campaign. You can find the other sessions over on the sidebar.

On Sunday, we got together via Roll20 to play our first session of MERP. As I discussed in my last post, the game is very loosely based on the ICE Palantir Quest module. Due to heavy modification, almost the entire first session was material I generated rather than actual material from the module.

Our fellowship consists of:

Ardaer: Silvan Elf Warrior
Banrim: Dwarf Animist
Dirdan: Sindar Elf Mage
Tulip Mugwort: Fallowhide Hobbit Burglar
Galadhil: Dunaden Ranger
Sindawe: Haradan Bard

1 Lothron F.A. 15

The fellowship are mostly young and have been working together for the last few years, aiding Gondor with its reconstruction. Having proven themselves useful to the realm, they were summoned to the White Tower in Minas Tirith to meet with the High Seer, Tarquillan. As they made their way through the city, they were pleased to see how many young children were in the streets. Each spring seems to bring new life to Middle Earth.

They are met at the White Tower by Elegar, the High Seer's assistant. He explains that Tarquillan is blind and that they should not be alarmed when they meet him. He then escorted them up to the Seer's chamber.

Tarquillan explained that he had recently seen some strange images while gazing into the Palantir. One image was looking out from a cave onto a frozen body of water, the other was clearly the inside of one of the Great Library Vaults. The Great Library Vaults were found the major cities of antiquity, but only the vault in Minas Tirith remains in the hands of Man. The known vaults were located in:

Minas Tirith
Osgiliath
Tharbad
Fornost Erain
Cameth Brin
Annuminas

The High Seer is very familiar with the vault in Minas Tirith, and knows that his vision was one of the other vaults, but he does not know which. He asks them to investigate the vault in Osgiliath, because it is the closest, and to bring back the Vault Keeper's Journal and Inventory. As the Palantir are often connected to items of great power, he wonders if one lies in the vault. Once they agree, he gives them the key to the vault and warns them that the vault and its contents may be trapped.

They ride to Osgiliath and find it still a city in ruins, torn by conflict between the the forces of Man and the remnants of Sauron's army. Gondor has not had the resources to launch an offensive to take the lands east of the river and have instead focused on just holding the western half of the city. As they approach the gates they can see the ruins of the Dome of Stars, beneath which lies the vault, straddling one of the bridges to the eastern city.

Once inside the gates they find Centril, a ranger in command of the city, arguing with a mercenary captain whose men are looting a nearby tomb. Tulip approached, introduced the party, and asked Centril if they could assist in any way. Centril asked if they could cover the mercenaries' patrol that night. When the characters answered that they could, Centril fired the mercenaries and ordered them to leave the city. He offered to give the fellowship a boat to cross the river under the cover of darkness the following night.

While patrolling the city, the party encounters a band of five orcs that have crossed the river to raid. They make fairly short work of the orcs, taking only minor damage, which they heal by resting through the next day.

2 Lothron F.A. 15

The next night, they use the boat to slip into the river and carefully make their way across to the Dome under cover of darkness. While on the water, they hear the sound of something banging against the bottom of the boat. Sindawe thrusts his spear under the boat and something that looks like a thick vine splashes out of the water. They row away.

When the reach the base of the Dome, Tulip uses Ardaer's enchanted rope to secure a route to the top for the fellowship. Sadly, the mage slips and falls while climbing, breaking his leg. The others use the ropes to haul him up into the Dome. The find a waist high pile of gnawed bones waiting for them at the top.

Once they make their way into the Dome they hear a large creature breathing. Ardaer sneaks ahead and sees a troll sleeping by the stairs down into the vault. They all decide to sneak in and ambush the troll. To my surprise this works, they manage to deal a massive amount of damage in the first round and repeatedly stun the troll so that he cannot attack.

This ended the session.

Thoughts on MERP

I was rather pleased by MERP in play. The first round of combat was slow, but we were moving through the charts at a good clip by the end of the first fight. The critical hit tables present genuinely entertaining results, and the effects lend an extra layer of strategy to the battles. The players essentially stun locked the troll and managed to defeat it without ever taking a hit. This all ends a level of realism that is missing from many other fantasy role-playing games of the era. All told, I was pleasantly surprised with how well the game played. Is it slower than the B/X descended OSR systems? Yes, but the detail it gives is a fair trade off in my mind. 

I made a few errors during the game. I am pretty sure that I did not always apply the Defensive Bonus correctly every time and I think that I slightly misinterpreted some of the Moving Maneuver rolls. None of these made much difference in the outcome of the game, and I should be able to correct these mistakes in the future.

I failed to understand the importance of the Secondary Skills while making characters. The way the book (I was using my old 1st edition copy) is organized, they are not really emphasized and easy to overlook. Because I overlooked them during character creation (to be fair, they aren't even really on the sheet), it wasn't clear how to resolve some actions during the game. Their use didn't really click with me until the very end. I will probably adjust for this by giving each player 5 free ranks in Secondary Skills to place before the next session. This should not unbalance the game.

Overall I was really happy with how the game went, it wasn't anywhere near as slow as I remembered from my childhood (almost certainly a function of not being a child anymore). The heroes were much more powerful and survivable than I expected as well. It is still a dangerous game, but it did not seem to be as deadly as '80s D&D.

I am looking forward to playing again.