THE CHARACTERS I've been asked elsewhere to give some more detail about the characters themselv es,

so here it goes. GRUON, DWARF WARRIOR Would have been a pretty standard high STR/CON build (very high CON, which combi ned with some good rolls and dwarf racial advantages resulted in him eventually having a ton of hit points), if it hadn't been for one extremely high roll. In MERP, you see, appeareance (meaning how beautiful your character is) was dete rmined by a 1-100 roll and modified by CHA. Gruon rolled very high and even after the dwarven CHA penalty ended with an appeareance value of 94 (90-100 being mor e or less movie star levels of attractiveness), which is possibly the highest I ever saw playing MERP for a dwarf character. The GM, of course, found it hilario us and made a point of having female NPCs hit on him with some regularity. Other than this, the guy started with some rather good gear (+15 mace, which wou ld be a +3 weapon in D&D; +10 to defense chain mail) and some serious money (sil ver, gold and some jewels overall equivalent to 100 gold coins, which is fifty t imes the starting money for first level characters). Also, no provided backstory , so the GM gave the player some broad strokes and we played with that. ELTURION, NOLDO ELF MAGE Have I mentioned that low level mages in MERP really, really sucked? Because the y do. They get somewhat better as they level up, but never go beyond decent (unless yo u happen to run with the Rolemaster expanded spell lists, since MERP lists cap a t level 10). Rune reading and magic item usage skills don't really compensate an d, for example, the character Elturion was restricted to two spells for the firs t level: Sleep V (can put to sleep five levels worth of enemies) and Projected L ight (beam of light projected from hand, explicitly works as a flash-light). Beyond the frankly limited magic, the character spoke roughly half a zillion lan guages from the start and in combat used a dagger that let him cast a water bolt once a day. His backstory presented him as a scholar going back home after visi ting the libraries of Gondor, who was interested in the mostly lost lore of the ringsmiths of Eregion (purely intellectual reasons, honest). Other than this, the most remarkable thing about Elturion was that a poor roll i n the Appeareance score resulted in a rather ugly elf (App 37), even with the ve ry high CHA bonus of elves in general (and Noldor in particular) accounted in. L ots of joking about this, considering the fabulously beautiful dwarf warrior and , in the end, the player decided to justify the appeareance through backstory by giving her wizard some ugly scarring as a result of getting caught in a fire as a kid. AMIRA, HARADANETH ANIMIST Rolled the maximum value in the AGI roll and then burned one "background option" bonus to bump it to 102, which is as high as it gets for PCs in MERP. High INT. Combined with a +15 bow she had, the character soon turned into the go-to membe r of the team in terms of delivering ranged pain, sometimes in combination with spells (she started with Calm I, which allowed her to prevent a single target fr om taking aggressive action for a minute). The backstory provided was pretty interesting stuff, though. Harad, in the rolep

laying game, was a rather complex territory that in spite of being generally hos tile towards Gondor for much of its history, was not a realm of Sauron worshippi ng fanatics until the very end of the Third Age (with Sauron back in Mordor and ready to crush anyone willing to step out of line). In this context, Amira was supposed to be a former street rat, turned low rank p riest of a sect of followers of a local Moon goddess who having angered the Nazg ul up in Minas Morgul with their pacifism got mostly wiped out. Amira essentiall y decided to try her luck with Gondorians, who might kill her, over the bunch of bastards actively trying to kill her. Player used the final background bonuses to buy high skill levels in First Aid, Dancing and Legerdemain to justify the ba ckstory. Also, the GM took the sect stuff and used for plot later. HALDAN, DUNADAN PALADIN There was nothing remarkable about the character in terms of stats or skills, bu t the backstory they (player and GM) cooked up to justify playing a paladin was pretty interesting. As previously mentioned, the Rynd Aratoran (House of the Champions) was an origi nal homebrewed concept for Middle Earth paladins by one Victor P. Arissa that go t published at one point in a fan-written magazine. They are presented as a Gond or sponsored organization created in the early Third Age and effectively dismant led during the Balchoth invasion with the death of almost all its members during the battle of the Field of Celebrant, later restored by Aragorn upon his ascens ion to the throne. Despite the timeframe, the GM allowed the player to run with it, painting the or der as extremely diminished from its glory days (quaint in the eyes of most who even know about its existence), but still extant and respected to some degree by the authorities of Gondor as a reminder of the glories of times long past. Than ks to being a member of the Rynd Aratoran, the Haldan character was effectively a free agent of the Steward, legally allowed to ask for anything needed from eit her the local authorities or populace of Gondor to complete his missions, but un able to accept monetary compensation for his deeds. Also, though potentially capable of using some limited magic, failure in the rel evant rolls resulted in him starting the game magic-less. LEOWYN, ROHIR WARRIOR As noted before, this was a character provided as an example in the corebook, so there is not a whole lot to comment about. She was a somewhat unusual high STR/ AGI build, with low CON (same hit points than the mage at the start, as a matter of fact), with high skill scores in Riding and some other stuff related to hors es. Other than that, she had a horse and had a remarkably high appeareance value (92). Her backstory painted her as a woman hunting the murderer of her love interest, who was supposed to be one of the escorts of the ambassador of Rohan in Minas Ti rith. GM had a lot of fun with this. A lot. ESTRECCA, DUNLENDING BARD Estrecca, son and grandson of Estrecca, was less lucky than his ancestor of the same name (the previous character of the same name I had played). Average to bad rolls and the jack-of-all-trades nature of the bard class resulted in my charac ter being a less than impressive party member (weak in terms of hit points, too)

, although I managed to get a few good moments. Although as a bard I got some limited spellcasting (starting with Whisper, which let me project my whispers some distance away from myself), I also got some lea ther armor with defensive bonuses (this removed my spellcasting ability, but was a good decision that saved my character three times early on), as well as a flu te that let me cast music to stun single enemies twice a day. My backstory painted the character as a Gondor/Rohan hating jerk who was looking for those who had sacked the tomb of his ancestor (my previous character) and s tolen his relics. This was an ongoing plot thread for much of the campaign and t he GM wisely ensured that I wouldn't catch up with the tomb raiders until my cha racter was of high enough level to get only minor benefits out of the recovered family treasures.