Middle Earth Maelstrom

Draft rules for Middle Earth RPG campaign using homebrewed Maelstrom rules.
A game about ordinary people banding together to face great evil and defend their homes.
Character creation
Determine attributes
There are nine attributes that define key aspects of your character. Each has a numerical value
—generally between 30 and 45 to begin with—and interacts in important ways with the game’s
mechanics (explained later). You are generally free to decide about non-quantified aspects of
your character. For example, there is no attribute for attractiveness, so you can simply choose
whether your character is comely, plain, or ugly without needing to express this with a value.
Each attribute starts with a base value of 30. You must allocate another 50 points among the
attributes but may not assign more than 20 points to a single one. Starting characters thus have
attribute values between 30 and 50, totalling 320 points altogether. Over the course of the
game, these attribute values will change, some more than others.
Agility
A measure of your character’s balance, coordination, and general dexterity. A high Agility
allows you to succeed at actions like swinging across a chasm on a rope and to avoid perils like
falling from a rain-slicked precipice.
Endurance
A gauge of your character’s general physical hardiness and capacity to endure physical
hardship, injury, and pain. A deep pool of Endurance will keep you alive despite damage from
accidents, weapons, and the sorceries of the Enemy.
Knowledge
An indication of how steeped your character is in the lore of Middle Earth: its history, peoples,
places, and powers. A vast reservoir of Knowledge helps you deduce the workings of the Enemy
and to bolster your companions’ morale with songs and tales of ancient valour, or simply of
home.
Perception
A measure of your character’s awareness and the general keenness of her or his senses. A high
Perception score allows you to discern the traces of the Enemy’s servants and to escape their
ambushes.
Persuasion
Whether you use diplomacy, guile, or relentless logic, this attribute expresses your ability to
convince others of something or to get them to follow a particular course of action. A high
Persuasion score increases your chances of winning allies to the struggle against the Shadow.
Speed
A gauge of the swiftness of your reflexes and how fast you move. Great Speed allows you to
engage in swift pursuit of the Enemy’s servants and to strike first in battle.
Will
Your character’s Will score reflects her or his mental and spiritual resilience and resistance to
despair. Your character’s Will is, most crucially, her or his principal defence against the deceitful
and demoralizing enchantments of the Shadow.
Attack Skill
A combination of physical ability, training, tactical smarts, and grimness, your character’s Attack
Skill measures her or his capacity for striking lethally in combat. A high Attack Skill increases
your chances of taking down the servants of the Enemy—at least, those that can be harmed by
mortal hands.
Defence Skill
Like Attack Skill, this attribute reflects the interaction of many different qualities—instinct,
strategy, skill—that work to one end: keeping your character alive during a fight. The higher this
attribute, the better your chances at escaping hurt when under attack.
Choose your people
To which of the Free Peoples do you belong? Elves and Humans are the most variegated, with
significant differentiation through geography and history. Dwarves and Hobbits are somewhat
more homogeneous. Your choice will modify some of your attribute scores, as follows:
Elves
Endurance -10, Speed +5, Agility +10, Perception +5
Dwarves
Endurance +20, Speed -5, Agility -5
Hobbits
Endurance +10, Speed -5, Agility +10
Humans
Distribute an additional 10 points among your Attributes
Choose name, gender, background, and other details
Who are you? What is your family? Where do you come from? Why did you leave? These are
the kinds of questions you will be asked when you travel to foreign lands, so it’s best to have
some answers! Work with the referee and the many available sources on Middle Earth’s
peoples and cultures to come up with something that makes sense in the context of the
campaign.
Choose starting equipment
How to play
Listen to the referee’s description of the setting: the world, its creatures, and their behaviour.
You will learn where you are, what your surroundings are, and what is going on around you. Ask
questions of the referee to clarify your situation, and then decide what you (i.e., your character)
will do. If your course of action is risky or if the outcome is in doubt, the referee may ask you to
roll some dice to see what happens. Most commonly, they will ask you to roll against a specific
attribute. This means: roll d00. If the result is equal to or less than that Attribute score, your
action was successful. Otherwise, it failed in some manner.
The core sequence is:
1. the referee describes the situation
2. each player decides on a course of action
3. if the outcome of an action is in doubt, the referee determines which attribute best
reflects the kind of effort your character must make to succeed
4. the player rolls the dice, leaving the result on the table for all to see
Example: A player has decided that her character, Drogo the Hobbit, will venture into
Mirkwood. The referee reveals that within short order, Drogo’s path is blocked by a raging river,
but that nearby he spots a fallen tree spanning the space from one bank to the other. The
howls of wargs can be heard close by; the player decides that Drogo must get across, and
quickly! The referee considers that there is a risk of falling; therefore, dice should be rolled. The
most appropriate attribute is Agility: Drogo’s is 47. The player must roll that number or less for
Drogo to make it across safely.
Critical results
Critical results are lucky rolls that indicate either extraordinary success or dismal failure. A
natural (unmodified) roll of 01 to 05 indicates a critical success; a natural (unmodified) roll of 96
to 00 indicates a critical failure. It is the referee’s job to determine the precise nature of the
result. In the example above, a critical success might see Drogo skipping nimbly across and
shoving the log aside so the wargs have no chance of following. A critical failure, on the other
hand, might see the hobbit losing his footing and plunging into the torrent below, striking a
submerged rock in the process. A critical failure often leads to injury or increased peril,
whereas a critical success improves the character’s situation beyond the expected. Critical
success or failure are always possible, even if modifiers (see below) adjust the chance of
success above 100% or below 0%.
Modifiers
Sometimes the circumstances of a situation make success more or less likely. Favourable
circumstances may justify a temporary boost to your Attribute, increasing your chances to
succeed. More commonly, however, especially difficult situations may impose a temporary
negative modifier to your Attribute, thus lowering it and making success less probable.
Example: Drogo needs to cross the same fallen log in a torrential downpour. This makes the
task more difficult. The referee decides that a modifier of -10 is appropriate: the player must
now roll 37 or less to succeed. Such modifiers may adjust the chance of success below 0%, but
the player would still succeed if, and only if, a critical success (natural 01–05) were rolled.
Levels of difficulty
In general, the referee can determine the difficulty of any task that is not straightforward by
rating it on a scale of 1 (slightly challenging) to 10 (incredibly difficult, but still within the realm
of possibility). (A straightforward task would be level 0). The level of difficulty, times ten, is the
negative modifier that should be applied to the roll. In the example above, we could say that a
crossing a wet, slick log while being chased by wargs is a task with a difficulty of 1; the modifier
is therefore -10. Walking across the same log under dry conditions is, however, pretty
straightforward — and would not even require a roll if it weren’t for the fact that haste was
required! Beginning characters, with attributes ranging between 30 and 50, are of course
unlikely to succeed at very difficult tasks… unless the player is fortunate enough to roll a critical
success.
Enemies
Combat is simply a particular type of situation, one in which two of your Attributes, Attack Skill
and Defense Skill, are key. The tougher and more dangerous an enemy is, the greater the
negative modifier imposed to your Attack Skill rolls (when you try to injure it) and to your
Defense Skill rolls (when you try to avoid its attacks). Each enemy is ranked from 1 to 10; its
level, times ten, is the modifier to your rolls when you are engaged with it. (The creature’s level
times ten is also its Endurance score.) A first-level enemy might be a palsied goblin; a ten-level
foe might be a balrog.
Example: Drogo is fighting a third-level warg – the leader of the pack. His Attack Skill and
Defense Skill score suffer a -30 modifier when fighting this creature. Should he also be engaged
in combat with a common first-level warg, the modifier would only be -10 with this particular
foe.