Role-Playing Games

�I have been role-playing for half my life now, 16 years, and I have played and game-mastered many campaigns using many different game systems. I love a good game and really like to learn new game systems. Consequently, I have a wide ranging experience (and a huge bookcase full of RPG books) when it comes to rpg systems. This is great to initiate new players but I have been known to be a little fickle with campaigns. Still, there are benefits to being able to create a new campaign at the drop of a hat, especially during those boring evenings when no one knows what to do. Hey! Let's start a new campaign, I've just read this great new game system... Etc.

My favourite part of role-playing is generating new characters and I am a much better game-master than a player.

I'll list my favourite rpg systems and some of the best games ever played. There were many and those times were the best in my life. So prepare to journey into discovery while I relate stories of heroism, tales of boldness and accounts of greatest evil. Sit back, most honourable guests and marvel at fables from fantastic lands set out for your enjoyment!

Welcome to Gerry's Tales of Wonder and Amazement!

�Our tale begins many years ago...

My first rpg experience was, like most role-players, with Dungeons & Dragons. My friend picked it up one day because he had heard the same rumors everyone else from the newspapers and television. He was intrigued enough to plunk money into it. He went into a hobby store and bought the now familiar red box that contained the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set. We gathered together and played the solo story from the book. Once we had played that, we needed a DM. I was chosen so I read the rules, made a scenario and we played it. The scenario was crude I imagine, because now I can't remember what that first game was. I think we played the module Palace of the Silver Princess (B3) from TSR.

After D&D, I discovered Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. The horizons had expanded and possibilities had just become more numerous. My friends and I made many small games together using the random dungeon tables from the DM's Guide and some good characters came out of those games. It wasn't much later that I played my first campaign with my first character. A friend introduced me to a group that played regularly on fridays and I had my first, and most memorable, character. We played the TSR Dragonlance modules and the character I played was Gilthanas, the elven fighter-magic user. He became plenty powerful by the time the game fizzled out. I sometimes wish we could get together and play a follow up game. Ah, nostalgia is a beautiful lure isn't it?

The next game I played was with the same group but with a game system I had never even heard of; Rolemaster. We played in J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth. Iron Crown Enterprises (I.C.E.), the company that publishes Rolemaster, also has the exclusive rpg rights to Middle-Earth and all related works like The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. They also make Middle-Earth Role Playing (M.E.R.P.) and the rules happen to be close enough to Rolemaster to make adaptation simple and painless. MERP is to Rolemaster like D&D is to AD&D; a simplification of the system. The character I played was a dwarven rogue (fighter-thief). He was related to the King of the Lonely Mountain, Erebor. He left his home in shame (a shame so profound he shaved his beard and hair so other dwarves would know the depth of his grief) when the sacred tomb of his ancestors were plundered while he was on guard duty. When the characters met, Umili (as he called himself at the time) was searching for the culprits in the desecration. The one thing he had to recover was the Arkenstone, the single most valuable gem the dwarves of Erebor had ever owned. It had been buried with Thorin when he died at the end of The Hobbit. Unfortunately, Umili (I never gave a dwarven name) never recovered the Arkenstone or discovered who had desecrated Thorin's tomb. Umili died while fighting one of Sauron's lesser minions after being captured.

In the same campaign, I created another character. He was a High Mannish astrologer named Amnon Ranoth. He was studying at Orthanc, the fortress of Isengard had been turned into a University of great reknown after being rebuilt. The fortress was attacked by agents of the same power who had killed Umili and Amnon was forced to flee with another student and friend. Somehow, they hooked up with the other characters. After some travelling they ended up in Rivendell and that's where the campaign ended.

During this time I started to purchase other games that came to my attention. The two most memorable are H�rnMaster by Columbia Games and CyberPunk by R.Talsorian Games. I refereed several successful campaigns with both these systems.

CyberPunk proved surprisingly easy to learn and play. We had characters set up one night and played the second (of course, I had been studying the system for a month before we even began the campaign). The fisrt scenario was simple, like most rpg games the first game was a bar brawl. I find the bar brawl naturally brings characters together and permit the players to experience combat early in the campaign. The brawl was more specifically the assassination of several mob bosses who had gathered in the bar to discuss an alliance against a new family muscling in their respective territories. Unknown to them, one of the minor bosses had allied herself with the opposition. She was the one who organized the assassination (more like a massacre). The players' characters were, naturally, caught in the middle. They were able to survive the massacre and fled the scene (after looting the bodies of the dead mob bosses, a great way to finance the players and give them pangs of conscience). Following the massacre, the players were constantly hounded by darkly-clad men so they decided to fight back. The first thing they had to do was find out who was responsible. They each had their own ways; cyberspace, street-contacts, corp networks, etc. When the campaign winded down, they had begun piecing together who was behind everything.

H�rnMaster is a fantasy rpg set on the world of Kethira and specifically on the mist-shrouded island of H�rn, which is an England-analogue society. The players' characters met in the city of Cherafir, capital of the kingdom of Melderyn also know as the sorcerers' isle. I had everything in this campaign as far as characters go: an elven knight, a wizard and a priestess. They were embroiled in a regicide and tried to bring order to the ensuing grab for power. They later discovered the king's death was faked to test his subjects' loyalties. The characters then decided to go on their journeyman travels and the campaign pretty much wound down like that.

The single longest campaign I have ever refereed was with Rolemaster. At the beginning, I had seven players and let me tell you that was stressful. The combats lasted for ever. Three player left about the same time but a new one joined. It stayed with five players for a short time until an old friend joined in. We had gone to grade school together and I didn't even know he played rpg's. I met him in the bus one day and in the end invited him to join the game. Later on, his sister joined the game. The total number of player reached six. The game had started in 1989 and many things happened since then to the people who played the game: one is currently in University in Texas, another moved to Rimouski (in the booneys of the Province of Quebec) and two had a child together. The others moved on to studies and carreers. The end of it is that whenever we decide to have a game, we can only gather an average of four players at the same time. This is including two who started three years ago! At the moment we have the following player characters: a half-elven thief, a half-dwarven cleric, a human warrior-mage, a humanoid-eagle warrior-mage, an elven bard. I am holding several characters as non-player-characters in case old players decide to return: an elven runemaster, a humanoid-St-Bernard ranger and a human warrior. Other npc's present are an elven astrologer and a human seer. See Tales of the Mithril Claw for more details on the characters from this campaign and the campaign itself.

Current Campaigns (as of June 23).

I am currently involved in two campaigns: one using Rolemaster and another using H�rnmaster. I referee the RM campaign and play in the HM campaign.

Rolemaster: the RM campaign revolves around five characters and how they meet when in the town of Haalkitaine. We are playing in I.C.E.'s Shadow World of Kulthea, a very high fantasy setting. The characters are composed of: a female Mixed Man Paladin who lives in Haalkitaine, a male Common Man Monk pursuing some stolen artifacts, a female Centaur Healer in exile searching for her vindication, a male Dark Tribe Delver expatriate seeking to escape a mad cult chasing him and a female Vorloi Human Forcemage who was taken from her home by a malfunctioning teleporter.

So far they have prevented an undead invasion of Haalkitaine, stopped a smuggling operation and uncovered an ancient site long buried beneath Haalkitaine.

H�rnmaster: I play the role of Fennelisa a 16 year old female who joined the legions of Tharda on H�rn. See this site for more information about a great campaign: Pax Tharda: http://www.ketherian.org/paxtharda/index.html

**Welcome to Gerry's Tales of Wonder and Amazement!**
�Our tale begins many years ago... My first rpg experience was, like most role-players, with Dungeons & Dragons. My friend picked it up one day because he had heard the same rumors everyone else from the newspapers and television. He was intrigued enough to plunk money into it. He went into a hobby store and bought the now familiar red box that contained the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set. We gathered together and played the solo story from the book. Once we had played that, we needed a DM. I was chosen so I read the rules, made a scenario and we played it. The scenario was crude I imagine, because now I can't remember what that first game was. I think we played the module Palace of the Silver Princess (B3) from TSR. After D&D, I discovered Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. The horizons had expanded and possibilities had just become more numerous. My friends and I made many small games together using the random dungeon tables from the DM's Guide and some good characters came out of those games. It wasn't much later that I played my first campaign with my first character. A friend introduced me to a group that played regularly on fridays and I had my first, and most memorable, character. We played the TSR Dragonlance modules and the character I played was Gilthanas, the elven fighter-magic user. He became plenty powerful by the time the game fizzled out. I sometimes wish we could get together and play a follow up game. Ah, nostalgia is a beautiful lure isn't it? The next game I played was with the same group but with a game system I had never even heard of; Rolemaster. We played in J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth. Iron Crown Enterprises (I.C.E.), the company that publishes Rolemaster, also has the exclusive rpg rights to Middle-Earth and all related works like The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. They also make Middle-Earth Role Playing (M.E.R.P.) and the rules happen to be close enough to Rolemaster to make adaptation simple and painless. MERP is to Rolemaster like D&D is to AD&D; a simplification of the system. The character I played was a dwarven rogue (fighter-thief). He was related to the King of the Lonely Mountain, Erebor. He left his home in shame (a shame so profound he shaved his beard and hair so other dwarves would know the depth of his grief) when the sacred tomb of his ancestors were plundered while he was on guard duty. When the characters met, Umili (as he called himself at the time) was searching for the culprits in the desecration. The one thing he had to recover was the Arkenstone, the single most valuable gem the dwarves of Erebor had ever owned. It had been buried with Thorin when he died at the end of The Hobbit. Unfortunately, Umili (I never gave a dwarven name) never recovered the Arkenstone or discovered who had desecrated Thorin's tomb. Umili died while fighting one of Sauron's lesser minions after being captured. In the same campaign, I created another character. He was a High Mannish astrologer named Amnon Ranoth. He was studying at Orthanc, the fortress of Isengard had been turned into a University of great reknown after being rebuilt. The fortress was attacked by agents of the same power who had killed Umili and Amnon was forced to flee with another student and friend. Somehow, they hooked up with the other characters. After some travelling they ended up in Rivendell and that's where the campaign ended. During this time I started to purchase other games that came to my attention. The two most memorable are H�rnMaster by Columbia Games and CyberPunk by R.Talsorian Games. I refereed several successful campaigns with both these systems. CyberPunk proved surprisingly easy to learn and play. We had characters set up one night and played the second (of course, I had been studying the system for a month before we even began the campaign). The fisrt scenario was simple, like most rpg games the first game was a bar brawl. I find the bar brawl naturally brings characters together and permit the players to experience combat early in the campaign. The brawl was more specifically the assassination of several mob bosses who had gathered in the bar to discuss an alliance against a new family muscling in their respective territories. Unknown to them, one of the minor bosses had allied herself with the opposition. She was the one who organized the assassination (more like a massacre). The players' characters were, naturally, caught in the middle. They were able to survive the massacre and fled the scene (after looting the bodies of the dead mob bosses, a great way to finance the players and give them pangs of conscience). Following the massacre, the players were constantly hounded by darkly-clad men so they decided to fight back. The first thing they had to do was find out who was responsible. They each had their own ways; cyberspace, street-contacts, corp networks, etc. When the campaign winded down, they had begun piecing together who was behind everything. H�rnMaster is a fantasy rpg set on the world of Kethira and specifically on the mist-shrouded island of H�rn, which is an England-analogue society. The players' characters met in the city of Cherafir, capital of the kingdom of Melderyn also know as the sorcerers' isle. I had everything in this campaign as far as characters go: an elven knight, a wizard and a priestess. They were embroiled in a regicide and tried to bring order to the ensuing grab for power. They later discovered the king's death was faked to test his subjects' loyalties. The characters then decided to go on their journeyman travels and the campaign pretty much wound down like that. The single longest campaign I have ever refereed was with Rolemaster. At the beginning, I had seven players and let me tell you that was stressful. The combats lasted for ever. Three player left about the same time but a new one joined. It stayed with five players for a short time until an old friend joined in. We had gone to grade school together and I didn't even know he played rpg's. I met him in the bus one day and in the end invited him to join the game. Later on, his sister joined the game. The total number of player reached six. The game had started in 1989 and many things happened since then to the people who played the game: one is currently in University in Texas, another moved to Rimouski (in the booneys of the Province of Quebec) and two had a child together. The others moved on to studies and carreers. The end of it is that whenever we decide to have a game, we can only gather an average of four players at the same time. This is including two who started three years ago! At the moment we have the following player characters: a half-elven thief, a half-dwarven cleric, a human warrior-mage, a humanoid-eagle warrior-mage, an elven bard. I am holding several characters as non-player-characters in case old players decide to return: an elven runemaster, a humanoid-St-Bernard ranger and a human warrior. Other npc's present are an elven astrologer and a human seer. See Tales of the Mithril Claw for more details on the characters from this campaign and the campaign itself. Current Campaigns (as of June 23). I am currently involved in two campaigns: one using Rolemaster and another using H�rnmaster. I referee the RM campaign and play in the HM campaign. Rolemaster: the RM campaign revolves around five characters and how they meet when in the town of Haalkitaine. We are playing in I.C.E.'s Shadow World of Kulthea, a very high fantasy setting. The characters are composed of: a female Mixed Man Paladin who lives in Haalkitaine, a male Common Man Monk pursuing some stolen artifacts, a female Centaur Healer in exile searching for her vindication, a male Dark Tribe Delver expatriate seeking to escape a mad cult chasing him and a female Vorloi Human Forcemage who was taken from her home by a malfunctioning teleporter. So far they have prevented an undead invasion of Haalkitaine, stopped a smuggling operation and uncovered an ancient site long buried beneath Haalkitaine. H�rnmaster: I play the role of Fennelisa a 16 year old female who joined the legions of Tharda on H�rn. See this site for more information about a great campaign: Pax Tharda: http://www.ketherian.org/paxtharda/index.html