Catholic Middle Earth Role Playing Game-does one exist?

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Luigi_Daniele

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Not looking for D&D. Looking (maybe) for a role playing game that uses Tolkien’s world.

Over to you 🙂
 
I’m not sure what you mean by “Catholic Middle Earth” but have you tried MERP? It is old, probably out of print, but used a system similar to ICE.
 
I don’t know what makes a game “Catholic” or not so I can’t tell if the rule sets of any.given game meet that criterion.

However with some work you could homebrew a D&D game in Tolkien’s world and make it as Catholic as you like.

Barring that there are things like en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings_Roleplaying_Game out there.

Forgive the inelegant link. This is hard on my phone.
 
It’s easy enough to invent. Just use some generic system (like d20). Setup the basic mechanics of combat, etc. Instead of spells, you could grace. Priests, paladins, knights, rogues, etc.

It would be more materialistic than D&D. Not so much magic. More realistic historical scenarios. It might be interesting, actually.

For example, you could play a party which consists of a few knights, a bishop, and some priests. The scenario involves a mission to convert some pagan territory. Add in plenty of political gamesmanship, tactics, sieges, etc.

One attribute could be holiness. Depending upon that attribute, you could get bonuses on various key actions (grace). It could work a lot like luck does in some other systems.
 
I don’t know offhand what MERP is (I assume Middle-Earth Role-Playing?), but I do know there was an RPG for Tolkien’s world quite a while back. I’m not sure if it was late 1970’s or into the 80’s. It exists, though you might have to work to track it down, but I can’t speak of its quality from personal experience.

There’s also a Lord of the Rings miniatures game from Games Workshop. The figures are mostly based on the films, but they are all really nicely detailed.

I’m not sure what you’re looking for that’s specifically Catholic, but those would be good places to start.
 
epiclotus said:
I don’t know offhand what MERP is (I assume Middle-Earth Role-Playing?), but I do know there was an RPG for Tolkien’s world quite a while back. I’m not sure if it was late 1970’s or into the 80’s. It exists, though you might have to work to track it down, but I can’t speak of its quality from personal experience.

There’s also a Lord of the Rings miniatures game from Games Workshop. The figures are mostly based on the films, but they are all really nicely detailed.

I’m not sure what you’re looking for that’s specifically Catholic, but those would be good places to start.
Click to expand...
That is what MERP is and I remember it from mid eighties.

For a cRPG with a Catholic feel, you could try Darklands available cheaply through GOG, good old games, I believe they are gog.com.
 
Rhubarb said:
I don’t know what makes a game “Catholic” or not so I can’t tell if the rule sets of any.given game meet that criterion.

However with some work you could homebrew a D&D game in Tolkien’s world and make it as Catholic as you like.

Barring that there are things like en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lord_of_the_Rings_Roleplaying_Game out there.

Forgive the inelegant link. This is hard on my phone.
Click to expand...
This looks awesome! Thanks
 
epiclotus said:
I don’t know offhand what MERP is (I assume Middle-Earth Role-Playing?), but I do know there was an RPG for Tolkien’s world quite a while back. I’m not sure if it was late 1970’s or into the 80’s. It exists, though you might have to work to track it down, but I can’t speak of its quality from personal experience.

There’s also a Lord of the Rings miniatures game from Games Workshop. The figures are mostly based on the films, but they are all really nicely detailed.

I’m not sure what you’re looking for that’s specifically Catholic, but those would be good places to start.
Click to expand...
I will look for this. Thanks 🙂
 
MERP was an interesting system. It was a little too complex, though. Also, there really was not anything inherently Catholic about it. The novels Tolkien wrote were Catholic because he incorporated Catholic themes and narratives into the plot of the story. The world itself was hardly Catholic by itself.

One interesting aspect about creating a new Catholic RPG is that you can swap out the old Poul Anderson-style alignment system for a Catholic system. An alignment which changes depending upon the choices you make, which can be verified by Catholic morality (such as Just War Theory, for example). In that sense, a Catholic RPG would make a decent learning tool for youth to analyze various situations and arrive at a better understanding of Catholic moral theology and doctrine.
 
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