I’ve been doing some work on setting up a HARP campaign that would end up underwater. One of the things I want to do is develop Dolphins in more detail as a fantasy race that has spell use. I’m going to be creating some spells specific to the underwater environment, possibly specific to Dolphins. I posted a question about this on the ICE forums to get some ideas

http://www.ironcrown.com/ICEforums/index.php?topic=1127.0

The list of Spells I’m going to start with is:

Replenish Air
Resist Pressure
Retain Moisture
Disentangle
Detect Predator
Locate Food
Sonic Blast
Sonar Enhancement
Water Sheild - Scalable from basic sheild to full sphere
Warm Water / Resist Cold
Bubble Wall
Shell Skin / Coral Skin (similiar to Stone Skin)
Navigation / Location
Create Wave
Absorb Sound

Some of these, or very similiar spells may exist already, next step is to look through the HARP books and see which of these already exist and which I’ll have to create from scratch.

Star Wars has always been one of my favorite settings in which to run Roleplaying Games. With the playtesting I’ve been doing with the upcoming HARP Sci Fi game, I naturally started wondering what it would be like to try and run Star Wars under those rules.
I figured that the major difference between Star Wars and other Sci Fi settings is the Jedi Knights and the use of the Force. If I can handle those in HARP, adapting the rest of the setting shouldn’t be to hard.
I started by posting a question over on the ICE Forums ( http://www.ironcrown.com/ICEforums/index.php?topic=2301.0 ) asking people what they thought the Top 5 Force Powers were.
From that I’ve come up with a list of a dozen items that I’m going to focus on handling. And some suggestions on how to deal with them.
The next step is to look at the existing HARP Sci Fi rules, determine which items are already handled and which aren’t, some of which Nicholas Caldwell, the author of HARP Sci Fi has already pointed out for me

Suggestion - “Power over Weak Minds”
Telekinesis - for lifting/chucking objects around, and choking hapless Empire officers
Enhanced jumping/gymnastics
Precognition
Force Lightning
Projected communication
Living beyond death as a slightly blue glowing ghost mentor
Parry laser beams with your power sword - and aiming them at someone else
Deflecting Blaster Bolts without a light saber (al la Darth) and deflecting Force Lightning (al la Yoda)
Blind Fighting (Guidance by the force - in melee and space fighter piloting)
Detection of / Sensitivity to the Force - “The Force is strong in this one”, “I feel a disturbance in the Force”
Force Shield (When Qui-gon was melting the blast doors with his light saber,the heat had no affect on him)

And, a couple suggestions on how to handle some of them:
Existing Telekinetic effects: Telekinesis & Telekinetic Hand (latter as much inspired by Gil The ARM as Vader)
Telepathy - all there in Field of Telepathy
Force Lightning is Energy Bolt
Force shield (multiple flavors Cyrokinetic Field, Pyrokinetic Field, Kinetic Field, Energy Dispersal)
some of the enhanced jumping could be Psi Agility etc, but not all

Although Precognition is in the rules, you’d probably need a Precognitive Defense discipline, patterned after the Psi Defense Tiering (e.g. +1 per skill rank to DB at Tier 1, +2 per rank at Tier 2, etc.) Similarly Precognitive Piloting, giving bonuses to Piloting skill on same pattern, perhaps.

Yeah, to follow the movie, you’d have a skill “short term precog” which added a bonus to all skills involving reaction time, but likely you’d want to make it more specific skills per Nick to maintain game balance. Unless you made the bonuses tiny, and stacked them. . .

Like
Short Term Precog
Enhanced Reflexes
Spatial Location Awareness

each adding something like +1 per rank to all associated maneuvers

Fixed up the links to the cover images on several pages, a few Shadow World pages and about half of the Spacemaster 1st and 2nd edition pages. These got broken when the pages were converted to php extensions, and they are pages where the cover images are not in the standard directories. These are usually smaller than usual cover images.
Since I now own most of these items, the todo list entry is to scan in larger images and update these pages so the images are in the correct directories.
Also need to add in the Spacemaster DataNet Pdf’s to the Spacemaster product list.

Thanks to a nice trade with Turambar from over at the ICE Forums, I’ve been able to update the MERP Product pages to show my new acquisitions. It really is amazing how many products ICE pumped out for MERP between 1984 and 1997. Doing the updates also made me realize that I haven’t included the Publication year column on the MERP 2nd Edition page. Another item for my ToDo List.

So, for no particular reason, here is the list of MERP items I’m still looking for, although I’m not looking too hard at the moment and am not willing to drop alot of cash on them.

8000 Middle Earth Role Playing (UK)
8001 Middle Earth Role Playing Combat Screen
8011 Mouths of the Entwash
8012 Warlords of the Desert
8013 Dark Mage of Rhudaur
8015 Forest of Tears
8080 Rivendell The House of Elrond
8090 Brigands of Mirkwood
8100 Middle Earth Roleplaying 1986 Edition Box (UK)
8101 Haunted Ruins of the Dunlendings
8103 Trolls of the Misty Mountains
8105 Gates of Mordor
8107 Woses of the Black Wood
8109 Ghosts of the Southern Anduin
8112 Hazards of the Harad Wood
8202 Teeth of Mordor
8205 Nazgul’s Citadel
3110 Mount Gundabad
3111 Greater Harad
3112 Gorgoroth
3113 The Grey Mountains
3300 Havens of Gondor, Land of Belfalas
3400 Sea-Lords of Gondor, Pelargir & Lebenin
3600 Dunland & the Southern Misty Mountains
3800 Far Harad, the Scorched Land
3900 Shadow in the South
4001 Northwestern Middle Earth Map Set
4010 Mirkwood The Wilds of Rhovanion
4011 Empire of the Witch-King
Rescue in Mirkwood
2002 Middle Earth Accessory Pack ( box )
2003 Middle Earth Campaign Guide
2005 Arnor
2007 Minas Tirith Softcover
2008 MERP Poster Maps
2013 Elves
2014 Dol Guldur
2017 The Shire
2018 Angmar
2019 Mirkwood
2020 Southern Gondor : The People
2021 Southern Gondor : The Land
2022 Arnor : The People
2023 Arnor : The Land
2024 The Lord of the Rings Poster Map
2025 Northern Waste

An interesting project by the Guild Companion that is worth supporting if you are interested in getting some Adventures for your ICE games

Ladies and gentlemen,

We’re putting the adventures back into role-playing.

The Guild Companion proposes to publish The Guild Adventurer, a compilation of original adventures and adventure-related material for Rolemaster, Shadow World, Spacemaster, and HARP. We have commissioned and received four complete scenarios and two adventure-support articles. The Guild Adventurer is currently in layout phase.

In this premier issue, we have:
“The Temple of the Three”, a Shadow World adventure written by Terry Amthor himself, the creator of Kulthea, and dual-statted for RM2 and RMFRP.
“Web of the Kobolds”, an adventure by Tim Dugger, ICE System Editor and codesigner of HARP, and multi-statted for RM2, RMFRP, and HARP.
“The Vampire’s Barrow”, a HARP adventure by Nicholas HM Caldwell, author of Mentalism Companion, Construct Companion, College of Magics, and the upcoming HARP SF role-playing game.
“The Paranoia Game”, a Spacemaster:Privateers by Robert Defendi, author and designer of the entire Spacemaster:Privateers product line.
plus:
“People, Places and Paraphernalia: The Flying Toadstool Inn”, an adventure location for HARP by Allen Maher, contributor to the HARP character compilation, Friends & Rivals.
“People, Places and Paraphernalia: The Red Hooded Traveler’s Inn”, an adventure location for HARP by Aaron Smalley, author of City of Archendurn.

We had intended to use fundable.org for this ransom; however, our ransom is below their minima for total and individual pledges.

So, instead, we are going to use an honor system.

If you want to see The Guild Adventurer, send me an email at editor@guildcompanion.com:
Give it the subject TGA One: Pledge

In the email, include:
your name or your online alias (whichever you prefer) [so we can name you as a Supporting Patron in the Credits]
a valid email address [so that we can send you a Patron coupon to purchase TGA#1 at a discount price]
and how many copies of TGA#1 you pledge to buy at the discount price of five (5) US dollars. [normally this will be one copy, but I know some people buy on behalf of friends]

We need 100 pledges for the ransom to succeed. We will run the ransom until 100 pledges are received or the 31st October (whichever happens first). Assuming the ransom succeeds TGA#1 will go on sale at RPGNow.

Remember, by pledging you are helping to ensure that there will be new published adventures for Rolemaster, Spacemaster, and HARP, you will be credited as a Patron, and you will save two dollars on the normal retail price of The Guild Adventurer.

Please use this thread for any queries you may have about The Guild Adventurer or the ransom process. I will set up a separate thread as a running total of pledges received.

Best wishes,
Nicholas HM Caldwell