Re: Middle Earth: War of the Ring SSI Game

From: Jeff Dobberpuhl <attorney@mr.net>

Date: Mon, 02 Sep 1996 00:00:00 +0000

Greg Reynolds wrote:
>
>         A group of us have been thinking about a WOTR PBM foir a while...
> we have the boxed rules and I understand that there are some other rules
> out there which cover the 5 player game and the PBM stuff... is this
> available anywhere?
>         I`m not very knowledgeable about the game myself and am posting on
> behalf of the 3 or so people that are interested in my area..
>
> david

First a quick point, the post should read SPI, not SSI. My screw up on
typing the original post :)

I am personally unaware of any 5 player rules or PBM rules already in
existance.
As to the 5 Players, who would they be? Fellowship/Sauron/Saruman/?/?  I
know that when the game first came out, we screwed around with army
commanders and character commanders (dividing the work of each player in
two) but this really didn't work out very well at all.  I think the game
could be completely restructured to allow as many gamers as you want,
but I think the initial point would be to just try and get a 3 player
game working.

I have been doing some work at trying to make the rules fit into a
PBM environment.  For example: Rule L.3 states that magic cards may be
exchanged "...freely and without any other limitation at any point
during the Game-Turn, except whenever one of his (sic) Characters is
involved in Individual Combat..."  This would definately not work in
PBM. The player and ref would be locked into an email exchange that
would drag the game down. It also causes the festering Shadowfax Cheat
(Character A rides Shadowfax, carrying a hobbit ringbearer to max limit
to Character B. Switch cards, B now continues the ride, still carrying
the ringbearer).  The fix, as I see it, would be to state that Magic can
be exchanged ONLY at the start of the movement phase.

Another troublesome rule (for PBM) involves character duels.  This is
another area where a person gets to choose which character is involved,
each side has an option to stop the battle, a choice is made between
Sorcery (H.1) and combat (G.1), etc.  The most probable choice for this
is a battle roster and and an order roster. The battle roster would be
the order in which the owning player wants the characters to fight and
whether that player will be using Sorcery (I.E. If Aragorn, Gandalf, and
Pippin are all moving together, the owner would state Aragorn, Gandalf:
Sorcery, Pippin; meaning that if any baddies are encountered, Aragorn
gets first swipe, then Gandalf using Sorcery and finally Pippin). The
order roster would be either 'fight to the death' (meaning never quit
fighting) or 'always yeild', meaning always offer to end the duel.

I think that regardless of whether there are any rules on the net or
not (and I'd be interested in a copy if there were) anyone interested
should contact me to work out our own set of rules.

Thanx,

Jeff

References

Middle Earth: War of the Ring SSI Game
Jeff Dobberpuhl <attorney@mr.net>
Sun, 01 Sep 1996 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Middle Earth: War of the Ring SSI Game
gtr100@york.ac.uk (Greg Reynolds)
Mon, 02 Sep 1996 00:00:00 +0000