"MERP" stands for Middle-earth Role Playing. This is the name of the fantasy role playing game series published by Iron Crown Enterprises (ICE), a small gaming company that was based in Charlottesville, Virginia. In 1982, Tolkien Enterprises bestowed upon ICE an exclusive, worldwide license to produce adventure games based on The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. ICE held this license for seventeen years and published more than a hundred products. On September 21st, 1999, Tolkien Enterprises forcibly revoked the license, and a year later (10/25/00) ICE declared bankruptcy and was dissolved.

MERP is broadly recognized within the fantasy role playing community as one of the most detailed world settings ever produced for a game. Although the series is out of print (except in Spanish) and its books are increasingly difficult to obtain, there is an active core of MERP players the world round who are dedicated to keeping the game alive. Other Hands and The Guild Companion are two magazines devoted to MERP. The Other Hands website contains an exhaustive directory of links to other places on the Web that contain MERP-related content (of which there are about a hundred).

The future of Middle-earth role playing games is currently undergoing an important new development. Decipher, Inc., another US-based game company, recently acquired rights from New Line Cinema to create a new role playing game based on Middle-earth. The core rules are scheduled for publication next February under the title "The Lord of the Rings Role Playing Game" (LotR RPG). Unlike MERP, whose products were generally set during the mid-Third Age (more than a thousand years before the War of the Ring), Decipher's game will be primarily based on the period immediately prior to the War of the Ring (i.e., between the events of The Hobbit and LotR).

The impact of LotR RPG on the MERP community is yet to be seen. Many MERP players may well adopt Decipher's new core rules for their own games. Whether they will abandon the MERP setting is another question. MERP has left a seventeen-year creative legacy of world-building that will be difficult to match by any gaming company (some MERP modules sell on E-Bay for more than $100 each - that's an indication of how enthusiastic the fans are about them). But we wish Decipher all the best, and look forward to their development of a hitherto untouched setting within Middle-earth's history. Die-hard MERPers are likely to be fans of LotR RPG as well.

For more Information:

• The Guild Companion
• Other Hands
• Decipher, Inc