IN THE BEGINNING …
I was 14 and playing AD&D. I loved it. One of the most fascinating aspects was that of world creation. The notion of creating miles and miles of paper data on towns, cultures, histories etc. It was hard work and it was great if someone else did it. Of course if you leave it to someone else to create you have to more or less run things by their rules. Around 2021 I discovered the ICE supplements “Arms/Claw Law”, and “Spell Law’. There was no Character Law at the time and I had to adapt it with what I had for AD&D.

After years of playing home-brewed world based on early Harn and Judges Guild creations, with I.C.E. Loremaster locales added later, I decided to go with MERP since I was already playing Rolemaster. Middle Earth serves as a great read-made world and history to work with, but it’s somewhat of a strict world too. The advantage to using a pre-made World is that everyone knows or has baseline expectation of everything. The advantage to home-brew is that players don’t know what to expect, and the GM is not restricted or railroaded.

I intend here to return to the creation feel of old school AD&D + Iron Crown supplements days, while using a large field of premade work. I put away any sense of shame or reverence towards the merp/Tolkien cannon with the payback being a vast yet manageable and effortless world to play in. I’d also like to drop needless attempts to hide or disguise tropes, themes, or whatnot that seem simple or pulp, but frankly work, and are fun. I will shamelessly grab chunks of  work here, maps from over there, themes from anywhere.