Welcome to the LotR Third-age RP! This is, at least in my (maybe-not-so-) humble opinion, the greatest of the LMB(E)'s RPs, and also one of the greatest strategy games of all time!
Sadly though, some of that greatness can make this place seem a little hard to get into. In truth, this isn't the simplest RP on the boards, but once you get the hang of it everything will fall into place. Realize that whether you intend it or not, joining this RP will become a commitment, and it will take some effort to get into. However, it's by all means worth every minute of time you spend here.

[P.S. I know this is a really long post, but there's actually not too much actual content here, just a lot of rambling. I tend to get side-tracked and start rambling on about stuff when I'm thinking about these kinds of things in my head, and I kind of just wrote down the stuff that was going through said head of mine. Sorry about all of the rabbit-trails. ]



Basics of RPs in general:
Anyways, enough of this small talk. You're probably here because you want to join the RP but need some assistance in doing so, and I'm here to help you with that, not to talk about how great this RP is and how much time I've spent here that I should've used for homework or doing stuff with "real" friends.
So, I'm going to start off with the absolute basics of how we do things here, and in RPs in general (at least those on these boards that I'm familiar with). If you've already been in an RP on these boards or on the original LMBs, you can skip to the next section. In most RPs, you play as a character and go around on adventures and stuff. You generally have one topic that's your home-base (called your HQ), and you travel to other HQs and topics and interact with their members and whatever people are there. Most RPs include a lot of fighting (I mean, where's the fun when you don't have a bit of action? ), so you're going to have to learn how that works (especially here). Whenever you want your character to perform some sort of action, be it dance across the room, tackle someone (probably Rex ) from behind, build a statue, or walk into to Mordor ( ), you post a "move". Moves are put inside pairs of asterisks (*like this*), and say whatever you want to do. Moves can be as simple or elaborate as you'd like, and you'll find everything from attacks like *I swing my sword at you* to responses like *I duck under your swing while simultaneously grabbing your wrist, and then I twist around, flip you over my shoulder, and pin you to the ground*. Just be sure that you're reasonable with what you do (you'll get a feel for that with time), and try to be clear and specific enough that your opponent will understand what you're doing well enough to respond properly. In my experience, the funnest battles are where both people are clear and specific about exactly what they do and how they do it. That way you can get down to the nitty-gritty details of the fight rather than using really vague stuff like "*I swing my sword*" and "*I dodge your attack*", which can get kind of boring after a while.
And. . . I think that's most of the basics of RPing in general. Go around and do stuff, and use moves to indicate what you're doing. But don't worry, there's a lot more to stuff here than just that.


Basics of the TA-RP:
Now we actually go into what makes this LotR RP so much better than all of the others. Things here are set up a lot like many military-strategy games. Think Axis & Allies (or Risk or Stratego, even chess some) or Age of Empires (or more closely, one of the TW games). Many players do have a character, but most of us don't really use them much outside of some special events. Instead of individual characters going on quests, this RP is based around armies and conquest. Some people might call it less personal, I think it makes things more grand. Here, people lead armies all across Middle-earth, attacking forests, defending fields, and meeting for battle on open mountains (err, I think I got some of those mixed up ).
We've got two sides to the war here. There's the Free Peoples of Middle-earth (hereby called "Good") and the Dark Forces of Sauron (hereby called "Evil"). This RP takes place during the War of the Ring (the big war that's going on during the Lord of the Rings), sometime before the Ents destroy Isengard. The Fellowship of the Ring really isn't involved in the RP; their council at Rivendell went long and now they're perpetually stuck contemplating the state of Middle-earth and what should be done with the One Ring (or something to that effect). Things actually don't line up quite right, be we'll just ignore that. The Ents are active (so Merry and Pippin have already been there), and the Balrog is destroyed (so Gandalf already fought him), but Moria's gate and bridge are still both fine (so the Fellowship never passed through). Meh, details.
But as I was saying before I went charging down that rabbit-trail, this RP takes place during the War of the Ring, when a whole bunch of different groups were fighting with each other. Everyone's organized onto two sides, Good and Evil, and each side has six HQs (topic indicated by title "location - race HQ") with their own troops. Each HQ is independent and does more or less whatever it wants (generally conquering enemy lands), though they are encouraged to work with their allies a bit.
In addition to HQs, there are many neutral topics called "regions" (topics indicated by just having the name of the location). Most of your battles will be in regions, not HQs. Regions can be conquered, and provide a small boost to whatever HQ owns it. Also, the closest one could get to winning this RP would be for your side to own every single region. We also have what are called "sub-HQs", but I'll go into those later.
Now where was I going with this. . . Oh right, this is supposed to be an introduction to the LotR TA-RP. This RP mostly consists of users marching their HQs' troops around to different topics, fighting enemy armies to capture regions. Combat is very similar to combat in other RPs, except that you moves are generally describing the actions of hundreds, if not thousands of individual troops. They tend to look more like "*my archers fire*" or "*my cavalry runs around your army and charges at their rear flank*".
Oh, and canon characters (characters specifically named or referred to in the books/movies/whatever) are allowed here. You won't find anyone playing as or using Sauron, or the Balrog (even if he was still alive), or as Frodo or Aragorn. Don't ask whether or not they exist in the RP, we just ignore that little bit.


Troops, Measurements of Troops, and Troop Limits:
Before I go into where these guys come from and all of that stuff, there are a few very common terms that you need to be aware of. The first term is MWE, or "Mannish-Worth Equivalent". You'll see why we have this term in a little bit, but it's basically a standardized unit of measuring troops, their strength, and stuff like that. One MWE is equal to the power of one standard Gondorian infantryman. Often you'll find a number associated with MWE in a given instance, and that number could mean a few different (though very closely-related) things. One example is in an HQ's troops list (you'll learn more about that later), where a unit will be said to be worth (or costs) "three MWE". This means that the unit in question is theoretically equal in power to three standard Gondorian infantrymen (so in a fight, one of these soldiers could defeat two of the infantry, but four infantry could defeat one of these soldiers, and three against one would be a tie), and costs the same amount as three standard Gondorian infantrymen (again, you'll learn about that later). I say theoretically because when you take into account certain variables like the kind of weapon the unit has and the fact that there are more of the lower lower-worth units, some units will be more powerful in practice against certain kinds of other units. This is something that you'll get a feel for with time. The other main usage of MWE is when someone says that they have, for example, an army or set of troops worth six hundred MWE. All this means is that if you look at the individual worth for each unit, the army or group is on the whole theoretically equal in power to (and would tie in a battle with) another army of six hundred standard Gondorian infantrymen (again variables and stuff, but you get the idea). It's a more accurate way of measuring the strength of the army as opposed to just looking at how many individual soldiers it has.
MWE also has a few derivative terms. The first two (the other one(s) will be brought up later), OWE (Orcish-Worth Equivalent) and E/DWE (Elvish/Dwarvish-Worth Equivalent) serve the same purpose as MWE, but are slightly different. As you may know, your standard units of different races won't all be of equal strength, nor will there be the same number of them. To try to simulate this while keeping things fair, we have two other terms that are used. OWE is the strength of your average Orcish soldier, while E/DWE is the strength of your average Elvish or Dwarvish soldier. One OWE is equal to four-fifths of one (0.8) MWE, while E/DWE is equal to one and one-third (1.333) MWE. You'll see what this means in a little bit.
Troop limits! Everybody loves troop limits! This is the second big term you need to remember, and what it does is make sure that we don't end up with "small armies" of a "mere" fifty thousand troops (and yes, that had happened before). Each HQ gets twenty thousand MWE to do whatever they want with. They can spend it all on basic infantry units to get a full twenty thousand troops, they can spend it on more skilled troops so that they only have five thousand troops that are worth four MWE each, they can build siege weapons or ships with it, or (and this is usually what happens) some combination of these. Whatever the HQ-members do though, they can never (well, normally) field troops with more total worth than their troop limit. So since an HQ's troop limit is twenty thousand MWE, if you add up the total worth of all of their troops, it shouldn't exceed twenty thousand MWE (this is why troop worth is also referred to as cost, because while a unit is equal in power to x number of infantry, it also takes up just as much of their HQ's troop limit as x number of infantry). In addition to its twenty thousand MWE, each HQ also provides two thousand S/N/TWE (Siege/Naval-Worth Equivalent, some people refer to it as Technological-Worth Equivalent). This is exactly the same as MWE, except that it can only be spent on siege weapons (and their crews), ships, and the like (not regular infantry/cavalry).
While each HQ only has twenty thousand MWE (twenty-two, technically), you'll actually find that most HQs have more than that. No, this isn't because we're all cheating. You remember those regions I mentioned earlier? Well, if you own a region, you're obviously going to need some troops that just sit there to defend it, and capturing more and more regions will mean that you'll have fewer and fewer troops left to attack with. To offset this, each region boosts the troop limit of the HQ that owns it by one thousand MWE, and also provides one hundred SWE. Normally all of these troops just stay in the region to make sure that passing enemies don't capture it (though they generally need reinforcements if there's an actual invasion), but sometimes users will take some of the troops from more protected regions and use them to boost their main armies.
We also have sub-HQs. These things are kind of a mix between an HQ and a region. You see, each sub-HQ is assigned to a specific HQ, and that HQ's members control all of the troops from the sub-HQ, though the sub-HQ generally has its own list of troops, and is more or less independent of its parent-HQ besides the fact that the same users control it. To make things more confusing, though (well, we do actually have other reasons, or at least we say we do ), sub-HQs act differently when another HQ besides their assigned owner controls them. While proper HQs cannot be captured (there are some temporary, but serious consequences if an HQ gets conquered, though), sub-HQs can be. But when a sub-HQ is captured, it becomes more like a region than an HQ. It no longer has its own ten thousand troops (that's how many it gets, by the way, ten thousand MWE), but it instead boosts the new owner's troop limit by two thousand MWE. As if that wasn't bad enough, it also gives the new owner three thousand troops that can't be regenerated (well, technically, the next three thousand troops lost in battle can't be regenerated), for a temporary bonus.
And lastly, there's one other little thing that needs to be explained in this section. You may hear someone say, for example, that a given HQ actually has a troop limit of fifteen thousand troops or twenty-five thousand troops. These are the Elven/Dwarven/Orcish HQs. Remember the OWE and E/DWE I mentioned before? These two things are related. You see, canonically (and "canonically" is a just fancy way of saying "because of how things just are according to Tolkien"), Elven and Dwarven soldiers are more powerful and Human ones, and Orcish soldiers are weaker. However, there are also a lot more Orcs (at least who can fight) in Middle-earth than Men, and there are also a lot fewer Elves and Dwarves. To simulate this, we made the standard Orcish soldier (who's worth "one"; not one MWE, but one OWE) worth only four-fifths of one MWE, while the average Elves and Dwarves are worth one and one-third of one MWE. If you do the calculations, that means that an Orcish HQ actually has twenty-five thousand Orcish troops (which are still equal to twenty thousand MWE, in total), while Elven and Dwarven HQs have fifteen thousand troops (again equal to twenty thousand MWE). The conversions also apply to sub-HQs and regions.


Troop Generation, Regeneration, and Movement:
So if you're going to be fighting battles, you're going to first have to move your troops to the battle, and also somehow get more troops as yours get destroyed in battle. That's what this section is about.
Let's talk about generation first, because it's short. Generation only applies to newly-captured regions and sub-HQs. When you capture a region or a sub HQ, you get some troops from it. Generation (not regeneration) is only for the first-time creation of these troops. Once you capture a region (or sub-HQ), you get two hundred and fifty troops that appear at that region every day, starting the day after you capture it and stopping once all of its troops have been generated. So for example, if you capture a region, nothing happens on day one. Day two, two hundred and fifty troops suddenly appear there and you can do whatever you want with them. Day three, another two hundred and fifty troops show up, so you've now got five hundred there. Day four you get another two hundred and fifty troops, making seven hundred and fifty. Day five, yet another two hundred and fifty, so now you've got your full thousand. Day six, nothing happens, because you already have all of your troops. Sub-HQs will generate troops for longer, because they provide more troops.
Next, regeneration. Regeneration is for getting back troops that got destroyed in battle. Each HQ can regenerate one thousand troops per day, but they still can't exceed whatever their troop limit is when you include their regions. Also, troops that were lost in battle can't be regenerated until the army that they were in is either completely destroyed, or is no longer in combat. So if you lose two thousand troops from an army that started with four thousand troops, then you have to wait to regenerate those two thousand lost troops until either your army captures the region, is completely destroyed, or leaves the region. Oh, and if your HQ is under attack, you can't regenerate troops there.
And now troop movement. Sadly, one does not simply walk from The Shire to Mordor in a single day. The official rule is that an army can pass through one region per day. What that means, is that if you have an army that's trying to go from one location to another, then once per day you can move them (posting moves that say that the army is leaving/passing through/arriving in whatever region) to any region that shares a border with the region that they're in. So if you want to move your army from Erebor to Gundabad, it'll take you three days. The first day you'll leave Erebor and enter Mirkwood, day two you'll leave Mirkwood (though you really should've posted that they were just passing through, that way you don't have to make a second post saying that they're leaving again right after they arrived ) and say that you're passing through the Wilderland, and then on day three you will arrive in Gundabad.
There is a little bit of a trick to traveling though. For one thing, mountains and major rivers are impassable, except at certain crossing points. Most of the mountain-crossings have dedicated topics (such as the High Pass, for example), and many of the river-crossings do too (though not all of them). They annoying part of this is that most crossings are very easily blockaded, so if an enemy owns a crossing that you want to use, you probably have to either walk around to another crossing, fight your way through, or maybe bargain your way if you're really desperate. Even some non-crossing topic can be blockaded. If you're passing through an enemy region, they'll probably leave you be, but keep in mind that they get the final call on whether or not you get to pass through without being attacked. If you pass through a region, whoever owns the troops there has a grace period of three days to intercept your army, and if they intercept your army, than you'll generally have to jump back over there and anything you did after passing through is undone. The three-day grace period is so that those of us who can't make it on here every day can still do stuff like this, though it doesn't apply if the user in question was active on one of the earlier days. If they're known to have been active here on one of the three days after you pass through, then they lose their opportunity on the following days.
In case you're not a top-notch Middle-earth cartographer, you'll find a map of the RP and its regions at the top of this forum. Or you can just follow the link below.
legomessage.boards.net/post/56286/thread


Combat and Time:
Honestly, a lot of combat and time stuff has already been talked about above, but there are a few other things that I should probably tell you.
First, most RPs have a "three moves per post" rule. We don't. Because we work with entire armies in this RP, three moves per post is not only not enough in some cases, but it also makes no sense. You can have as many moves in your post as you want/need, but don't go too far ahead with your moves, because time can be kind of funny when in combat. Well, actually, time is funny here in general. We've got two kinds of time: travel-time and battle-time. Travel-time is where lots of stuff happens but you only get one post per day, and we use this for, well, traveling, and also stuff that you do by yourself without enemies around, like building defenses and regenerating troops. Battle-time is where only a little bit happens in each post, but you can make your next post as soon as your opponent has made his. Battle-time is, by the posts, turn based, but everything plays out in real-time. That probably doesn't make sense, so I'll try to explain it. When two players have a battle, they take turns posting moves. Player One posts what his troops do, Player Two posts what his troops do in response to Player One's moves, Player One posts his response to Player Two, and so forth. However, if you imagine each player's moves actually happening in reality, their armies don't just take turns running around firing arrows and the like. Rather, each player's moves are happening simultaneously, just like two real armies would be acting at the same time in a battle.
One of the consequences of this is that when you post a move that will take a long time to complete, not all of it will actually come to pass. An example will probably make this more clear, so here's one. Let's say that I have an army and a group of cavalry running around in circles to the side, and that you have an army that's also running around in circles to the side. Now let's assume that the melee troops in your army marched forward and engaged the front line of my army, leaving your archers by themselves. I see this terrible mistake, and make my move: *My cavalry charges over at your exposed archers, quickly destroying them.* And so it would appear that you just lost your archers. "But oh ho! Not so fast my dear friend!" you say. You see, you're a good student and you pay attention to stuff like this, so you know that while it may have been my turn, stuff plays out in real time so on your turn, your moves will be playing out at the same time as mine. With this knowledge (which you of course knew before I even moved my cavalry, because otherwise you wouldn't have left your archers so "exposed"), you respond: *My (actually you, but I'm typing out your move ) cavalry dashes out into the path of your (actually my) own, intercepting them and keeping them from reaching the archers.* And so suddenly, the logical results of my move never came to pass because you made a move that stopped my own from completing. Now you unfortunately can't normally go back in time to do stuff like this that happened several posts ago, but you can start your moves in a given post at about the same moment that your opponent started his in the post that you're replying to. Generally, most people's moves are directly in response to their opponents moves, so their moves start playing out whenever their opponents' start playing out. As with a lot of stuff, this is something that you'll get a feel for once you've been in a battle or two.
And there's a few quick things that I should clarify about starting battles. When you move into a region to attack, your general arrival is the only move in that post. The defender gets the next move, normally consisting of moving troops to their battle-stations. After that, you, the attacker, gets the first real move of the battle, where you get to put your troops into formation (well, they can enter the region in formation) and choose where and how you want to attack. Also, the attacker gets to choose the weather. If the attacker wants specific weather conditions (don't worry about defender, as they don't get a say in weather), they have to specify them in their arrival post (maybe their second post, but certainly no later). If no weather conditions are specified, it's assumed to be a regular nice day, cool and sunny with a few clouds, negligible breeze and nothing to reduce visibility (unless the region is specifically known for some other sort of weather, in which case you default to that). With intercepts, however, if the attacker (the army passing through) doesn't state any limiting conditions, the defender (interceptor) does get to choose weather. This mainly applies in large regions where the attacker is spending a long time in the region without any particular haste.


Miscelaneous Things to Note:
And that's just about it! Use your HQ's troops to march around, attack other people, and capture regions! Everything above covers most of the stuff that you need to know, but there are a few things little things that should be brought up.
First, different kinds of units are better against certain other kinds of units. Fortunately, you also get to use your own custom units, so you can find the perfect balance of whatever traits you want/need in a unit. Most users make lists of the units they normally use, and you'll find those in one of the topics near the top of this forum (Armies and Units of Middle-earth, referred to as A&U, among other abbreviations). As you're getting started, you'll probably want to stick with fairly basic troop types, and maybe just use your HQ-leader's troop list (several users have also helped to make different lists for some HQs, and have even archived a lot of older users' lists; just ask at the A&U if you want any of these). As you get more experienced, though, you may find that you like certain kinds of units more than others, or that there some role that none of your current units seem to fit well. When that happens, you can design whatever unit it is that you want and post it at the A&U (try to include a name for it, how much it's worth, what weapons and equipment it has, and a basic description of what they do, what they're good at, and that kind of stuff). Assuming that it's reasonable and nobody has any major objections to its usage, you can start using that unit as soon as your field another army. If there is some sort of objection, you may have to scrap it, but more likely there are just one or two minor things that need to be worked out. Don't despair if somebody (totally not me ) brings up problems with your unit. Chances are, it'll actually make it more effective than originally designed (if not, you'll probably be saved from finding out your unit's design flaws (because every unit has some flaws) at the worst possible time: in battle).
When making custom units, there are a few quick rules. First, no flying units. We've had them in the past and may allow them again sometime in the future, but they've been difficult to keep fair and so for now, they're not legal. Second, no explosives/unnatural fires. Again, we had them in the past, and they proved troublesome to keep under control. Basic oil and stuff is okay, but no explosives or Greek Fire. As a basic rule of thumb, if it can be put out with a reasonable amount of effort with only supplies that an army would have with it, it's safe to use. If the fire is effectively impossible for the enemy to put out, it's best to stay away. And third, no advancements in technology. If you're making a custom siege weapon, for example, you can mix up whatever technologies were available in this time period to create something that is on the whole new, but you can't develop new technologies. For example, Human flight was not something that they had at this time, so although they could theoretically build a winged box that could fly, it's not legal. On the other hand, if you wanted to build an armored wagon powered by cranks and has a ballista on top (coughcough ), you can do that because all of the technologies involved (a wagon, a ballista, cranks, gears, etc) were already invented and have examples of being used at this time.
Additionally, just like how some kinds of units are better for certain things than others, certain HQs have better troops of a certain kind than another. All HQs are created equal, but not the same. Different HQs have different specialties, and some of them have access to units that others don't, while some of them have units that are more powerful than another's for the same price. For example, Erebor has technologies (such as tanks which are armored wagons powered by cranks and have a ballista on top ) that other HQs don't, while Rohan's cavalry is going to beat any similar cavalry from a different HQ.
Each user can lead one HQ, and be a member in one other. this rule is to make sure that we don't have one player controlling hundreds of thousands of troops. You're free to be in two different HQs (on the same side, of course), one of which you can lead if there isn't already a leader (or if the leader is leaving, or something like that). And of course, you're free to switch HQs at any time, just make sure that you let the other members of your old HQ(s) know so that they can take over for what you were doing before.


Closing:
And I think that's just about it! I or someone else will probably edit this post at various times to keep it up to date, and fix anything that I got wrong (and cut out some of my rabbit-trails ). But you should now be ready to get started in the LotR Third-age RP! I hope you have an idea of which side you want to be on or, better yet, which HQ you want to join. There's a list of HQs below along with some basic traits of theirs (their members could give you more details). Also, each side has a council topic that you may want to check out pretty frequently in case your allies are formulating some sort of plan. There's also the RP Discussion Topic which you should check out every once in a while at least. It acts as a general meeting place for members here, and we discuss any changes we want to make to the RP and hold the relevant votes there. Also, if you have any questions or advice, go pop in over there and let us know.

Important topics:
RPDT: legomessage.boards.net/post/22270/thread
A&U: legomessage.boards.net/post/22303/thread
Siege weapon/ship details: legomessage.boards.net/post/23889/thread
Good's council: legomessage.boards.net/post/23045/thread
Evil's council: legomessage.boards.net/post/24703/thread
RP map: legomessage.boards.net/post/56286/thread

HQs:
(Just go to the main HQ to join. You can ask the leader specifically for you to control troops from the sub-HQ, if you wish.)

Good:

• Bree: Lots of different troops (Hobbits, Men, Dwarves), some good stealth and elite units. legomessage.boards.net/post/24324/thread
  Sub-HQ - Rivendell: Elvish, good archers. legomessage.boards.net/post/30330/thread
• Mirkwood: Elves, good archers. legomessage.boards.net/post/23026/thread
  Sub-HQ - Lothlorien: Elves, good archers. legomessage.boards.net/post/23470/thread
  
• Erebor: Dwarves, good melee infantry, highly advanced technology, no cavalry. legomessage.boards.net/post/28630/thread
  Sub-HQ - The Iron Hills: Dwarves, good melee infantry, some advanced technology limited cavalry. legomessage.boards.net/post/28632/thread
  
• Dale: Men, wide variety of troops, some advanced technology. legomessage.boards.net/post/24570/thread
  Sub-HQ - The Carrock: Beornings/Men, Skinchangers. legomessage.boards.net/post/37586/thread
  
• Edoras: Men, good cavalry. legomessage.boards.net/post/58940/thread
  Sub-HQ - Fangorn Forest: Ents, not much else. legomessage.boards.net/post/58952/thread
  
• Minas Tirith: Men, good orderly infantry, strong formations. legomessage.boards.net/post/24290/thread
  Sub-HQ - Dol Amroth: Men, good heavy cavalry, navy. legomessage.boards.net/post/29294/thread
  

Evil:

• Moria: Orcs, Trolls, advanced technology. legomessage.boards.net/post/23219/thread
  Sub-HQ - Goblin-town: Goblins, good stealth units, large numbers, weak individuals. legomessage.boards.net/post/24724/thread
  
• Dol Guldur: Orcs, monster units (such as Trolls). legomessage.boards.net/post/22343/thread
  Sub-HQ - Gundabad: Orcs, Werewolves, some advanced technology. legomessage.boards.net/post/28357/thread
  
• Rhun: Men, some good cavalry, battlewains. legomessage.boards.net/post/41121/thread
  Sub-HQ - Khand: Men, good infantry. legomessage.boards.net/post/50749/thread
  
• Isengard: Uruk-hai, advanced technology, strong melee infantry. legomessage.boards.net/post/23159/thread
  Sub-HQ - Dunland: Men, strong shock-troopers, poor formations, little technology. legomessage.boards.net/post/53733/thread
  
• Mordor: Orcs, some advanced technology, monster units. legomessage.boards.net/post/23373/thread
  Sub-HQ - Minas Morgul: Orcs, monster units. legomessage.boards.net/post/34809/thread
  
• Harad: Men, Oliphaunts, good cavalry, good light infantry. legomessage.boards.net/post/33874/thread
  Sub-HQ - Umbar: Men, navy. legomessage.boards.net/post/33875/thread