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Here you will find information on the key parts of the Merp.com website related to the Middle-earth gaming community

The Middle-earth Role-Playing Community

Here you will find information on the key parts of the Merp.com website related to the Middle-earth gaming community

Including News, Chatrooms, Email Lists, and the rest of the huge international Middleearth role playing gaming and Tolkien fans community!

Check out the NEWS section of the site, http://www.merp.com/news/ for the latest News related to the Middle-earth gaming community
Check out the CHAT (rooms) section of the site, for real time live chat over the Internet with fellow fans, authors, and more at http://www.merp.com/chat/
Join The Middle-earth Role Playing Mailing List. This list has hundreds of community members, including many authors of the ICE MERPS, Decipher LotR, OtherHands, and other great J.R.R. Tolkien and Middle-earth related contributors to the community

Come join in conversations with the Merp.com community and fellow role playing gamers.
In addition to email lists, IRC chat rooms, news postings, and dynamic web pages, there are of the web-based forums as well.
The rest of this section of the site covers more information on IRC Chat, Mailing Lists, Forums, Audio/Video Conferencing, Newsgroups, etc.

Mailing Lists

There are a number of great Middle-earth, Tolkien, Role-playing, MERP, Tolkien Language, and other related mailing lists currently active.
This section covers information on those mailing lists.

MERP List

Merp.com Middle-earth Role Playing mailing list.
Audience/Focus/Topics: This list is focused on gaming (with any rpg system) in Middle-earth. Most heavily ICE MERP/Rolemaster and Decipher LotR. Though other systems such as Harnmaster, AD&D/D&D/d20, GURPS, HEROES, and any others are occasionally discussed and always welcome.
Background: This list has been around for at least a decade, and includes many authors of many published modules and rpg systems, as well as hundreds or rpgers.
Features: Open subscription, unmoderated, email searchable archives, Web archives, digests.
Language(s):English
Traffic: Very Light to medium so it won't overload your inbox. To subscribe: send an email to merp-subscribe@merp.com then follow the directions in the confirmation email you receive. To unsubscribe: send blank email (from the same address you subscribed under) to merp-unsubscribe@merp.com then follow the directions in the confirmation email you receive.
To access the web archives, click this link. This is a public archive, but in order to block spammers we've put a simple username/password requirement, simply enter merparc as the user and merplist as the pwd.

Kandi.org/Xenite Middle-earth List (Currently down/offline) (Michael Martinez List)

This list has moved to Google Groups (see information below the old information

Website: http://kandi.org/mailman/listinfo/middle-earth_kandi.org
Audience/Focus/Topics: The Middle-earth mailing list is intended for discussions about J.R.R. Tolkien and Middle-earth, or related topics, such as Middle-earth merchandising, plays, television productions, movies, etc.
Features: Open, unmoderated, archives, webpage.
Language(s): English
Traffic: VERY HIGH
To subscribe: http://kandi.org/mailman/listinfo/middle-earth_kandi.org

After too many, and prolonged outages, the Michael Martinez Tolkien Email Discussion Forum Mailing list has moved to Google Groups.
The information to join is at:
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/endor/about

Middle-earth List (middle-earth@merp.com) NEW! (In place of Kandi/Xenite list going down.

Website: http://www.merp.com/chat/
Audience/Focus/Topics:The Middle-earth mailing list is intended for discussions about J.R.R. Tolkien, Middle-earth, and related topics that are of a non-gaming and non-role-playing nature.
Features:Open subscription, only subscribers can post, email archives and digest available.
Language(s):English Traffic: Light to moderate. To be determined. Just came online as of Thursday November 25th, 2004
To subscribe:middle-earth-subscribe@merp.com

Eä d20 Middle-earth Role Playing List

Website: eagroup.merp.com
Audience/Focus/Topics: The Eä d20 mailing list is intended for discussions about J.R.R. Tolkien and Middle-earth, or related topics, such as Middle-earth merchandising, plays, television productions, movies, etc. with emphasis on gaming using the D&D d20 3.5 system converted to fit the "Feel" of Middle-earth, and indeed ALL of Tolkien's universe (Eä), better.
Features: Open, unmoderated, archives, webpage.
Language(s): English
Traffic: LOW
To subscribe: Send a blank email to ea-subscribe@merp.com
To unsubscribe:Send a blank email to eaunsubscribe@merp.com

The Eä IRC Chat room is at:
Server: irc.merp.com
Channel: #ea

TOLKIEN@listproc.hcf.jhu.edu

Audience/Focus/Topics: Tolkien
Features: Unmoderated, Archives.
Language(s): English
Traffic: VERY HIGH TRAFFIC
To subscribe: To subscribe, send mail to address ListProc@listproc.hcf.jhu.edu with subscribe tolkien yourname on the first line

TolkLang (Tolkien Language) List

Audience/Focus/Topics: Tolkien Languages (Elvish, Dwarven, Rohirric, etc.). Very scholarly focus.
Features: Moderated, archives.
Language(s): English
Traffic: Very light.
To subscribe: Send mail to address tolklang-request=server@dcs.ed.ac.uk, as a subject use subscribe

TOLKIEN@pub.vse.cz

Audience/Focus/Topics:

Features:

Language(s):

To subscribe:

List owner:

IRC - Internet Relay Chat

We have an Internet Relay Chat network with video and dedicated channels, for role playing gamers who like to adventure in Middle-earth, or just discuss tolkien in general, or just discuss role playing gaming in general. The server is running 24x7x365. Come join your fellow gamers online from around the world. You'll want to loiter there for a while, since there are users from all over the world in every time zone, it's best to come in, hang out, and when others arrive greet them, and start up the conversations about topics of interest.
We're also using video in addition to the usual text chat, and audio chat is on the way too!

For those who want just text and have an IRC client, simply point your IRC client to:
Server: irc.merp.com
Channel: #merpchat (for Middle-earth role playing conversations)
or Channel: #tolkien for non-role-playing Tolkien conversations
or Channel: #ea for d20 Middle-earth gaming
And feel free to setup your own rooms as long as they're related to role playing gaming, middle-earth, and/or tolkien. Enjoy!

***** The new Java Applet IRC Client is working well for most users (though not all unfortunately). Give it a try by following This Link to Java Chat Client and enter your desired username (first and last), then you will join the main Merp.Com Chatrooms.

If you don't have an IRC client yet, you can get one for free. Every platform has many to choose from. Below is a list (with links) covering just a few:

nix/

Or you can try using the link below to chat online using the web interface (but we recommend you use an IRC client instead since the web-based clients can be buggy on different platforms and browsers. Click Here for webclient (buggy)

Audio/Video Conferencing (outdated)

We need a new volunteer to update this section of the site

Now it is possible to game with fellow MERP gamers even though you're scattered around the globe! Now we can game live, online, with full video, audio, text chat, and "whiteboard", all live! No more slow PBM/PBEM games that lose all the interaction of a live game. Just connect your CuSeeMe software to one of my reflectors during a scheduled game and you'll be gaming the same as though all of you were in the same room (well, virtually that is).

Click here for current game schedule (currently disabled)

Or to reserve a game time slot send email request to webmaster@merp.com

Reflector #1 Offline unless requested to be turned back on. On a multi-gigabit connection.

(outdated) Reflector #1 Now on a 10 Mbps AT&T Sonet line! And I'm running the games from home to the server over an ISDN line. The next sessions should be far better in audio and video quality! reflect.merp.com

(outdated) Reflector #4 (64k connection only)fully functional and online at reflect3.merp.com

You can connect to these addresses if you have CuSeeMe.

If you don't have it, Click here to download the free B&W version (450kb) Or for the Windows free Color one from Cornell originally Or here for other versions and platforms Or here, for demo Enhanced CuSeeMe (full-color) ( 11.5 MB! )

2-5-2000 game: Went VERY well, audio worked very nicely, video still a bit weak, but passable, most of the time the players were able to enjoy the game without having to focus on the the technical issues of being online, occasionally had to have the local and remote players repeat themselves, and there were a couple of miscommunications that caused some serious consequences, so the audio defintiely needs to be cleaned up a bit more, but we're a lot closer now. Remote players stayed connected fairly reliably, rarely disconnecting. I still need to setup whiteboard capabilities, I worked around it by uploading images to webpages so the remote users could see the same drawings that the local ones saw, but a live whiteboard would be a lot faster and smoother. I'll have to work on that. All in all, it went well. We will be doing games regularly online now. about every 2-4 weeks. Even some of the local players may opt to play remotely if the last few issues iron out easily enough.

9-11-99 game, didn't fare well on the online gamers side! most could hear and see my players and myself clearly and smoothly, but when the online gamers tried to talk (send) they were extremely choppy on our receiving end alas! It might be because I'm only on a regular phone line at home (although the server is on the 512k ADSL), I'm not sure, I'm researching further to hopefully have this problem with the gamers sending audio resolved before the next session on the 9-25-99 game. Also we had problems when players and I used different versions of CuSeeme, one part would work and another part wouldn't For example I could reciveive their audio but they couldn't hear me even though they coudl see me on video!, Or any other number of weird combinations. I wil keep researching this. If anyone has any suggestions from their own experiences please be sure to email me at webmaster@merp.com

(8-21-99 Saturday) First full Live broadcast game, I will gather users input on how well they received the transmissions, and the next session will be involving web players as well as locals.

Now setting up for test number 4.(7-24-99) I have a server I'm setting up on a 512k ADSL line. I will be testing this as a reflector within a week or two at most. I expect it run to run VERY nicely, and handle many users simultaneously, this should also make it easy for other GMs to host their games on here as well. Check back soon for test resuts.

The third testing stage, performed 5-20-99 on a 48k phone line connection, of a live MERP/RoleMaster online gaming site! I am limited by legal issues to no more than 24 players at a time, But who would want more than 8-12 max anyway?!?!? :) (in one game of course) The game is going to include the following: MERP and MERP-based RoleMaster characters A live GM (myself, and maybe later others too) 2-12 Live players Streaming/Live Audio (Multipoint, not lame point to point) Streaming/Live Video (Multipoint, not lame point to point) Live whiteboard (Drawings, images, animations, etc) Live text chat Live Video will vary between color and black and white depending on bandwidth/playability issues I intend to run two more (series total of five) "dry-run" Technical tests before actually performing online game. If you would like more info on how to join, and game times please send email to webmaster@merp.com

Update on tests: Test three started running on Sunday May 30th 2 pm MDT and will continue until next Sunday I am constantly posting the results below, and will do so with following tests.

Check back soon.

Test 3 results = Mediocore, had several technical delays, I will continue testing throughout the week and coming weekend Ok it works, but bandwidth is only handling about 2-4 users from outside the LAN Also found a possible bug in the reflector software if a user has more then one IP address on their computer the server won't let them connect for example: if they have a NIC using an internal IP address , and then use a modem/DSL/cable to connect to web they now have at least two Ip addresses, the server shows their connection attempt, but it won't let them finish connecting.

Test 2 results = Excellent, over a 64k ISDN line had 8 connections with full conversations simultaneously, video was a little slow, but acceptable, Audio was great except for one fellow in Croatia, kept breaking up a lot, most users were only running on 28.8 modems (not even 56k), some video was in full color.

Test 1 results = Horrble, my phone line only had average connect speed of about 21k-26k, and very poor quality, I was only able to have 2-3 people connect with a lot of chopiness and very weak video any more connections than that, and everyone would lose the connection to my server, will try to get more bandwidth.

Forums

Information coming soon

Newsgroups