Greetings traveler,

A happy Easter and welcome to the seventeenth edition of the alcarin.com newsletter.
There is an archive of the previous newsletters in the Townhall and the columns are added to the Town Square, so you can always read it again.
It's been quite a while ago that it was so busy on the site. This month has brought lots and lots of updates. The RPG Archives have expanded with new new characters, monsters and items, some new Elfstone Campaign Setting stuff. But the two most important updates are a new article and a D&D mission. The article is a photo report of a regular night of role-playing at a group in Barneveld, The Netherlands. The mission is a large D&D mission for level 1 characters. Some 23 pages of mission with lots of maps, handouts and other things.
Enjoy reading.

This letter's content:
1. What's New
2. Coming Up Soon
3. Close-Up
4. Column: Men with a Mission

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WHAT'S NEW:

26/03/2002 - new article in the Town Square: "Role-Player's Night - the photo report"

20/03/2002 - new monster in the School: "Wretched Fencer", new item in the School: "Coffin of Preservation"

18/03/2002 - new D&D mission in the Barracks: "Agmanor's Treasure"

17/03/2002 - new character in the School: Poison Nova

09/03/2002 - converted main Pantheon page and Pantheon Wings of Air, Water and Fire of the Elfstone Campaign Setting to D&D 3rd edition

08/03/2002 - created chapter "Beyond the Mirror" on the Dunékàr Online RPG

07/03/2002 - started chapter 4 of the webnovel "Goiren and the Blackened Blades"

05/03/2002 - new link in the Gate

03/03/2002 - new character in the School: Alarielle

Visit http://www.alcarin.com/townhall/updates.htm for the latest updates.

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COMING UP:

Work on the Elfstone Pantheon is actually in progress: three Wings have been converted to D&D third edition. In the coming month, I will be working on converting the other two Wings that where already there and maybe I'll have the time to work on the last two Wings (the ones that weren't even ready for AD&D second edition). I don't think there will be time left for the Elfstone Geography pages. That's something for beyond this month.
The photo report was online much sooner than I had expected. For now, there are only 9 photos. Maybe in the future, this can be expanded. The other important update this month, the new mission, is on the site as a zipped Word-document. I'm still working on converting it to PDF format. My attempts so far have failed, though.
As for other updates: I think there will be some more submissions to the RPG Archives, but other things are a bit uncertain.

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CLOSE-UP:

Lord of the Rings for Warcraft 2 (Barracks)

Preview:
"Mission 6: "The Battle of Minas Tirith" (16,0 kb)
route part: Minas Tirith
terrain type: forest
description: This mission starts in Minas Tirith with the 2 members of the party that reached Minas Tirith first, the soldiers of Minas Tirith, and the other nations that gathered in Minas Tirith.
You must defend Minas Tirith against the attacking orcs and Southrons. If the gate breaks, send some of your soldiers north. You will find the Riders of Rohan coming to your aid. Bring the Riders to Minas Tirith and you will find Aragorn, Glimi, Legolas and the Dunedain. After surviving all of this, gather and army and send it to Mordor. Destroy all enemy forces you find on your way.
player colors:
- blue: the Riders of Rohan
- white: the party
- black: the Mordor orcs, the black riders
- red: the Southrons
- green: the soldiers of Minas Tirith
- violet, orange: the other nations gathered in Minas Tirith
- yellow: the Dunedain
screenshots: none"

That are the notes and mission description of one of the missions from The Lord of the Rings mission pack for Warcraft 2.
Some years ago, I read the famous book "The Lord of the Rings" by J.R.R. Tolkien and I really liked that book. During the same period I was quite a big Warcraft 2 fan as well. So, I combined both things. The result was a mission pack for Warcraft 2 that covered the story of The Lord of the Rings. I originally created it just to play it myself. The website didn't even exist back then. But after a while, some friends wanted to play it and they liked it. Some time later, when the site was founded ("Realms of Gildor" it was called back then) someone thought it would be cool to put it on the site, and so I did. And it is still there today.
The Lord of the Rings mission pack for Warcraft 2 is a series of seven mission files (.pud). It is intended to actually follow the storyline of the Lord of the Rings. So it's not an arm the Shire to the teeth and march to Mordor type of mission. Part one deals with getting the Hobbits from the Shire to Moria. Part two deals with the journey through Moria. The third part with the journey on the river Anduin. The fourth mission is to defend Helm's Deep and destroy Isengard. After that, mission five takes Frodo and Sam into Mordor. Mission six (the one above) deals with the battle of Minas Tirith and the final mission, mission seven, deals with the final battle and Mount Doom. The missions can be downloaded separately or as the complete mission pack. Of some of them, there are screenshots available.

Check it out at the Barracks: http://www.alcarin.com/barracks

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COLUMN: MEN WITH A MISSION
A column by Wouter vd Zandschulp; wouter@alcarin.com

"RPG-ing; is it just a cover?"

Happy Easter to all readers!
You readers may have, while looking at www.alcarin.com - fantasy & role-playing, accidentally have stumbled into the picture gallery at the Town Square (the new article "Role-Player's Night - the photo report", red.).
This includes some nice pictures of our role-play-party, including a very hairy person fighting a very long person with empty cola-bottles and an IDIOT with a grin that is not physically possible. Some of you probably think we are LARP-ing (Live Action Role-Playing) here, but that is not really the case.
It's just that in our party two guys are always fighting, some guys throw over their glasses with cola a lot, the DM has body-functions that are not possible, some have way to much hair, some are way to tall, some can make noises that damage your ears considerably and so on. Any lost traveler that would happen to stumble upon our rpg-party is in for a big surprise.
He might think to walk in on some guys that are playing to be other guys in a fantasy-world. Of course no non-rpg-er really gets this concept at all and might wonder what the fun of it all is.
But when he will walk in at our party, he might be treated to a song at first, way too loud and not very keen sang, probably some child-song that has been messed around with.
If he ducks in time, he may be lucky and not being hit in the head by a cola-bottle. If he then can raise is voice as much as to make himself hearable and introduces himself, he will hear terrible word-jokes made out of his name, which he will try to forget by drinking loads of alcohol for the rest of the poor guys live.
Other things he might see are: fire eating, of course human sacrifices and maybe even evil clowns.
After this neutral observer, who will have ran away screaming, when he is lucky enough to still being able to, that is, will try and tell outsiders, no-one will believe him, luckily.
Questions that rise are: are all role-players idiots? Are they all accustomed to physically abusing one another? Is role-playing just a cover to act crazy?
It seems that mostly students are role-players. This is the case in our group, at least. So maybe we can blame it all on the too demanding school-system, that makes us have to unload too much stress. I think this is a pretty good theory. Screaming, after all, unloads stress. Singing children-songs, running around, hitting one another, all of that helps to get it out of your system. And the role-play-group provides for all kind of youngsters that have the similar need and therefore can trust that their nuts behavior does not leave the room. And to one another they have no respect after all. Why should they? Come on, they are role-players! So they use each other to unload.
But is role-playing a cover for actually just craziness? Well, to answer that last question I will have to find someone in that group to ask if there also is some real role-playing in a night. Well, I guess I will do.
Well, as a role-player in this hectic group I can tell you: yes. We also really role-play (most evenings, at least). After all, role-playing itself is an interesting hobby, which you can unload your stress into as well. And this is just good, sensible fun with rules and statistics and everything.
Well, and it allows you to cast a snowball-spell at a gnome, attacking your party-members, buying slaves, giving exploding presents, etc.

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Well, that's it for this month's newsletter. I hope you enjoyed it.
Lord Gildor
"May the stars guide you on your journeys"
http://www.alcarin.com

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