Topic: Found a discrepancy on herbs, need clarification.

[Bruce]

First off I have a spreadsheet that I think I downloaded from the ICE vault a long time ago. This spreadsheet has every single herb in RM and MERP listed in it. I copied that spreadsheet and pasted it into my preferred campaign manager which is Obsidian.md. I then found my copy of Hands of the Healer from MERP and am working on adding the descriptions from Hands of the Healer to the file in Obsidian.md. I found a discrepancy though in the first herb Akbutege.
In the book it says the herb is found in wetlands about two weeks following an extremely cold part of the winter with a Difficulty of Very Hard. I took this as meaning the codes to be: cH6 (cold, Heath/scrub/moor, and Very Hard to find). But the info in the spreadsheet has sO2 (semi-arid, Ocean/saltwater shores, and Easy to find), which is just about the complete opposite of what I have and what the Hands of the Healer describe.

Can anyone please clarify this for me as to what I should go by and which book I might find the correct info in?

[Elrich Maltah]

The information I found in both Character Law and the Shadow World Master Atlas indicates that Akbutege should be sO2. The herbs for concussion relief with codes around at least cH6 might be Cusamar (Character Law) or Anneke (SWMA), but they heal more than Akbutege due to the greater difficulty.

[MisterK]

The information between different settings is not necessarily consistent. ICE writers back in those days often reused names without necessarily reusing the complete description package and context.

In short : when playing in Middle Earth, use the MERP reference. When playing in Shadow World, use the SW reference. When playing in an original setting, pick one or the other, or come up with your own.

[nash]

First off I have a spreadsheet that I think I downloaded from the ICE vault a long time ago. This spreadsheet has every single herb in RM and MERP listed in it. I copied that spreadsheet and pasted it into my preferred campaign manager which is Obsidian.md. I then found my copy of Hands of the Healer from MERP and am working on adding the descriptions from Hands of the Healer to the file in Obsidian.md. I found a discrepancy though in the first herb Akbutege.
In the book it says the herb is found in wetlands about two weeks following an extremely cold part of the winter with a Difficulty of Very Hard. I took this as meaning the codes to be: cH6 (cold, Heath/scrub/moor, and Very Hard to find). But the info in the spreadsheet has sO2 (semi-arid, Ocean/saltwater shores, and Easy to find), which is just about the complete opposite of what I have and what the Hands of the Healer describe.

Can anyone please clarify this for me as to what I should go by and which book I might find the correct info in?

They could also both be correct.  It could be two different plants.  It's not unusual for multiple plants to have the same common name.

[Bruce]

The information I found in both Character Law and the Shadow World Master Atlas indicates that Akbutege should be sO2. The herbs for concussion relief with codes around at least cH6 might be Cusamar (Character Law) or Anneke (SWMA), but they heal more than Akbutege due to the greater difficulty.

Thanks! I haven't had the time to go through the books to find it myself but was wondering about the differences.

[Elrich Maltah]

For what it's worth, my copy of the core MERP book doesn't list Akbutege at all. However, it does list Draaf with the same sO2 code and heal 1-10 effect that Akbutege gets in RM and SW.

And as a side note, if you happen to have duplicate listings for Arlan (one with code cM2 and the other with tT2), the cM2 listing should be changed to "Arthond" per Iron Crown Quarterly issue 3.