Topic: YOur First Rolemast Experince

[Warl]

This may have been done before, But I would Love to Hear peoples stories of how they First Encountered Rolemaster.

I was working in my Local Game store as an Employee (Mind you I was 16-17 at the time) and a New group started running a Game there. I got to Know the Gm and some of the players and as we Talked, they would tell me about the game they were playing and the system they were using. I had been running AD&D up to this Point as a GM, But due to summer vacations and some moves, My game was currently On Hiatus.
Learning this, the guys of this group invited me to Join the game. I was hesitant at first, But the more they told me the more I was intrigued. So i gave in and began Character creation. Having leafed through the Character law Professions and Companion 1 & 2 (the only companions out so far at the time), I choose a Night Blade. My character was introduced to the group and we Headed of towards the Elven Lands in order to acquire the right type of wood our mage desired for a Staff.
We were attacked by a Mountain troll. The Dice and Damage Flew about the Table with crits on both sides aplenty. The Mountain Troll escaped, but we were pissed. So we Healed up as best we could and tracked the Beast back to it's Lair. Scouting it out, our Burglar discovered that there was a Stream coming out of a crevice in the rock face that we could send some guys through to do a rear assault while other attacked through the Main entrance. I and the mage were chosen for the mission. It had been scouted out and was shown to lead to the trolls "nursery".
I was in the lead and the mage was right behind me, we were to Wait until the adults had been drawn off due to the fighting at the main entrance. This happened save for 1 female that Remained behind. The Mage and I discussed it and after a Few rounds we decided to try and take the female ourselves.
I moved up and crouched so the mage could cast over my head, Cast a Poisoning spell on my Arrow and Fired at the She troll....... It bounced off.. Crap!!!.. She was Charging at us and the Mage wasn't done with Prep on his spell... I tried to back peddle into the crevice, knowing she was to large to get us there, Only to realize the mage was blocking the escape while he cast.

Sadly My first character was Pummeled while the mage escaped. But It Had been a Blast, I had already fallen in love with he skill system just making a character, having always felt that lack in AD&D. I quickly got a new character sheet and started rolling up a new character, a Warrior this time, and I pulled the Box Set copy and the 2 companions off the shelf and bought them. Determined this would be my New Games system. I played for awhile with this group and Even Ran into My old character again later in the adventure. You see, My first character had rolled up "Necromantic Urges" in the back ground Options... and when our group came back that way, we discovered to our dismay that the fallen Comrade had turned into a Vampire.

LOL just awesome.

[Cory Magel]

Technically we were using very early RM stuff (before it was really a formal system and was only putting out add-on type stuff) with our 2nd Ed D&D way way back.  But I would say my first real experience with RM as a system was using MERP (basically simplified RM).  First roll I ever made was with a Heavy Crossobw, fumbled, and pinned by foot to the ground for something like 5 rounds with a bunch of hits and bleeding.

[intothatdarkness]

Mine wasn't all that great, considering that the group I was with used a sort of "rotating GM" system and that you were guaranteed to die as soon as you reached 5th level. I was never really sure why 5th was the level of death, but there it was (you'd be cruising through the woods and get jumped by a red dragon...usually an OLD red dragon - they wanted to be sure you were dead). The setting was an odd post-apocalypse thing centered close to Denver, although we were pure fantasy in terms of equipment and the like. Never was clear on the background, since we joined kind of mid-stream (my friend's brother was one of the players and occasional GMs). One of the rotating GMs had an odd slavery fetish, so when it was his turn to run the party seemed to focus mostly on capturing people to sell (which didn't sit well with myself or my friend in the group). Luckily the bulk of the party screwed up in one small town (started a fight with the guards and my friend and I manged to avoid it somehow...I think we were off trying to buy healing herbs for his healer). The ironic part of it was that we ended up selling the rest of them into slavery to pay off the fines!

Even though the game itself stunk, I was immediately fascinated by the potential the rules had. This was RM2, mind....very early RM2 (like circa 1985 or so). My friend and I managed to track down a copy of the three core books soon thereafter and starting playing with a new party. Been at it off and on ever since.

[arakish]

My very first experience in the Rolemaster system was with the very first publication of Arms Law back in 1980.  I was on leave from the Navy and saw the book in a local hobby store.  I skimmed it, loved it, bought it, then worked on incorporating it into the DnD I was currently playing.  I went back and bought a second copy so I could carry one with me back in the Navy and leave one for my wife.

She kept going back to that hobby store and found the first publications of Character Law, Spell Law, etc. and bought them.  When I took leave again a year later, I immediately fell in love with the RM system and have never looked back to DnD since.

The first Arms Law gave me what was missing from DnD.  Real Criticals.  I always felt that the combat system in DnD was too cartoonish.  Real combat does not consist of pummeling each other until one falls to below 0 hits.  Especially with swords and other edged weapons.  I was always asking, where are the severe disembowelments, decapitations, impalements, limb severances, etc.?

Arms Law provided that.  But then a year later (IIRC), Rolemaster began rolling out and we had what I have been calling the "Perfect" role playing system.

rmfr

[VladD]

We started play with a German/ Dutch RPG (Schwarze Auge/ Oog Des Meesters) but the system was bland, so one of my friends had acquired the MERP basic rule book. We played that literally to bits, but we began missing stuff such as higher level spells and more weapons and criticals, so we first got us Spell Law, then someone pulled out Arms Law and finally we met Character Law a few sessions later, so we decided to try some RM. Never left Middle Earth, though.

[Old Man]

My first experience was in 83 or so when we took an AD&D campaign and grafted Arms Law on to it (basically *5 to the bonuses and use 1d100 instead of 1d20). Later we grafted Spell Law on and eventually Character Law.

I should have an old PC sheet around here somewhere ...

[PhillipAEllis]

My first taste was a solo adventure in Mirkwood. Rolling up the woodsman, I feel in love with the system, even pre-RMC 1, and ended up spending most of the session buying planks of wood and making trails from tree to tree. I did get a taste of combat against three trolls, tho, and was definitely hooked.

Since then I've usually ended up being the GM. And I love it!