Author Topic: When did you start playing ICE rpg's?  (Read 58483 times)

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Offline markc

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Re: When did you start playing ICE rpg's?
« Reply #80 on: April 10, 2012, 10:20:18 AM »
 I like HARP SF a lot. But then I also like SM:P a lot also.
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Offline intothatdarkness

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Re: When did you start playing ICE rpg's?
« Reply #81 on: August 17, 2012, 05:18:53 PM »
Yeah, I played James Bond, too. Actually started working on a Miami Vice mod for those rules (something that would have allowed players to play cops or drug runners...with possibilities for an adversarial campaign). Ah...the days of youth and ambition... ;)

Wow.. That sounds hilarious. I would play that in a heartbeat! I might want to convert it to Top Secret 1st ed. rules. I think that's what we were playing way back then.

I still have the Miami Vice mod rules floating around somewhere. They were about 3/4 done, since it was pretty easy to convert those sort of things into the James Bond rules. Competing party gaming always fascinated me...had a Top Secret group running like that for about a year.

My kinda rough TS conversion for RM2 is actually in the Vault here.
Darn that salt pork!

Offline chippermonks

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Re: When did you start playing ICE rpg's?
« Reply #82 on: September 29, 2012, 05:08:09 PM »
I fondly remember hiding under the kitchen table and secretly stealing the GM's (my dads or uncles) books and reading them when ever they set them down. It is basically what sparked my interest in reading and role playing! that would have been early 90's.

While I always kept an open mind and love experimenting with different systems, I've always preferred rolemaster over the competitors and I greatly enjoy teaching people how to play :)

Offline OmegaRogue

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Re: When did you start playing ICE rpg's?
« Reply #83 on: October 04, 2012, 12:05:20 PM »
I remember and infact still have the very first thing I ever purchased about RoleMaster - it was a "universal" game supplement called Character Law that tlks about skills, personality & background, and conversions of stats to/from a 100% stand point - since then, I have tried very hard to make sure I got a hold of RM/SM/MERP/HARP/SD products at to date have virtually everything published by ICE on those product lines ...

funny thing - I actually bought it used in about 1984 and I liked it so well that I have been 'obsesively hooked' on the ICE line ever since - I don't even know what is going on with any other game brand/style anymore :P

Needless to say, I am extremely happy to see RM/SM/HARP taking off again and I am more than willing to assist if there would be anything that would be needed for the game ...

As from another post elsewhere ... "Long Live The Crown" :D
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Offline MDillenbeck

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Re: When did you start playing ICE rpg's?
« Reply #84 on: October 08, 2012, 04:37:05 AM »
Mentioned it elsewhere, but the heavy parchment tables in the original box sets were what caught my eye - but the content of those tables hooked me.  I also liked the idea of a skill-driven system at a time when AD&D didn't really have any.

By the age of 12 I was going downtown to my local University Union and playing with the adults.  Runequest, Tunnels and Trolls, and so forth.  I've played tons of games, lost most of them in 2 moves.  GURPS, Dirt, Paranoia, Lords of Creation, Boot Hill, Gamma World (the original), Fringeworthy, Traveller, The Morrow Project, a WW II squad rpg with deadly realistic combat that I don't remember the name of and wish I had, Palladium, Rifts, Shadow Run, TWERPS, Talislanta (an awesome setting - the guy who made the game held on to the rights, and after the market bottomed out on it he put everything online for free!  8)  I really recommend checking out his game/setting), D&D (basic-expert-etc), AD&D (1, 2, and 3rd edition - never really did 3.5 and no point in looking at 4... did one beta playtest for the new edition and stopped participating), Chill, Changling, Mekton II, Villians and Vigilantes, Champions, DC Heroes, Marvel Superheroes, Vampire: The Masquerade, Call of Cthulhu, and so many more I can't recall, but I wish I still had all my games now.  :'(

Looking up at the shelf right now I can see HARP, RM2 (all companions, war law, sea law, character sheets, heroes and rogues, etc), RMSS and RMFRP (got the FRP for cheap and I collected all editions), Space Master (like the ship design rules better in this version), Privateers (like the robot design rules better in this version, setting was kind of bland for me), most of the Shadow World setting, Cyberpunk (still remember the firefight where the bodyguard couldn't hit the broad side of the barn, but a nerdy scientist with 1 rank in a energy pistol took out two attackers with kill shots and incapacitated a third... I twisted it into a "Bubble Gum Crisis" game setting.), and even a few of the Loremaster modules.  No matter my moves, I tried hard to hold onto my Rolemaster games while everything else was lost (all my non-rolemaster stuff is from a coworker of my wife's who use to be a gamer that retired... mostly Rifts and superhero games).

I know I am getting old because I am getting nostalgic for the golden age of RPGs.  I didn't care that it was geeky and the ultimate act of social pariahism.  I remember roleplaying before work, coming home from work to staying up all night and day gaming, having to go back to work, drinking mountain dew and popping no-doze until my boss sent me home due to really bad shakes and inability to form cohesive sentences.  I had a friend who worked as a janitor.  He let us in after hours so he could take his breaks gaming with us - and we got to use the offices for several hours.  I remember thriving game shops filled with wide eyed kids like me.

Now?  Video games, movies, and the internet has replace so much.  I shouldn't complain.  My town has had a stable FLGS for quite some time, there was a second one I didn't realize existed (it focuses on miniatures and war gaming, but still does some RPGs), and one opened up in the last year that focuses on board games more than RPGs.

I miss the good old days of childhood when I could game all weekend, or the early days of adulthood before the evil of CCGs descended.  However, through all my decades of gaming, I've always come back to Rolemaster.  Even when not actively playing Rolemaster products I would buy them and read them.  I wish the hobby would come back, but I don't think it will ever be the same.  Still, nice to know it won't completely die off in my lifetime either.

Offline Jacchan

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Re: When did you start playing ICE rpg's?
« Reply #85 on: October 09, 2012, 03:01:26 AM »
In 2003, A friend arranged an evening with a one-shot. The system was not properly RMFRP but a hybrid of merp/ Rolemaster and full of house rules. To me and my friends we liked it very much. Me and my friends liked it a lot and started a campain (lasting 3 years)... With time I became the GM and gradually we took of almost all merp parts and many house rules... In nine years, little by little (and after a little disgression with D&D4) now we use a Rolemaster with only some simplified parts. :D
Sorry for my very bad english...

Offline talsharien

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Re: When did you start playing ICE rpg's?
« Reply #86 on: October 14, 2012, 05:16:46 AM »
Go my first copy of Character Law in 89. I was in my last years of school playing D&D at the time and I picked Character Law up off the shelf of my local gaming store as an impulse buy.

I remember being on holiday in Scarborough (Yorkshire) with my girlfriend in the early nineties when RMSS first landed, that was probably the beginning of the end of our relationship when I spent the whole week reading the core rulebook  :D

Offline HighNDry

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Re: When did you start playing ICE rpg's?
« Reply #87 on: October 22, 2012, 11:02:47 PM »
At the time we didn't even know what Rolemaster was. A good friend of mine bought the middle earth rpg in 1985 and we played it for a couple years. I picked up some Spacemaster at the same time. Around 89-90 I discovered RM2.5 and got the core books, but it waited a year or two before my friends decided to try it out. We had such a blast, crit charts can just wreck a GM's night.   ;D

Offline Turbs

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Re: When did you start playing ICE rpg's?
« Reply #88 on: June 03, 2013, 07:28:51 PM »
Note - I have only listed the products to help people remember what was being published during each period.  If your introduction to ICE rpg's was RM2, but not until 2004 - then mark it as the HARP era.

i voted first then read this..
my answer should be late mid to late 90's playing Rolemaster after a failed attempt at DnD first edition..failed because the party got bored and tried to kill each other..
The universe is hostile. So impersonal. Devour to survive; So it is; So it's always been.  ~Tool; Vicarious~

Offline Cory Magel

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Re: When did you start playing ICE rpg's?
« Reply #89 on: June 03, 2013, 10:01:34 PM »
...the party got bored and tried to kill each other...
We've done that.  Three party members left alive out of seven plus an NPC I believe.  Needless to say we were getting tired of the campaign/GM's attitude.  It was a really fun fight.  And the look on the GM's face was priceless (especially since we didn't need him for the fight once the NPC went down).
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Offline Nortti

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Re: When did you start playing ICE rpg's?
« Reply #90 on: June 12, 2013, 03:57:27 AM »
Started GMing RM2 in the early 90´s. In an earlier thread (2009) I said it was RMC but I was mistaken as I did not know the proper names of different versions.

I moved from Runequest to RM2. I like both because of their "free for the GM to create" -spirit.

Offline danbuter

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Re: When did you start playing ICE rpg's?
« Reply #91 on: August 09, 2013, 10:00:20 PM »
Mid 80s. I was all MERP for several years. Never got into RM until the 90s.

Offline Bruce

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Re: When did you start playing ICE rpg's?
« Reply #92 on: September 25, 2013, 11:42:40 PM »
A little story: It all started for me back in 1981 when my best friend back then got the basic d&d set for Christmas on accident (He actually wanted the TSR electronic dragon hunt game). It was me, my best friend, his younger brother, and another good friend in a group. In high school a couple of years later I started playing AD&D with some guys in our study hour. One of the guys in that group came up to me one day and handed me three books and said I could have them if I was interested. They were the original Character Law/Campaign Law, Spell Law, and Arms Law. I started reading, and was hooked. At first I tried implementing some of the stuff into our d&d games but it didn't really work. We played a few games and no one in our group (except me) really enjoyed the rules system that much. We continued playing d&d and other RPGs, mostly Marvel Super Heroes. In 1986 I ran a few successful RM games in my Army AIT school. Then in 1990 after joining the navy I went to the base rec center and ended up GMing my very last d&d campaign. Which led me to develop a regular RM group and start gaming on a regular basis for the next 15 years. I purchased and started running HARP as soon as it came out way back when. But unfortunately I went into a hiatus for about 7 years or so, though I did have a good game of pseudo HARP for about a year in there (pseudo HARP meaning I created all the rules from memory,...).
Currently, I am weathering some gaming in pathfinder. Mainly to draw players to HARP. Secondly to just game and get a good feel for the atmosphere again. Two problems, one it isn't RM or HARP and two I am a GM, I don't care for being on the other side of the screen to much, though it can be fun at times and others tend to enjoy my characters sometimes. My HARP game is starting soon though.

Bruce
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Offline KacyCrawford

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Re: When did you start playing ICE rpg's?
« Reply #93 on: September 26, 2013, 08:47:02 AM »
Started gaming in the year 2003.

Offline Cory Magel

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Re: When did you start playing ICE rpg's?
« Reply #94 on: September 26, 2013, 12:54:37 PM »
It's interesting that RMFRP and RMC have zero while The Guild Companion has 2.  It's also interesting that it appears the majority of RMSS/RMFRP users here started with RM1/RM2 - I wonder how much of that was using it piecemeal with another system early on.

While we here on the boards are probably not the 'normal' demographic for the system the poll would seem to imply RM has had a hard time getting new users post-RM2 in general.  There may be an impact from the possibility that those who started with RM1/RM2 are likely more hard-core fans and more likely to register here though.
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Offline Thom @ ICE

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Re: When did you start playing ICE rpg's?
« Reply #95 on: September 26, 2013, 01:10:39 PM »
Cory,
Since this poll has so few entries it is really not relevant in regards to actual forum member breakdown.

In addition, it was posted in Jan 2011, after a number of years where HARP support had dwindled and forum activity had fallen way off.

We're doing everything we can to bring out product support for RM and HARP, and we're trying to recover some of the wayward souls who left the ICE forums years ago.  The plan is that these initiatives will return knowledge of ICE game systems to the general gaming populace, and as we continue to put out quality, new products we'll grow the following.  We know our limitations using a part-time and freelance workforce, but that is what let's us exist without high overhead and allows us to begin looking at sinking money into marketing and con support.

We'll also be looking for help from the fanbase.... but you'll have to wait a little longer to hear how we plan to handle that. ;D
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Offline RandalThor

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Re: When did you start playing ICE rpg's?
« Reply #96 on: September 26, 2013, 06:05:46 PM »
While I was aware of the RM1 and RM2 rule sets, I don't think that I actually started playing RM until RMSS in the early 90's, shortly after getting out of the Marine Corps. Of course, I fell in love with the system and have tried to make it my go-to system, though it has been difficult.
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Offline Cory Magel

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Re: When did you start playing ICE rpg's?
« Reply #97 on: September 26, 2013, 09:03:38 PM »
Cory,
Since this poll has so few entries it is really not relevant in regards to actual forum member breakdown.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying major business efforts should be based on this - as I said we are almost surely not the 'normal' demographic.  Although, with 135 replies it does cover the majority of active posters.  The numbers are still useful, you just don't want to go running off to the presses based on them.

Quote
In addition, it was posted in Jan 2011, after a number of years where HARP support had dwindled and forum activity had fallen way off.
Heh, this in no way reflects on the current effort, but "support had dwindled" can be said about ICE products in general previous to the last change of hands of the license.

Quote
The plan is that these initiatives will return knowledge of ICE game systems to the general gaming populace, and as we continue to put out quality, new products we'll grow the following.
That's the tough part I think.  'Getting the word out' (without actually advertising or being on the shelf) is what's been going on for a very long time.  Hopefully you guys have some good ideas apart from relying on the fan base to spread the word as it were.
- Cory Magel

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"The only thing I know about adults is that they are obsolete children." - Dr Seuss

Offline markc

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Re: When did you start playing ICE rpg's?
« Reply #98 on: September 27, 2013, 08:33:49 AM »
Got a free copy of MERP and RM 1 or 2, SM 2 back in 83-84 did not play it but bought a lot of MERP stuff for reference for a home brew game. Started playing RM 2 in 96-97 picked up books as I could but also picked up RMSS and loved it even thought the group I was gaming with did not. They had way to much time (personal and game related) tied up with the RM2 system to switch. We did encounter some of the RM 2 edition problems but it was having to do with profession skill costs and such. They used RMSS SL as they liked it better.


 So I am a RM 2 convert from around 96-97 but during my analysis and with input from people who had been playing since the 80's I decided to go with RMSS.


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Offline electron_god

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Re: When did you start playing ICE rpg's?
« Reply #99 on: October 06, 2013, 02:50:37 PM »
My main group got together in the mid 90's and used RMSS. We tried out the the expansion stuff ICE released beyond the Big 3 from RM2 but it never stuck except for maybe Arcane Companion. After all this time, we're trying to pick it back up and do it using Google Hangouts since we've all moved around over the years.

Edit: meant RMSS and for some reason typed RM2.