Ok, so a little background. My brother works for a roofing company, and they were called out to help empty an old bookstore prior to a thorough remodel. The store had gone under, and the space was mostly used to hold the back stock that didn't sell. (It was one of those resell shops, and didn't carry many new items.) The new owner of the bookstore just wanted the space emptied, so the crew were ordered to pitch everything. Well, they had a section, albeit small, of RPG's and other games. And due to a leak in the roof, most of it was ruined.
But my brother knows how much I like RPG's, so he salvaged the best looking boxes and brought them to me.
Again, most of it was water damaged, and got thrown out anyway. But in the end, I wound up with several old RM2 books! Now, I've read the RM2 rules, though it was some time ago, and I've invested a lot of money into my RMSS set. But I certainly cannot argue with a relatively complete set of RM2. I took the duplicates to my FLGS and was able to negotiate a trade for the remaining books.
So I scored big, and my collection is now nearly complete. Now I'm re-reading the RM2 rules, and I'm seeing a lot there to like. For example, I like the older version of initiative better than RMSS does it. I like the rules for generating stats better. In fact, the only thing off the top of my head that seems missing are the skills and categories from RMSS, one of the things I most like about that edition. I still have reading to do, but maybe you all could help out with a couple of things.
First I'm not sure the spell gain roll rules are clicking for me. Someone want to run down how that works?
Second, if I decide to follow up on it, I'm thinking I might start saving up to buy the RMC books. After all, it is the latest edition. How much difference is there between RM2 and C? And how much of the old RM2 stuff can be plugged in without change?
It does seem that a lot of the complexity I was thinking could be simplified was already there in the older books to begin with, and it might be easier to sell my new group on RM if I could show them less than an hour to build their first character.