Topic: RMU Beta and MERP

[markc]

 I just wanted to comment on how often I read people comparing rules from RMU to MERP. I did know that MERP was somewhat popular but I just did not realize how many people still played the game or in fact quoted it.
MDC

[Marc R]

It was at one point, a contender with D&D as the most widely used system. . .that point was a long time ago, which indicates we either have an older crowd and/or one that likes to dig back in the cellar to sample prime old vintages.

[egdcltd]

It was at one point, a contender with D&D as the most widely used system. . .that point was a long time ago, which indicates we either have an older crowd and/or one that likes to dig back in the cellar to sample prime old vintages.

Probably an older crowd, looking at the upcoming birthdays.

[roxolid]

First post here, but thought I'd pitch in. MERP was a breath of fresh air for my group back in the day. I wasn't a fan of Middle Earth and the meta plot, but strip that away and as a generic fantasy RPG it made a nice change. Combat especially was a lot of fun compared to chipping away at cubes o hit points in D&D. I think that was around 1984 ish (Red Book 1st edition) so it was in direct competition with BECMI, AD&D and Runequest, and for our die hard BECMI group (though all other games at the time got some play in - we mixed it up when not playing BECMI) it was a little bit of a hard sell at first, but once up and running the criticals and fumbles won us over.

Fast character creation, unpredictable and entertaining criticals, skills and a completely different feel from BECMI were what attracted us, mostly. Downside was the character sheets being a pain to write out - photocopies cost quite a bit back then

[Mungo]

For me its the other way round: the world modules are among the best I have ever read, MERP as a system doesn't excite me. Just this week I digested Minas Tirith and it was really great.

So what I want to have when I say "backward compatibility with MERP" is actually to make sure that the RM stats in the MERP modules can be used without too much back and forth convertion.

[wlewisiii]

I'm more inclined towards what Mungo has to say. The MERPS was not an especially good fit with Tolkien Canon (especially the Spell Law based magic!) but the modules were exquisitely produced.

Considering that ICE no longer owns any rights to MERPS or anything Tolkien related, however, I'd advise not mentioning it or worrying about any kind of compatibility. The folks that handle the Tolkien estate's licensing matters would, if memory serves, drool over the chance to cause ICE still more grief once again.

MERPS is of the past and must remain there, unfortunate as that may be for the ICE fanbase.

[roxolid]

I was referring more to the system, to be honest. File off the licensed setting and MERP is a fine game that, with a few tweaks, could easily be put out there as a 'basic' product. I have the thin version of RM (Classic?) along with a host of different versions, and to be honest it never drew me in as the MERP system did.

Part of the problem with RM I had was trying to figure out which version was which and the differences between them all. For the most part I'm guessing that its a 'different coat of paint' but otherwise the same game but I'm sure someone will set me straight.

[Frabby]

MERP was essentially the system that got me started into tabletop RPGing. I've tried out a zillion other commercial or homebrew systems, but our core playing group went from MERP to Rolemaster to Rolemaster+ (essentially a hodgepodge of RM, all published companions up to Arms Companion, and some house rules) to RMFRP+ (largely RMFRP with only a handful houserules remaining).

My personal conclusion is that Rolemaster grew and grew and eventually collapsed under its own size with all those optional rules (and no, I don't buy into the argument that these rules were "optional" - they were officially published rules and my players paid money for the companions so they insisted that these rules be included, no matter how unbalancing they might be).
That's why I immediately fell in love with the fresh start from RMFRP, although that's since been diluted by too many (imho) new classes and extra stuff. Well. I guess ICE has to sell books after all and since adventure modules apparently don't sell well, the rules cannot ever be complete.

I am telling this because we seriously considered cutting back and returning to the bare-bones MERP rules at one time. We settled for RMFRP, but overall, MERP is a simple (but not oversimplified) essence of the best aspects of RM.

[yammahoper]

At its height, MERP was the second best selling rpg of all time, behind DnD.

A "different coat of paint" is an excellent analogy.  Having just completed reading Character Law, I can say RMU is to RM2 what RMSS was to RM2.  It is the same system, but now a new set of no longer optional rules are plugged in.  I have to say, it is clean and well done.  When my biggest complaint is "A laborer proffession, really?  Isn't that a bit redundant when we have a No Profession already?"...well, that's not much to complain about.

The system is still the same, so old modules and MERP materials should work fine.  I'm gonna read Spell Law tonight.

MERP was my intro into RM too.  I will always feel in its simplicity it encapsulated RM's themes perfectly.  We played MERP for a long time with just Arms Law before actually switching over.  There is a lot to be said for simple and concise.

[Keen_Man]

My whole group LOVED Merp back int he day and half of them still are in my game groups.

My merp books will always have a loving place on my shelves.

[Old Man]

I still see MERP modules in play (in fact a PBEM I am in is using the Dark Mage of Rhuduar setting) and was always fond of the relative clarity of the system (tick X boxes a level in skills .. ).

[johnkzin]

When I was in my "lots of crunchy rules, don't care about how much it slows down the game" phase (back the mid 1980's), I loved RoleMaster and SpaceMaster.  But, when I started to move toward smaller, more minimalist game systems, MERP (and, later, Cyberspace) were a great fit for that.

More minimal, yet a lot of the same ideas in overall system design.  Yet MERP and Cyberspace (CS, which is the same rule set, tweaked for cyberpunk) weren't completely minimalist.  It was a good balance.  But, then, true minimalism isn't barebones.  It's "what is necessary, and nothing more".  But some people forget that it's also "nothing less."  That's what MERP/CS were, in my opinion.  What was necessary, nothing more, nothing less, with a very similar flavor to the far-from-minimalist RM/SM.

With some tweaking and expanding, you could use Cyberspace as a SpaceMaster replacement.  With a little more tweaking, you could combine MERP magic rules, spells, skill group, and profession, into CS... letting you run Techno-fantasy settings like Shadowrun.  Further, the way professions were implemented, it was actually pretty trivial to make hybrid professions and/or entirely new balanced professions (you just mixed around the skill points per skill group per level, recognizing that one of the groups costs twice as much).

In that regard, CS/MERP was almost a holy grail of RPGs.  Except that, by the mid-90's, most of it was gone.  And when the new Iron Crown finally got around to addressing the lighter-game counterpart of RM/SM, they didn't resurrect this great system.  Instead, they created HARP.  Don't get me wrong, HARP isn't awful, and it has some good ideas... but it's no MERP.  I had a lot of hopes for HARP, and it didn't really live up to them.

To see comparisons between "RMU Beta" and MERP is kind of a nice sign, in my opinion.  It makes me wonder if the new-edition of MERP (mechanics wise, not settings wise) might be on the horizon.  That would be a good thing.  But, it makes me wonder about what place HARP has in the product-line ... because anything that fills the shoes of MERP will be a competitor with HARP.  (MERP is even a little bit lighter than HARP)

So:  am I an older gamer, yes.  But that's not why (over the last decade, but not much in the last 4ish years) I have sometimes chimed in about MERP.  The reason I chime in about MERP is that it was a particularly good system for those with a particular mindset about RPG rules and minimalism.  In the same way that there are still gamers that play 1st edition AD&D, and even a recent resurgence of original D&D and 1e AD&D players (the "old school renaissance"), there are some gamers who are still nostalgic about MERP/CS.

I even did a version of FUDGE that was heavily based on MERP/CS, quite a while ago (similar structure of skill list, and how you bought skills and spells).  Unfortunately, I muddled it down in an action point system that was even more complex than Hero.  And then d20 came out.  By the time I got back to FUDGE, I was going in a completely different direction.  These days, I'm more interested in the game "Warrior, Rogue, Mage".

But, this thread alone has gotten me over the "will I or wont I pick up the RMU Beta" question.  If RMU is drawing comparisons to MERP, it's worth looking at.

[johnkzin]

Unfortunately, looking at the Character Law playtest, RMU isn't going to be anything like MERP (not any more-so than RM in general has the same larger ideas, but RM is implemented with a lot more detail and crunch).  Not sure why it was brought up here.

[Mungo]

Unfortunately, looking at the Character Law playtest, RMU isn't going to be anything like MERP (not any more-so than RM in general has the same larger ideas, but RM is implemented with a lot more detail and crunch).  Not sure why it was brought up here.

It was brought up because the MERP adventure modules are great and contain RM stats. And some people would like to use them without too much conversion going on.

[markc]

Unfortunately, looking at the Character Law playtest, RMU isn't going to be anything like MERP (not any more-so than RM in general has the same larger ideas, but RM is implemented with a lot more detail and crunch).  Not sure why it was brought up here.

 I brought it up because I was surprised on just how many people were quoting MERP rules and the MERP mindset of RPG's.
MDC

[johnkzin]

Unfortunately, looking at the Character Law playtest, RMU isn't going to be anything like MERP (not any more-so than RM in general has the same larger ideas, but RM is implemented with a lot more detail and crunch).  Not sure why it was brought up here.

 I brought it up because I was surprised on just how many people were quoting MERP rules and the MERP mindset of RPG's.
MDC

Some people like the overall organization of RM/SM (which was basically the same as MERP and CS), but prefer a more minimalist approach instead of tons of crunchy mechanical details.  MERP/CS fit that mold quite well, IMO.  And that might be what some of the others liked as well.  They may or may not realize that HARP fits a similar role (or they might not care ... or, like me, they might not think that HARP does the job as well as MERP/CS).

Then there's those that liked the setting ... but they've got an up-hill battle to fight, since ICE can't do anything with Middle Earth right now.

That probably covers the range of why people bring up MERP :-)

[Guillaume]

Unfortunately, looking at the Character Law playtest, RMU isn't going to be anything like MERP (not any more-so than RM in general has the same larger ideas, but RM is implemented with a lot more detail and crunch).  Not sure why it was brought up here.

 I brought it up because I was surprised on just how many people were quoting MERP rules and the MERP mindset of RPG's.
MDC

As a once upon a time MERP fanatic and Gamemaster of numerous campaign in there the appeal of MERP products was twofold :
- first, it was a really easy rule system to learn and it was fun to play with it. ( as some stated it was the alternate system in fantasy roleplaying against D&D, and it was like that almost to the end. )
  It didn't carry the bad view that Rolemaster had ( rollmaster, rulemaster, ... ) in some circles. [ even if it's basically the same system without the 90% of Fluff that makes RM ] 
- second, the module quality was great and the content in them gave us ( GMs ) hundreds of hours of gaming.

When talking about MERP ( and I won't go into ICE relation with Middle Earth Enterprise, aka Tolkien Enterprise, aka Saul Zaentz ) nowadays there's a few things that come in mind :
- one of the reason why people still play MERP is because all the replacement games in Middle Earth have been more or less failures. The modules that came with these games described things that could be found in the books, and only that... So people either dug their MERP modules from the attic ( if they were old MERP hand ) or went looking for the old MERP books...
- Corollary of the above, after a while the playing group will grow tired of spending lot of time converting MERP stats to whatever game rule they are using, and will just jump back into MERP.
- Corollary of that ( and that's how I came to RM ) once you are using MERP rules, you can switch to RM very very easilly... and in the early books ( Umbar, Ardor, Angmar, ... ) the stats are for RM...

Now IMHO, the modules were great at that time ( it was a time when we GMs created a full campaign out of two lines in a text ), but nowadays the players ( any RPG ) wants something pre-hashed that they can use without hours of preparation.

[Olddragon]

I realise MERP is in the past and unfortunately has to stay there.  But the modules themselves were great.  If only ICE produced the coloured maps like the MERP maps instead of those horrible maps in Shadow World, I might of stayed a fan of Shadow World.  I still have a great deal of the MERP modules and would still use them if I wasn't so isolated from any gamers, as I live in rural Australia.

[Cory Magel]

The MERP products were some of the best RPG products produced across all brands imo.  I've got most the 2nd Ed stuff and used to use it as source material all the time.

[Jacchan]

Well, we switched from merps to RMFRP years ago but we maintained the plot and use the merp products.
@wlewisiii: I agree, the magic system doesn't fit well. But with merps system you have few PP, and with some houserules is possibly decrease the discrepancies... If the group isnt a "Tolkien fundamentalist" may be enough.