I am returning to ICE games after a long hiatus from running RPGs. I'm looking at running a sci-fi game with some friends, and originally I was going to use Traveller for that game. As I starting thinking more and more about what I want to do with this group long term I realized I was eventually going to end up using RM to run a Middle Earth game too.
Just to be clear I have all of the books, or darn near all of the books, ICE ever put out starting from back in the early 80s excluding HARP and the Cyradon material. I kept buying them even after I stopped playing games and running games in the mid 90s. If I am missing anything it's some of the more recent Shadow World material, and I will likely rectify that fairly soon. Terry seems to have been busy, and I am looking forward to seeing what he has been working on. It's not a question of what to buy it's a question of which of the rulesets that I have would be the smartest choice for my players.
Long and the short of it is once I realized I'd be using RM for other games I concluded it was a bad idea to use Traveller for the sci-fi game since that would be new the group too. I don't want to get them used to one thing, and then switch to another that is very very different.
So initially I was thinking MERP with RM rules and a Spacemaster Campaign on the side means using Rolemaster Classic over RMFRP. I am wondering where that leaves me with respect to RMU though? Is it going to be more like RMC or more like RMFRP? How hard will it be to covert the MERP source material to RMU?
I'm used to the ICE systems being so analogous to each other that it's easy to integrate or convert things from one rules system to another, Spacemaster was practically just a Sci-Fi Companion for RM to my recollection, but I want to make it as easy on this group as I can. Some of them are serious into tabletops, and will devour just about anything. Some of them are much more causal, and just want to roll the dice and have an idea if they rolled poorly or well.