for one guy in my group, it's his favorite system.  he ran a few adventures in it back in the 90s, and now anything else he wants to run e.g. shadowrun, traveller, etc.) he want to do with those mechanics as well.  it's okay, a bit lethal, but i haven't seen much talk about it anywhere.

has anyone else played it?  any opinions, either way?  :confused:

I've never played it but I've skimmed through it. Seems like a lot of work, but very playable. I too would like to see some opinions of this.

Any game that models blood loss, bone damage and hydrostatic shock every time you get hit is waaaaaaaay to much detail for my tastes.

as a player, it was never a big deal.  i didn't have a rulebook, so it was pretty seamless to me.  i described my actions and he would tell me what to roll, against what skill or whatever, and then describe the results.  

but now he has lended me a rulebook, and asks me questions on converting this or that to ME and the like.  two recent inquiries--check out these weapon tables from star frontiers (in ME terms), and how would wired reflexes work in that system.  i'm going to have to get down & dirty with the mechanics, it seems. :eek:  

i'll just have to ask him why it's his "go-to" system.  the rest of the group doesn't seem to mind.  but it always did seem rather lethal for the kind of adventure gaming we do.  and that's before energy weapons enter the mix!

I ran the first edition for a espionage meets monster movie style game (big bad monsters, often the PC's were very overmatched) but it was the cultists, the puppet-people and so on they mostly fought with.

Was fun, can't say I'd pick the game up now for a lot of reasons (the body map system is neat, at first, but wears down when you realize just how poorly it works for actual positions PC's choose to attempt to fight in)

It has a lot of verisimilitde. It's a crisp, cool system. There are lots of stats and skills, percentile, and lots of combat detail. The body maps add a visual element that brings another level of concrete detail. You get the feeling that the dice tell you exactly where the bullet goes when you're shooting. That's a lot of detail. The injury mechanics account for a matching level of detail, for vry nice consistency.

I drew more body maps, added some cutouts to repersent cover, and generally padded out that part of the system. It was the first one like that I had seen, though I did pick up the Killer Crosshairs kit later that bolted that idea onto your favorite game. I think the stuff that came with ME was pretty nice, but I can see how some creative, literal players would eventually find it restrictive--especially since the system encurages creative, literal play.

The campaign material was detailed as well. I think ME brought a lot of crunch for a reasonable amount of effort in an affordable package with a mild, intuitive learning curve. Good stuff. I just don't think most players find the level of detail or lethality to be enjoyable. It wasn't really about superpowers or manic action.

I personally wasn't sold on the system too much (far smoother and faster systems could do the setting justice better in my experience). But the setting books had some of the best information in gaming for a good techno-thriller/espionage game. It is just I felt that techno-thrillers style games work best in a cinematic style and the rules covered too much detail for that feel.

i guess that's why i don't mind the crunch factor--i like a fair bit of "realism" (ha!) in my games, and the "cinematic" style just seems a bit too handwavy for me.  

i would like to see some of the supplements, tho.  that, and maybe go back to using it for clancy-esque action or something.  i'll probably wait until my friend's traveller-in-ME-rules adventure gets a little further along, see how it works, before i critique it further.  everyone has a fave system i guess.  maybe the precision of the crunch appeals to him?  

silverlion, what kind of monsters were in your game?  another one of the guys in my group is running his own version of the WoD (kind of) with all parties involved, and he's using the same system (ME).  i only got to play in it once, so i'm not sure how he modelled all the different powers etc. in it.  but it does seem like the relative power levels betw. regular humans (even with lots o' skills) and weres/vamps/faerie/etc. would be a bit daunting.

The ME combat system was pretty crunchy as I recall, as others have described. Character gen could talk a while as well. In the few one shots of it that I ran, the players enjoyed the template overlays.

The material on running techno-thrillers from the main book, and several of the supplements such as The GM's Companion and the Miami Sourcebook are very useful with other systems.