I collected this a while ago and played it once at a Con. I was really impressed with how smoothly the game ran in play, and it seems to solve D&D's LFQW problem - wizard types are impressive, but warrior types have bunches of interesting things to do. Are there any communities online that run MERP/RM games, good RM sites, and so on?
I am only familiar with 'classic' rolemaster.
Love the game system but I find it a bit cumbersome in my old age.
I think the game has a ton of cool elements like potential stats, maneuver system, skill system, and the most glorious critical hit system ever.
You will have fun playing rolemaster, but you WILL die from a critical hit.
Mages and fighters: Hard to say, low level mages often start out a bit weak, and fighters tend to slow down at high level.
Never seemed a problem though in play.
I have had rolemaster characters die from among other things:
A trapped door fell on me and broke my hip; -80 on everything (-16 if it was d20) Got killed shortly after by monsters.
Soooo hard to flee with a broken hip.....
Killed by an orc with a scimitar...got me in one perfectly placed slash
Died falling into a deep pit. fell on head.....and spikes.....
Flesh golem punched me so hard my lungs broke.
Arrow to the eye.....
Burned to death from a fireball....
List goes on
Quote from: Kaiu Keiichi;693517I was really impressed with how smoothly the game ran in play,
You must have been playing some other version of RM, as although I adore the RM/MERP system, Ive found it anything but smooth.
Regular role-playing and dice-rolling is a constant table check, whereas combat takes this referencing to a whole new level.
I've played RM, and like it well enough. Heck, my single greatest combat feat as a player was in RM, where I one-shotted -- with a broken sword -- a dragon who'd taken down every other member of my party. (That was an open-ended roll that finished up in the 450s.)
Quote from: Ravenswing;693577I've played RM, and like it well enough. Heck, my single greatest combat feat as a player was in RM, where I one-shotted -- with a broken sword -- a dragon who'd taken down every other member of my party. (That was an open-ended roll that finished up in the 450s.)
That's quite cool!
One interesting fact about rolemaster, is that anyone, however weak, can one shot anyone, no matter how powerful. The odds may be low, but it happens.
Well there's basically three versions plus HARP at this point. HARP is an attempt to simplify the system that for some reason felt that getting rid of the double digit addition wouldn't help with that.
RM1/2/C is the original game. RMClassic has a slightly different initiative system.
RMSS/RMfrp is the ultimate omnibus version of the game. It's Rolemaster with all the options turned to eleven. I love this game. It's got such a rich, baroque texture to it but there's a lot of book keeping. It's also pretty broken if you want levels to be a reliable guide to power levels.
The third version is the new revision. It's got the deepest and most fundamental changes between editions but it looks like RM2 and cleans up many of the inherent bugs and issues. For instance Rolemaster has never really handled big monsters well in the past. The playtest files are free on ICE's website and this is where the game is going so that's what I'd suggest having a look at.
Real Roleplaying forums (I know I know) might be the best place to get PbP games http://www.rpgrm.com/rmsmf/ of Rolemaster or I guess MERP. I think there are people (aside from me) that like it on #rpgnet too.
As for LQFW I wouldn't say it solves it by default as it's very hard to pin down the exact system being played - every edition Rolemaster is very much built upon heaps of optional rules. But there are certainly a lot of tools to even the field to the extent you feel necessary.
I ran a MERP game but with extended RM rules for about a year - basically an alternate to the Hobbit where Thorin hedges his bets by hiring a group while passing through Bree. At one time, I believe we had 14 players.
I passed out the critical hit tables to different players, who would then look up the results when needed. That sped things up considerably. Everyone also had to have their own print outs of their spell lists.
It is a complex game but, I don't think it really ate up much more of my time using the above methods than my current Pathfinder game.
It isn't the perfect simulation of Middle Earth, but there are so many campaign books, adventure packs, etc - and some are really, really good.
This might be of interest to you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merpcon - and it still lives as Tolkeinmoot!
I ran a lot of RM back in the 80s, and I still have all my RM books, but I haven't played it in a long time. I still would, though; I liked the system. I ran RM2, and I played in a game of RMSS. Of those two, I much prefer RM2. Also, I think the GM needs to have some restraint, because RM can suffer from the "splat book/optional rules" problem that seems to be a common RPG affliction.
It's a glorious game-- one of my favorites-- but the amount of prep time necessary to run it is a little too cumbrous for me in my old age. I am working, however, on how to introduce the critical hit mechanics from RM into Fate, because I figure if I find the one other person in the target audience for that, my life will be complete.
There are two big problems
1) It's a nightmare to figure out how to play/make characters. I remember trying it as a kid in the '80s and it was a struggle.
2) It's very critical heavy, which always affects characters in the long run.
Sooner or later, you're going to be killed by a critical, not always on an opponents attack role, either.
All the charts are fun and cute to read, but very infuriating when they happen to your character.
Well there are a lot of herbs and spells for fixing your shit, although they're respectively expensive and higher level. So it's more of a question of surviving until you can get some :D
As for making characters and playing, oh yeah. Every edition aside from possibly RMC is organized as a randomly sorted pile of information for an experienced player. It pretty much blows for newbies even though I was able to figure it out with some effort (starting with MERP helped).
I've still got my RM/MERP collection, and that's one of those I'm not getting rid of.
The open ended one-shots are great fun, unless it happens to you, but it makes for great theater.
I remember really enjoying my first read through of MERP back in the 80s, enjoying the exploration XP as well as the incredibly detailed sourcebooks.
Quote from: JeremyR;693772There are two big problems
1) It's a nightmare to figure out how to play/make characters. I remember trying it as a kid in the '80s and it was a struggle.
2) It's very critical heavy, which always affects characters in the long run.
Sooner or later, you're going to be killed by a critical, not always on an opponents attack role, either.
All the charts are fun and cute to read, but very infuriating when they happen to your character.
It does help to have a healer in the party :)
I think rolemaster is great for a 'Dark Sun' or 'Conanish' brutal setting.
There are a number of things that can reduce the mortality rate. Above all don't get out numbered. If you're out numbered you need to find a bottleneck situation where they can't get around behind you. Spells like Wall of Fire can create a bottleneck if the terrain or GM isn't helpful.
-Get a defensive bonus item, usually armor, but possibly a ring or cloak of some kind during character creation. DB applies to all attackers and parrying only applies to one.
-Rotate out your fighters. There's no free hit against withdrawing foes. Don't wait to your last hit point. Get out of there and let someone else take it for a while.
-Clerics are just a bit better than healers. A healer has to absorb wounds and regenerate them and clerics are better at keeping souls in bodies and retrieving fled souls.
-Don't play an elf. The stats are fantastic but the soul departure time means that when you go down there's no chance of saving you at low levels.
-Don't fall. The Crush / Fall table is brutal and none of your precious armor or defensive bonus will save you.
Started off with MERP, and liked the way it led to small-scale location-based adventures. XP per miles travelled fit well into The Hobbit style scenarios where every mile away from home was an adventure. Rolemaster went way beyond that into high fantasy but if I were to play again, focusing on a small location would be a good way to keep it accessible.
IMHO RM is too complex and involved to be as deadly as it is.
I don't mind the lethality in OD&D because I can generate another PC in 5 minutes and resume play.
Creating a RM character is major undertaking, and then regardless of skill, you can get crit killed anytime.
I can enjoy playing fragile characters, even playing in meat grinders, as long as chargen is quick and simple.
Quote from: FaerieGodfather;693768It's a glorious game-- one of my favorites-- but the amount of prep time necessary to run it is a little too cumbrous for me in my old age. I am working, however, on how to introduce the critical hit mechanics from RM into Fate, because I figure if I find the one other person in the target audience for that, my life will be complete.
As a narrative immersionist, I may be your one person audience. I've never seen the constructed fallacy that simulation and narrative must be opposed. Please keep us appraised on your work!
Quote from: vytzka;693775Well there are a lot of herbs and spells for fixing your shit, although they're respectively expensive and higher level. So it's more of a question of surviving until you can get some :D
As for making characters and playing, oh yeah. Every edition aside from possibly RMC is organized as a randomly sorted pile of information for an experienced player. It pretty much blows for newbies even though I was able to figure it out with some effort (starting with MERP helped).
I used to own the MERP core book. It was great, but I never found a chance to play it.
I played in -and enjoyed!- an RMSS game years ago. I never got past 3rd (?) level though, the game ended before I saw what a high level Rolemaster game was like. Low level was explore, run!, fight only when you had to, sometimes die from it, loot when you won. Not so very different from D&D, but it felt different at the time.
Play went surprisingly fast given the game's reputation, actually faster than my experience with D&D 3E (after leveling, and with tactical players) or 4E (ever). But this was with a GM who knew the system, who had us photocopy our common weapon and critical charts so we weren't flipping through the book, and who I believe was only using the two generic maneuver charts (also copied), not looking up the specific ones except on special occasions.
When you do that, play and combat are just roll, add mod off your character sheet, look up result. Which is, in principle, pretty fast and easy. I suppose the critique is, when enough users aren't doing that to give you your reputation, you've got a presentation problem at the very least.
So I feel it's a very under-rated system in that respect. Simultaneously, there are enough games out there its no longer as compelling an option for me. Especially when it looks very much like Rolemaster influenced the DNA of 3rd edition D&D (and therefore Pathfinder, and even Castles and Crusades). Between AD&D 2E and Rolemaster, I'll take Rolemaster. When it's C&C or Savage Worlds or ACKS or 3.x/Pathfinder or any of 20 other games or Rolemaster, RM hasn't gotten high enough up the list to come out of storage.
Quote from: vytzka;693775Well there are a lot of herbs and spells for fixing your shit, although they're respectively expensive and higher level. So it's more of a question of surviving until you can get some :D
It also depends on just what happens to you. One of the virtues of Rolemaster is the incredible diversity of spells. One of the weaknesses is that spell descriptions are very short and often require judgment calls (healing spells are especially susceptible to this issue). The same is true, to a lesser extent, with the critical tables -- how precisely some of the entries are read makes a surprising difference in terms of how lethal the game is with healers involved.
Rolemaster is not as complex as people make out. I will agree that chargen is a mite too complex for a system that is a bit more deadly than the norm, but i've had no problem running multiple campaigns from 1st level up to 20th.
If anything spell-use is a bit too hamstrung compared to say, d&d. Unless you want to risk exceptional spell failure, it takes more than 1 round to cast spells that are around your level. Once you're 6 levels higher than the spell being cast it takes a single round, so a 7th level spell user can cast a 1st level spell in 1 round.
Luckily, there are a plethora of spell-using classes to chose from, so your utility can be greater if you feel like it.
Every time i talk about it here makes me want to start a new game. Not sure if i can get one going for a while though.
Quote from: Kaiu Keiichi;693517I was really impressed with how smoothly the game ran in play,
Quote from: Lawbag;693548You must have been playing some other version of RM, as although I adore the RM/MERP system, Ive found it anything but smooth.
In my experience, Rolemaster runs very smoothly, provided the GM delegates some of his tasks, like XP accounting, critical and attack charts, etc. If the GM tries to manage everything by himself, he'll get crazy!
Quote from: One Horse Town;693963If anything spell-use is a bit too hamstrung compared to say, d&d. Unless you want to risk exceptional spell failure, it takes more than 1 round to cast spells that are around your level. Once you're 6 levels higher than the spell being cast it takes a single round, so a 7th level spell user can cast a 1st level spell in 1 round.
This aspect of Rolemaster is rarely talked about in forums, but it's an essential part of its flavor, as much as criticals. When you need one or two rounds to prepare a spell, it's very easy to be interrupted by an enemy, which makes you very dependant on fighters. One of the best features of Rolemaster. And I say this as someone who has played magicians and sorcerers.
Besides, it's awesome, when you're playing a magician, to announce you're going to concentrate in order to cast a firebolt. :D
We played MERP in a break from D&D/AD&D 1e when it first came out. The crit system really livened up our gaming sessions, but it is bloody lethal. You pretty much end up killing things without reducing their hit points by a massive amount from ordinary hits. The bleeding and dying and 3 rounds of intense agony will generally do it.
If the players are happy to rattle out new characters when the last ones buy the farm (and they will) I would absolutely recommend giving it a whirl in a generic fantasy style world with dungeon crawls and the usual stuff. The longest time we spent was writing out character sheets by hand, but that was in the early-mid eighties with a dot matrix printer if you were lucky, not an issue now.
We even ran a campaign where the bad guys turned good. Olog Hai player characters, all five of the group. The slaughter was unholy, and those guys could really kick ass from day one. A small bunch of Ologs rebelling at being the bad guy and taking the fight to the big bad fellas. Proper gore splattered bone smashing blood and thunder hack and slash play, and made a nice change from the usual creeping about, frightened of your own shadow 1st level 'red shirt' characters. It was different anyway.
Oops. Rolemaster. Can't remember which version we played - probably the first one. These days it's confusing to know which that version was (RM1? RMC?) but the general consensus was that MERP did everything RM did easier, faster and without the poring through the various companions and figuring out the errata with what was in the books. Spacemaster was even worse for that, and I really wanted to like/play that.
So yeah, I'd recommend MERP. Cheap to buy 2nd hand, gives you the basics and if you need more, get Spell law. If you really need more, pick a version of RM, but god knows which is the best one. We played MERP, tried RM, went back to MERP and had loads of fun.
D&D doesn't have an LFQW problem unless you remove Spell disruption...
I tried playing RM once, and it didn't go well. This was after several years playing MERP. MERP was much simpler and easier to play.
I would love it if someone would take the MERP system and strip out all the ME. I want a MERP OSR.
Quote from: APN;696660...MERP did everything RM did easier, faster and without the poring through the various companions and figuring out the errata with what was in the books...
I quite agree. MERP was a great system, one that realized most of RM's virtues while avoiding many of its vices. (That said, I did enjoy RM 2e back in the day, at least until the Companions became overwhelming. But MERP is better overall IMO.)
One could always combine MERP with
Arms Law (if one wanted more detailed combat) and/or
Spell Law (if one wanted more spells). A nice thing about such a combination is that it doesn't matter which version of AL and/or SL you use.
Quote from: YourSwordisMine;696664...
I would love it if someone would take the MERP system and strip out all the ME. I want a MERP OSR.
I too would be thrilled to see such a project. (Alas, I have neither the time nor resources to do it myself.)
A few years ago
Rolemaster Express (RMX) came close to matching MERP as a simplified, streamlined, and setting-less version of RM. For some idiotic reason the 'new' ICE discontinued RMX. :mad:
Quote from: Akrasia;696729I too would be thrilled to see such a project. (Alas, I have neither the time nor resources to do it myself.)
A few years ago Rolemaster Express (RMX) came close to matching MERP as a simplified, streamlined, and setting-less version of RM. For some idiotic reason the 'new' ICE discontinued RMX. :mad:
Yeah, MERP was a very good level of introductory difficulty. One of the odd things in the modern RPG market is how few games are really aimed at the beginning player. MERP or RMX would make an excellent way to get new players used to the logic of Rolemaster.
I wrote a d10 version of Rolemaster called The Rolemaster's Apprentice. The point of the thing was to show that the actual mechanics weren't complex by removing the double digit math. I submitted it to ICE and they sat on it. Eventually I posted a link to it in an on-line discussion and was threatened with legal action for doing so. The people who saw it really liked it.
The current ICE hasn't done anything with it either. Which leads me to believe Rasyr's claim that the real problem is with the current owner.
I'm not enough of an insider to speak with authority. But I saw enough of the events that led up to the change in management to say that there was a heated power struggle for control of ICE a couple years back and the removal of RMX was a factor in that power struggle.
I think you'd find a lot of legal heat from ICE and Tolkien Enterprises* for trying to retro clone MERP. The latter, in any case has lawyers that need to justify their salaries by protecting their IP and their employers do technically own MERP.
*not to be mistaken for the Tolkien Estate who don't really get much out of it either way at this point