Quote from: Zachary The First;360583Do you have a link to that?  I can mention it in my review that I'm finishing up.

It is now part of the download, and you could probably get it from your RPGNow account, but i will also email you that now.

As promised, here's my review of Rolemaster Rome!

Quote from: Zachary The First;360660As promised, here's my review of Rolemaster Rome!

Good review!  Thanks for that.

I personally found the game cumbersome and overly complex.  The various Rolemaster pieces did not mesh well (little balance), so you could not cross genre things easily.  Most of the people I played with could not make heads or tails of the books. A few tried to play it, but it didn't work for them.  The books were really pretty though.    

MERPS made more sense and was better recieved.  

Note I said Most people.  There was a group that managed to make the game playable.  Each player had a character binder.  The character binder had the pages (and charts) in various the rulebooks that applied to the character copied and put in plastic holders.  So each character's binder had about 30 pages, some more (magic users), a few less. (Each character ran you about six bucks (way back when).) With the charts and a lot of practice, they managed to be quite efficient in their combat times. In fact, they played through many really big combats in less time than most player groups (they made a point of trying to play fast).

Quote from: MoonHunter;360880I personally found the game cumbersome and overly complex.  The various Rolemaster pieces did not mesh well (little balance), so you could not cross genre things easily.  Most of the people I played with could not make heads or tails of the books. A few tried to play it, but it didn't work for them.  The books were really pretty though.    

MERPS made more sense and was better recieved.  

Note I said Most people.  There was a group that managed to make the game playable.  Each player had a character binder.  The character binder had the pages (and charts) in various the rulebooks that applied to the character copied and put in plastic holders.  So each character's binder had about 30 pages, some more (magic users), a few less. (Each character ran you about six bucks (way back when).) With the charts and a lot of practice, they managed to be quite efficient in their combat times. In fact, they played through many really big combats in less time than most player groups (they made a point of trying to play fast).

There are some important points about Rolemaster here.  Some people just don't get on with it.  I wonder what your final opinion might have been had you played RM with the organised group though?

Also, if you are organised, and have all of the necessary charts copied and to hand, RM does indeed move very fast.

RM is a piece of piss once you get familiar with it. D&D 3 & 4 are far more complex.

RMX is a great deal and pretty well organized. I still prefer HARP for getting in and playing (and HARP Lite is a free complete PDF) and its tweakable magic over spell lists but its organization is lackluster and Rolemaster has a certain feel to it. Both really could have benefited from a good chargen program, one was promised for HARP but never materialized.

Quote from: Sigmund;359221What is contained in the "Express Additions"? Are thy what come in the 3 and 6 book bundles? Huh, now I can't find the bundles... also, I see where the differences between RMX and RMC are explained, missed that before.

Each typically has 1 or 2 new classes and also races and a new type of magic or spell caster. Very good and cheap stepping stones from RMX. Not sure if they're best bought in order or if it's fine to pick and choose. IMO a better option than buying 3+ Law books for learning and cost. That's another thing I liked about HARP, one core book but that's not as feasible for Rolemaster.

I did like MERP and Spell Law back in the first edition days.

In my experience the only D&D players who have actually read the rules through are the munchkins.

Rolemaster is an intimidating read and it doesn't really do a great job of teaching you to use it.

And it takes some experience to get used to it.

As I've said many times, on average, a combat round will take you longer but things will die faster.

Because I'm lazy I only read the first twenty or so posts... so I'm not going to correct for thread drift. Fuck you, this is MY place...

Anyway.

Many years ago I was playing MERP with the local GM dude, who had a hard on for... um... something.  We always spent a long time wandering in the wilderness going to the adventures and scrabbling hard for every little morsel of food... never mind the XP.

This was in any game, mind you, not just the MERP. Miracle of miracles, we started in a single day's travel from town and soon entered, did some investigations, lost at least one character to a suicidal charge against the main keep in town for reasons best left to speculation and san loss.

After many weeks in town (real weeks... it was something like two days for our party I think...) we finally get a lead on an adventure of some sort and leave town.  

During the boring ass road trip portion the mighty elf archer of doom decides he's going to shoot some random birds. For food or sport or what have you...

Random. Birds.

THis guy (an optimizer, though how good I can't say) pulls his dice, rolls 'em and winds up with a modified 100+ die roll. I don't recall the exact amount, but we all agreed it was a good solid shot, with a nice solid die roll to back it up, if not 'super duper'.

The GM looks up from his screen, clears his throat to get our attention, and calmly tells us he missed hugely.  It appeared to be that, all modifiers taken into account, the difficultly of shooting a random bird on the wing was something over 150... which meant that our superhuman (elf) archer/sniper at first level could only succeed on a critical success.

We all looked at each other, looked at our character sheets and...

Not a one of us showed up the next week.

Yes, virginia, at least the way it was being run at THAT table, RM was the king of games, if you meant by 'king' that it made you suck even harder at first level than D&D did.

Heh, sometimes my campaigns look like that.  I think he probably had a hard on for structure and proceedures.

My own problem stems from trying to get PCs to take initiative in a sandbox.  Yes that can be code for came unprepared to GM. If you don't have players who can handle that you end up looking for random encounters.

On the other hand, some of my very best games came out of sandbox play and improvisation.