I remember fighting giant spiders, we always hit limb locations and ended up with piles of legless spiders. My favourite fumble was "trip over imaginary invisible deceased turtle".
I cherish my time with ICE's vision of Middle Earth - the game System was hard and deep, Character origins bewildering and delightful, the adventures were dangerous AND amazing !
I've still mostly run 1E/2E AD&D , the only reason I started picking up any 5E was because of that first run at officially licensed Middle Earth for a D&D system.
I just picked up the Tales , and Ruins of Eriador yesterday - my preliminary assessment is that they are excellent, more than worth the price, quality printings and pages too.
Thanks guys a good review. I recall our first time playing MERP. We had a TPK in the first encounter against some wolves. It took a while for us to get it back to the table after that. I agree TOR is perfect for Middle Earth and is now my go to.
Still my favorite Middle Earth RPG by a long shot. They diverge from canon quite a bit, but we loved it. They do cool things with the lore, like creating full backstories for all the Ringwraiths, fleshing out the deep southlands, etc. I still regularly use their maps and convert stuff to Old School Essentials. We played a bit of MERP last summer and it was fun, but it plays rather slow. And character creation takes forever. But I did port the critical tables over to our Castles & Crusades game.
Yes the character creation is slow but you can use that time to design original skills for your characters. You can also speed up combat by ensuring other players have copies of their given weapons tables; designating certain "rolling-roles" to players etc...
MERP was the first game I ever played back in the 90’s. More recently I have been running the One Ring 2e but I have a lot of MERP pdfs which have so much great material that I sprinkle in.
a few years ago i managed to get a copy of MERP because a friend of mine his brother in law interned with ICE back in the nineties and his parents were getting rid of stuff they had in their attic. I remember reading through it and the rulebook stating that creating your own character should only be done by an player experienced for the setting.
Loved it for all the reasons you gave. A real change from ADnD - first time two of us ran up against an Orc we died Really quickly :-) . My main dislike was in the character creation - book was beautiful but poorly laid out, you had to flip back and forth to find the tables you needed. I would play it today under a good GM, would no want to run it. Enjoyed hearing you discuss it.
I am currently running a campaign using the Gates of Mordor campaign book. It has been enjoyable! Definitely a bit slower with math and charts but the critical tables and fumbles make it worth it!!
Simplified, and focused, I think they did well. It was funky having action (Classes) much like D&D - but my experience with trying to promote Adventures in Middle Earth was that the new 5E generation REALLY struggles with not being allowed Tieflings, Dragonkin and bird people, combo Druid/Assassin/Sorcerer characters or Man/Bear/Pig to play. Both of these 5E adoptions have only a tiny audience.
How often we went out to search for those herbs! Mirenna berry junkies:) I think a big plus for Merp was the concreteness of the rules, wounds are real wounds, herbs have names. That made the world so much more real than abstract hit points and some unnamed “healing herbs”
Nice acknowledgment of Angus McBride's work. He was a fantastic artist. iirc there was even an ICE artbook featuring his work. Agree 100% about the art direction being evocative of Middle-Earth, but the rules did nothing to either make you feel like you were in Tolkien's world, or helped the GM run the game. Hopelessly outdated now, of course. An interesting historical piece to see how early RPGs were constructed but unless you're just into retro gaming then you'd have to be a masochist to try and run it.
I bet you say that to all your level 1 mages ;) But you're right, there's probably lots of interesting uses for the skill, even tactical distractions.@@ReallyDicey
I used to be a Game Master for MERP. I read the Lord of the Rings 7 times, the Hobbit 5 times, the Silmarillion 3 times. I was very knowledgeable. I took my D&D friends on MERP adventures. My knowledge of Middle Earth just astounded people. When I talk to people about the Valar, Maiar, Valinor, the Simarils, Faenor, Fingolfin and Finarfin, the Noldor and the Vanyar, people just freak out. I literally could have written way better stories and diaglogue for those stupid Rings of Power shows. I should write to them and offer my services because they could have done so much better!
I love Merp, it has its flaws, especially when evoking mood, but the combat system and the character creation are so great. Tried to play TOR but ti me it’s like playing in a straight jacked if horrible abstract rules. Hate it, feel like Sauron made it to dominate all life. Those social conflict rules🤦🏻♂️
I remember fighting giant spiders, we always hit limb locations and ended up with piles of legless spiders. My favourite fumble was "trip over imaginary invisible deceased turtle".
The fumble charts will always be one of my favorite things about this game.
I cherish my time with ICE's vision of Middle Earth - the game System was hard and deep, Character origins bewildering and delightful, the adventures were dangerous AND amazing !
I've still mostly run 1E/2E AD&D , the only reason I started picking up any 5E was because of that first run at officially licensed Middle Earth for a D&D system.
I also enjoyed Adventures in Middle-earth. Have you looked into the One Ring or the Lord of the Rings 5E books?
I just picked up the Tales , and Ruins of Eriador yesterday - my preliminary assessment is that they are excellent, more than worth the price, quality printings and pages too.
Thanks guys a good review. I recall our first time playing MERP. We had a TPK in the first encounter against some wolves. It took a while for us to get it back to the table after that. I agree TOR is perfect for Middle Earth and is now my go to.
Thank you for watching!
Still my favorite Middle Earth RPG by a long shot. They diverge from canon quite a bit, but we loved it. They do cool things with the lore, like creating full backstories for all the Ringwraiths, fleshing out the deep southlands, etc. I still regularly use their maps and convert stuff to Old School Essentials. We played a bit of MERP last summer and it was fun, but it plays rather slow. And character creation takes forever. But I did port the critical tables over to our Castles & Crusades game.
How did the conversion to OSE and Castle and Crusades go?
Yes the character creation is slow but you can use that time to design original skills for your characters. You can also speed up combat by ensuring other players have copies of their given weapons tables; designating certain "rolling-roles" to players etc...
Those Fenlon maps are also great, as are the regional descriptions in the books.
MERP was the first game I ever played back in the 90’s. More recently I have been running the One Ring 2e but I have a lot of MERP pdfs which have so much great material that I sprinkle in.
That's great. Is there a MERP book you have used the most so far?
@@ReallyDicey Dark Lord of Rhudaur and Dunlend are both really handy as I am focusing on this area quite a lot.
a few years ago i managed to get a copy of MERP because a friend of mine his brother in law interned with ICE back in the nineties and his parents were getting rid of stuff they had in their attic. I remember reading through it and the rulebook stating that creating your own character should only be done by an player experienced for the setting.
A friend shared this video with me! Great and accurate discussion! MERP lives on in Against the Darkmaster from Open Ended Games!
Thank you for the kind words! I would love to do a video about Against The Darkmaster in the near future.
Loved it for all the reasons you gave. A real change from ADnD - first time two of us ran up against an Orc we died Really quickly :-) . My main dislike was in the character creation - book was beautiful but poorly laid out, you had to flip back and forth to find the tables you needed. I would play it today under a good GM, would no want to run it. Enjoyed hearing you discuss it.
I am currently running a campaign using the Gates of Mordor campaign book. It has been enjoyable! Definitely a bit slower with math and charts but the critical tables and fumbles make it worth it!!
I still have this book. Its a primitive game compared to rolemaster.
Simplified, and focused, I think they did well. It was funky having action (Classes) much like D&D - but my experience with trying to promote Adventures in Middle Earth was that the new 5E generation REALLY struggles with not being allowed Tieflings, Dragonkin and bird people, combo Druid/Assassin/Sorcerer characters or Man/Bear/Pig to play. Both of these 5E adoptions have only a tiny audience.
How often we went out to search for those herbs! Mirenna berry junkies:)
I think a big plus for Merp was the concreteness of the rules, wounds are real wounds, herbs have names. That made the world so much more real than abstract hit points and some unnamed “healing herbs”
I am running it right now. I'm also running BECMI and d6 Star Wars.
Nice acknowledgment of Angus McBride's work. He was a fantastic artist. iirc there was even an ICE artbook featuring his work. Agree 100% about the art direction being evocative of Middle-Earth, but the rules did nothing to either make you feel like you were in Tolkien's world, or helped the GM run the game. Hopelessly outdated now, of course. An interesting historical piece to see how early RPGs were constructed but unless you're just into retro gaming then you'd have to be a masochist to try and run it.
And a smart GM would give a new Mage a handy daily spell artefact as part of his upbringing (see background options).
Our level 1 mage could boil a cup of water -- tea maker!
You just made me realize that with the ability to boil water and the amount of herbs, a mage can be a very creative healer.
I bet you say that to all your level 1 mages ;) But you're right, there's probably lots of interesting uses for the skill, even tactical distractions.@@ReallyDicey
Background points did a decent job of balancing those pesky Noldor. The partial success mechanic for skills is superior to most roll above DC systems.
I used to be a Game Master for MERP. I read the Lord of the Rings 7 times, the Hobbit 5 times, the Silmarillion 3 times. I was very knowledgeable. I took my D&D friends on MERP adventures. My knowledge of Middle Earth just astounded people. When I talk to people about the Valar, Maiar, Valinor, the Simarils, Faenor, Fingolfin and Finarfin, the Noldor and the Vanyar, people just freak out. I literally could have written way better stories and diaglogue for those stupid Rings of Power shows. I should write to them and offer my services because they could have done so much better!
I love Merp, it has its flaws, especially when evoking mood, but the combat system and the character creation are so great. Tried to play TOR but ti me it’s like playing in a straight jacked if horrible abstract rules. Hate it, feel like Sauron made it to dominate all life. Those social conflict rules🤦🏻♂️
The Noldor should be more powerful than the other races!!!