In 1985 my father went on a business trip to Great Britain (we're Dutch). My brother and I tasked him to bring us back Dungeons&Dragons that we knew only by reputation. However, my father is a huge Tolkien nerd and brought back MERPS instead. My brother and I initially were a bit disappointed but quickly started to appreciate it. I had to learn English to read it though, so I took our Dutch to English dictionary and started looking up every word I didn't know (and there were a lot). MERPS is responsible for teaching me English to a level that now I can speak fluently. But it all started with MERPS!
That's great! RPGs expanded my vocabulary, during my youth, and English is my native language. I'll never forget the time in high school language class when everyone, including the teacher, thought I was some kind of genius because I was the only one who knew what "prestidigitation" meant. Heard some, "What the HELL? How do you know all these things?" I still get a chuckle. 😄
Red Bart - you must have got the Games Workshop distribution copy like me (before they went all Warhammer only): it had a purple cover, with a massive evil army issuing from a Dark Tower, and a Big Balrog figure in the background
"Shot through both ears! And any ear-wax is removed" - I cannot forget the Critical Hit tables, nor the Fumbles: "You trip over an imaginary deceased turtle..." or even "An incredibly inept move - your foe is stunned for 1 round laughing..."
My experiences with MERPS equals the following: Game 1 - spend hours rolling up a Dwarven fighter to be killed by a Worg wolf in the very first encounter. Game 2 - Spend hours rolling up another character to take on Moria. Finding the grand staircase to the Balog’s Lair and saying “let’s go visit the Balrog” with a bunch of level 1 characters. You can guess how fast that encounter went...
That was my exact experience the one time we played it. I'd owned the book for years, finally convinced one of my group's DMs to run it, and we spent hours in creation.. only for my definitely-not-Legolas elven archer to die to a single goblin 10 minutes into the game. I wasn't even hit in the chest or head or anything cool, it was just a crit table death from a leg wound or some nonsense like that. That book was very quickly traded off after that :^)
In the late nineties last century, we played Rolemaster for about a year. It was in Würzburg, Bavaria (or specifically: Frankonia...). We were a bunch of computer science students - and we loved it! With a big affinity to tables it was easy for us to manage the complexity. Nowadays everybody in my roleplaying crowd only plays D&D because every other system is to complex. What a heck!
Man, such fond memories! It was 1987, I was 13, and my friend Simon had invited me over to his house for the weekend. Suddenly, out comes this magnificent red box, a great cover with all of my favourite characters. Would you like to play a game in Middle Earth says he. What, are you kidding, of course! The art was amazing, immersive, the system intriguing, so full of potential, so realistic in my eyes, in contrast to B/X and AD&D that we were playing at the time. MERP, to me and him, felt like the holy grail! We spent the evening creating and crafting my sindar ranger, carefully tweaking my skill ranks, picking my gear and fleshing out my background. The next day, he ran the intro adventure included in the box, an old keep, an orc lair, with a kraken at its heart if I remember correctly. I lost an eye to a slashing critical and barely got out alive, the kraken would have to wait for another day! Details are blurry, but I remember coming back to the keep a couple of week-ends later, accompanied by a beorning npc Simon had introduced forme to befriend. The Kraken was defeated and we went on to have many more great adventures together. Thanks for this video Trevor, nice walk down memory lane! Time to get my MERP supplements off the self, I still have a dozen or so of them in mint condition (Dark mage of Rhudaur, Thieves of Tharbad, Goblin Gate, Hillmen of the Trollshaw, Path of the Dead, Dagorlad and so on, so much content crammed into those books, and like you said, among the most evocative maps I’ve seen in 40 years of gaming!)
We loved MERP and Rolemaster after playing D&D for years. In fact our group never went back to D&D ever again. Now we are looking for Rolemaster Unified to come out sometime this year or next.
We were thrilled with this in 1984 too, a game set in a specific intellectual property? How novel!!! I see Smeagol peeking over your left shoulder :) We loved the crunch (of bones!) in this games crit tables and soon moved on to the king daddy of overblown systems and crit tables, Rolemaster. Would love to see you cover that here. The number of classes with the RM Companions was insane! And your smoking jacket. Would really love that.
Oh man. Brings back some memories.. Specifically a memory of having my character slaying orcs but being killed by a bear. I have the Swedish boxed version from 1986, which actually differs a bit from MERPS if I recall correctly. Anyhow, I do remember the damage tables fondly. 👍 Edit: I also really like the more recent "The One Ring" rpg from Cubicle 7 - check it out if you haven't already!
MERP (or MERS here in germany) what a game! Sixteen years ago, this was my introduction into the roleplaying hobby. Nowadays I usually lean towards "lighter" or more narrative games, but I have to say: MERP is still a solid "old school" fantasy game. The critical hit tables make every fight so vivid and impactful, great stuff. And if everybody has the charts in front of them, the game moves surprisingly quickly. Another point for MERP: Even so the rules were a poor representation of the setting, the supplemental material they produced was just gold!
Oh, I have many good memories of MERP. Basically my high-school years had a single long running campaign where we played out the war of the 4th age of middle earth - going around collect old elven artifacts, stopping dark cultists who were trying to bring Morgroth back from the outer void - and eventually the Dagor Dagorath when the big bad returned... It was an epic 5 year game that we played in various ways - by the rules, by notes passed in class, on weekend get togethers. Loved it.
Yesssss! MERP was my first RPG and definitely holds a special place in my heart. I'm also fairly positive we never played it right either, but for a group of 12-15 year olds it was close enough though.
My first Roleplaying books were MERPS and the Shire sourcebook. I was very young and didn't play it right, but MERPS still has a special place in my heart.
I loved MERP back in the day! It was actually the first RPG I played consistently. We then moved on to Rolemaster, which is to this day one of my favorite games, because of its detailed approach to things. It's crunchy but it's easy to ignore the rules you don't feel like using. As for Against the Darkmaster, I actually got my copy last week, it's a monster of a book! It's exactly what you say, a streamlined approach to MERP. It's the OSR version of ICE's games, I'd say. Thanks for another fantastic video!
I first picked up MERP as it's boxed set around the late 80s. The one with the miniscule 20-sided d10s (adorable, and a likely candidate for the future child choking warnings). Later picked up the revised 2nd Edition hardback and a couple splatbooks. The Dol Guldur megadungeon book was ridiculously packed full of content for it's size. Eventually sold 'em just a few years ago. Loved the system for the same reasons you do, but after owning The One Ring I decided to stick with TOR for something with more Middle Earth feel and would simply get HARP for the system since it's uses the same as MERP. Hadn't got around to that yet when Against The Dark Master was released. Had to get it, and glad I did! It not only streamlined things which needed it, but also provides some tools to easily custom mold the beginnings your own fantasy setting without too much fuss. Although the system has more magic in it than Middle Earth, it's still less so than high heroic fantasy such as D&D, darker and deadlier in many ways. Right down my lane. Grab the big hardback when you can!
I well remember those *tiny* d10s - we spent as much time hunting for them on the floor as we did checking the tables. I could have saved so much time if I'd only bought a couple of proper sized dice with the box set! I wished the system could have been as evocative of Middle Earth as the brilliant Angus McBride covers on the modules/books.
Ah, MERP (as we called it; no 's'). Far better than people remember it - great unified mechanic that had loads of flexibility to it; really underrated. But, yeah, the 'playing in Middle-earth' bit... erm... needed work, to put it diplomatically. It could be done though - those spell lists just needed limiting based upon knowledge of the source material but I could live with the deadly combat crits, etc. Great commentary though Trevor, love your videos! And watch out for those imaginary deceased turtles. ;-) EDIT: Recommend "Against the Darkmaster" too... I have a hankering to couple it up with the old Midnight supplements for d20 which were based on the Darklord winning.
This game was my first RPG love before merging it with RM for more spells, crits and weapons. I totally agree that it didn't do the low magic setting of Tolkien well but I GMed for my cousins, all of us teenagers, all of them fighters with boxes of potions and thousands of gold pieces from selling the loot from the official ICE modules. I realise how bad a GM I was then but we all had great fun where even now, 35 years later, we still swap stories about those adventures! If you ever want to drop in on a Darkmaster session Trevor, let me know. We play every other Sunday and are also bringing out a module for it. Cheers!
Thank you Trevor. This was most interesting. I presume you have heard of / played 'The One Ring RPG' - which just got a brand new Second Edition with solo rules designed in part by Mr. Ironsworn, Shawn Tomkin.
I've had this rulebook in spanish called "El Juego de Rol en la Tierra Media" since a friend gave it to me, back in high school. I never read it, but Angus McBride's art was very inspiring. I just learned that I have a copy of MERPS in spanish, although not in a very good state 😂 The things we learn from you! 🤩
I'd say that MERP for all it's High Fantasy elements is also quite the gritty system, where one open ended enemy roll can leave even a high level character severely wounded, crippled or dead on the ground. I really loved how that affected players and their perspective on and approach to combat.
My experience was phenomenal! The first time I played it was in the back room of a video store after school (6th grade). I remember it fondly because I didn't know any of the other kids, but the owner of the store and GM asked me if I wanted to play. I had read LOTR and the Hobbit and he asked me what I wanted to be. I said a Hobbit Scout. All the kids laughed at me. I decided right then and there that I was going to burglar the party. So I would send notes to the GM and I would borrow things from the party. In an abandoned troll hole I found a map. The GM gave me this homemade map, it was cut out from an old paper bag, wrinkled up and the edges were burned. He made the map with black chalk and I was hooked. I put it in my shirt so no one would see it. Then went to the bathroom to look at it. I lied to everyone and told them there was treasure in the ruins ahead as the map guided me to it. Then when they went in, I stole all there horeses. They wouldn't play with me anymore.
Love your videos as they bring back so many memories. 😎 Despite having collected RoleMaster back in the days and that MERPS (the German translation of it) was one of my very first TTRPGs when I did run my first Campaign with 8 players, the setting was Forgotten Realms (The Dalelands), with some Rohirrim mixed in and with the Rules of Stormbringer (Chaosium BRP). Yes, already back then I couldn't leave it to mix and mash all up. The players loved it. Shortly after I started to develop my own rules and a little later my own world, as none published did really satisfy me. And the rest is history.
What a badass attire, Mr. Devall. Truly befitting of such a gentleman sage. Hahaha. My friends and I, no ones but inexperienced novices, are preparing to play The One Ring 2E by Free League Publishing ourselves. Are you playing the newer editions and systems of LOTR RPGs too, sir?
Well, now this brought back memories. I remember already being a huge Tolkien fan and having some experience with D&D as well as having tried Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (first edition back then) and thinking I was an experienced roleplayer I was lent a copy of this by a classmate. The one and only session we ran was an unmitigated disaster! None of us were native English speakers, the character stats were quite complicated and the combat tables were frankly incomprehensible to us. I remember wanting to like this game oh, so much, but giving up after that one first session. To be honest we probably didn't quite play WHFRP correctly either, and I know one lad who completely misunderstood some of the rules from the slightly more complicated (English, again) rules for D&D that we managed to get our mitts on, but MERPS stands out the one we really couldn't grasp at all. Would love to get another copy and see how it lives up to the memories, though.
I love MERP. I even used it to run a session of Keep on the Borderlands a few years ago. I’m currently running Against the Darkmaster and it is truly a worthy successor to MERP.
I just came across this video. Yea, I had ALL the Merp in the 80's up unto the late 90's when ICE folded. Still do! The later stuff edited by Chris Seaman was particularly good. I ran a MERP game for my weekly group about ten years ago. Our "Power Gamer" had his hip crushed in the first combat round and had to be carried around on litter for weeks of game time. :)
Got MERP as well (have to look in the attic, if I can still find it). For me personally it was a little to complicated but hey, people grow with their challenges, right? One other success I would like to mention is The One Ring (2E) which was successfully funded on Kickstarter. Got the digital version already and - although it uses a different system than MERP - the Middle Earth feeling to it is amazing. Got the Deluxe Edition because it looks like the Red Book of Westmarch (aaarrrghhh... stop piling, start playing :) The jacket is very sophisticated by the way :)
By a quirk of distribution, MERP was pretty much the only game in town if you lived in Ireland in the mid- to late 80s (I think it had something to do with Irish company Prince August Miniatures, who later produced Mithral Miniatures, having the distribution rights). Such a fun game that had so little to do with its setting; the tables were always hilarious and the open ended rolls were a hoot.
Sir, you have pretty much encapsulated my junior high and high school years! Indeed, the system wasn't really a match to the ethos of Middle Earth, but did we care? No, we were just high on imagination actually running around in TA 1640 slaying orcs and finding randomly generated magic items that I rolled up on -- you guessed it -- a chart! For some reason, I kept rolling up +5 climbing pitons that (I kid you not) cast the elemental Cold Call spell. Like, seriously, I rolled up that same item at least 7 times. Ah, the glory days of our youth! Thanks for this video.
I played Rolemaster but used the MERP sourcebooks and hence "Middle Earth" as our game world. I loved it but we often got bogged down with the plethora of options Rolmaster presented. It was tough to reconcile the tone of MIddle Earth with the magic present. Combined that with the bad reputation of it being Chartmaster/ROLLmaster and never could keep a group going for long. About 14 years ago a friend gave me a good copy of the 1st Edition MERP rulebook and I too have a pdf copy of Against the Darkmaster. Would love to give either a try. Mr. Devall, THANK YOU so much for doing this. I saw you had a copy of the Basic Roleplaying Gold Book; I know at least two people who would love to hear your take on it.
Okay, gamer story time! I was running for 3 friends. Dragon appeared, they were supposed to be scared & run away, then advance in levels by adventuring then return to face the dragon. 1st level character, 1st round open-ends TWICE on one roll. 100 on his E crit. Kills the 25th level dragon. One round, one shot. It was soooooo epic. I never even bothered trying D&D until 5e a couple of years ago, because a 1st level character can’t one shot a 25th level dragon.
I had the 2nd edition box set back in the day, never got to play it with other people (I think there may have been a short solo adventure in one of the books in the box?) but I remember being fascinated with the system. The box disappeared into my parents' attic some years ago, never to be seen again sadly.
Such fond memories, we were 12 yo I think. Of course we also played Rolemasyer and of course I am quite sure that we never got the rules right, either. We then proceeded to play Elric of Melnobone and then we upgraded to Call of Cthulhu. And I am still playing CoC as of this day, more than 30 years later...
Really enjoying this series. I've slowly been collecting MERP over the years, but never have been able to play it properly. Palantir Quest looks like it would be so much fun to play. I look for them whenever I go into a Half Price Books or other used book stores, but they are getting harder to come by. If you are willing to spend the money Noble Knight Games had been the best place otherwise to find them.
We're running through that adventure online and stream it via Twitch if wanting to have a laugh. Look us up either MajykFngrz or Adventures in Middle Earth, there. If able to share a link: www.twitch.tv/videos/1885997929
First roleplay game I ever tried and then I ran it for my friends in high school. Loved it, loved the system because it was brutal, tried Rulesmaster after it didn’t gel as well so we went and played West End Games Star Wars and AD&D. I’ve come back to it a few times since this days and I’ve been looking to play it again. Can honestly say I had no idea it was set 1500 years before the Lord of the Rings, as we always did our own thing and mourned those who fell in battle or drowned in a river due to heavy armour.
I never actually played MERP but I spent hours and hours generating characters for it. I also bought two versions of the starter set (and several expansions) and made great use of the card standees. Herubar Gular, the ruined keep in the intro adventures is currently the floorplan of the PCs base of operations in my ongoing WFRP campaign.
This just showed up again in my autoplay. And I remember now: it's you I have to blame for VsD! 😆 I bought it 5 months ago and read it cover to cover after watching your awesome video and feeling nostalgic of MERP. I should've known that it would suffer the same faith as my old MERP copies and gather dust, as none of my friends are really interested to try anything not D&D just for the sake of trying it. Who knows! Maybe I'll end up soloing it. Thanks again for the great content.
This was the first game I played, for me this was the door to RPG, I'm from a Spanish-speaking country so for us wasn't many alternatives for RPGs. I love this baby, even thought I don't think I get to play it again. Two months ago I find a first Spanish edition of MERP in a second hand book store, and it was in perfect condition.
When I arrived at University in the eighties we played a couple of sessions of D&D before switching to MERPs and then ICE role master. This video brought back many happy memories of my PC ‘Pete the Feet’ a hobbit thief and his friends Gaddafi the fire wizard and several others. 😃
i remember when we played this rpg, we were fiften years old, the first challenge was to understand the rules !!!!! and the firs encounter with a Troll was epic !!!!
I love the MERP setting. They are still some of the best source and adventure books I've owned. I've had watch lists for them on eBay for years, and occasionally get to pick up second hand items to add to my collection. I've spent between $10 and $150 Australian on good condition books - and occasionally have seen some of the rarer books sell for $300+. Cubicle 7 Entertainment released licensed 5e Middle Earth Books only a few years ago. I picked up a bunch of pdfs on a Humble Bundle for cheap last year, but have not read them closely. We quickly moved on from the MERP rules to Rolemaster. ICE was resurrected from bankruptcy and still sells Rolemaster products now.
MERP was out of print for decades since the publisher, ICE went under. ICE was revived and put out a polished version for generic fantasy and not Middle Earth in the 2000s. It was called HARP, or High Adventure Roleplaying. It might still be on drivethru.
Heard of it, but we never got around to playing it. Our gang was more into AD&D (1.0!), Traveller, Bushido, Gamma World, and Stormbringer. I'd love to hear your thought on Mork Borg.
We didn't play it right (we upgraded it with Rolemaster), and I didn't even realize it was set in the past. And we ate up that lore. Crazy. Never heard it called MERPS with the S, a bit of a discussion about that on the facebook group ;)
MERP one of my old favorites .. played in high school and a little beyond .. still have my 1st edition book and my revised 2nd edition book .. some adventures .. the Moria supplement .. the poster size map .. i dont know that we ever played it right with the phases either. lol
Same here, we never cared about the not so important details in between beers & classes, etc. in college. MERP was flexible, it was up to each player to bring some creativity to the arena!
Reminds me of conversations I've had with people who do not understand why Gandalf doesn't have an Instant Death spell. I just replied with he is not that kind of wizard and they walk off even more confused! Nice outfit. You would fit right in on the Antiques Roadshow!
I am trying to get my group into the successor game mentioned, Against the Darkmaster, which does allow me to recycle a boatload of MERP material I bought long ago because it was so pretty, particularly those maps, even if yes not really "middle earth" in the amount of magic and magical treasure.
I own just about all of the MERP campaign books and modules (some of different editions), and I, too, love the maps and presentation of this game. Looking forward to playing Against the Darkmaster some day (when I can get a hard copy). It's extremely well designed, and while it retains some of the flavor of MERPS, it really is a different game with a lot of unique mechanics that emphasize roleplaying over the chart consulting and record-keeping mania of RM. Well worth the purchase!
I don't remember that from Merps... I seem to remember that was a rule in the "Darkening of Mirkwood" campaign for The One Ring 1st ed. (or it might have been in the ToR Adventurer's Companion). Either way, it's a great setting-appropriate concept.
Played this as our fantasy game instead of DnD. Also probably never ran the rules right. The first character we made for the game was WAY overpowered because we used the stat to add to skills instead of the stat bonus. Also (I may be wrong about this) my recollection is that they sold sourcebooks instead of adventures. What this meant is as a GM you had to write your own adventures since the sourcebooks just described a geographical area, people and events. It didn’t really lay out a scripted adventure. My recollection is also that the magic system was……elusive. You had to roll well even to get any spells to learn (you may not get any). Also, a lot less spells; many were variations of the same theme and none of our players ever had a character that could survive on magic alone.
Those two tiny little 20-siders, 0-9, were great! If you didn't lose them. I think Gamescience still makes some that size, and they would probably give me a kidney stone of comparable size if I were to look at the price.
About combat neither did makers of the rules. From Rolemaster Classic Arms Law "This system was originally introduced in early versions of Rolemaster, yet it was, according to many of the people I have talked with over the years, rarely used. In fact, the folks who originally created it rarely used it themselves."
When I first started role-playing, my GM wanted us to learn I.C.E. Rolemaster first. Then we transitioned to HERO System 5e Rev. Learning Rolemaster definitely helped me appreciate the wealth of skills, but then also realize the amount of skill bloat. I like Chaosium's Basic Role-Playing because it's got a wealth of skills, but not a huge bloat and you can even reduce those or get other abilities instead of being restricted to certain magic type lists like Rolemaster.
I realise this video is 2 years old, but I just watched it. Anyway, MERP is only available now second hand sadly, but I am planning a game with my current group as Roll20 has character sheets available. This will be the first time I have played it since the 80's and I am pretty excited.
lol, that into had me laughing for 5 minutes straight. If I'm going to be internet famous for anything, I think that was a good cause. My memories of our MERPs game are a bit of a blur to this day (primarily as I was stoned out of my mind through most of it), but I do recall it being incredibly frustrating, though not sure how much of that was the system (which I suspect we were not doing correcty then either - didn't the GM get rid of to-hit rolls or something?) I recall getting obsessed with some Dire Wolf puppies at one point. The supplement line for the game, despite the obvious liberties taken with Tolkien's canon (enough to make David Day blush) were a thing of beauty, essentially supporting a hexcrawl sandbox approach to the setting. Angus McBride's artwork still evokes instant nostalgia to this day. Though it obviously is a bad fit for Tolkien, I always thought a fun campaign could be built around Tolkien's unfinished sequel to Lord of the Rings (the surviving chapters of which were published in the History of Middle Earth volume 12), which he abandoned for being "too dark", if you excised the magic entirely. A dark and gritty system seems like it might fit the world Middle Earth became after magic passed from the world and the Fourth Age led gradually into recorded history, with "Orc Cults" (in the story, not orcs, who had been wiped out, but humans playing at Orc culture and presumably worshipping Sauron or Morgoth in some form) as a sort of Lovecraftian nemesis. Incredibly rare survivors of the world-that-was could lend the whole thing a Berserk feeling.
I had been trying to concoct possibilities for playing in the fourth age for some time. Apart from Palantir quest module, i had thought about the fact that we are not sure if The Mouth of Sauron was really killed (therefore he might be an adversary given the fact that he knew much dark sorcery). Also, there was a really interesting character described in the Gorgoroth module (i can't recall the name now) who was basically an elf who met Annatar in the Second age (that is, Sauron in disguise) and who fell under his thralldom). If we take into account that elves live very long, this guy could still be around. Last but not least, how much do we know about Pallando, fir instance? What was his final fate? Is it not possible that he was not as strong as Gandalf in resisting the Shadow?
I too was in about 7th grade when this game came out, and it was a big hit for my gaming group at the time as well. I can guarantee that we probably didn't play it exactly right either, as it was a bit more complex for my mind at the time. My first character was a Hobbit Scout whom I played for quite a while before suffering the worst crit possible by a slashing weapon which was... "Strike to head destroys brain and makes life difficult for the unfortunate fool. Expire in a heap immediately." Yeah, that sucked, lol. Still, the game was a lot of fun, but while some of the supplements did a nice job trying to bring various locations of Middle Earth into the game... The core rules didn't feel much like the setting at all.
Wonderful video, as always. My group and I still play MERP (we call it MERP, not MERPS) regularly. It’s one of our go-to games and I have a good many fond memories of claiming victory with an open-ended E Crit at the right moment. I suppress memories of the many Fumbles that I’ve suffered over the years obviously. I’m afraid that, as far as I’m aware, this game is only available via eBay and such for second hand books, and they’re quite pricey. I, for one, would love to see a MERP(S) solo game in future but I guess that my love for this game isn’t that universal and it could be a short series seeing as how unforgiving the game is.
Still have a couple of yards of Merp sitting on my shelf. Best game I've ever played - though we did use the Rolemaster weapon tables. So much more variety...
Trevor, what is your knowledge of the more recent (but now killed off) Adventures in Middle Earth RPG? I heard it was good and is expected to have a revival with similar rules under a new company soon. Could be another one for the Sage’s Library?
That was a 5E conversion of the vastly superior The One Ring rpg (which is getting a second edition). I ran a 6 year campaign in ToR - absolutely beautiful game, and pitch perfect for Middle Earth.
I and my friends started with this game. It was PERFECT for playing gonzo middle-earth! I ran a lot of 1st Age & 2nd Age. My games were very gonzo. 😂 We moved onto RM2e because we wanted to go farther than 10th lvl
I haven't played Against the Darkmaster myself, but I definitely loved reading it. If I ever got to play it I hope I wouldn't bounce off it as hard as I did MERP once I got to play that (:
I too have some fond memories of this from back in the day and I never cared how badly it represented playing in Middle Earth because I was totally addictived to anything to do with that setting 😎
Love the channel. It's been a genuine inspiration. Weird side note, and maybe unnecessary, the font you used in the logo "The Sage's Library," it's only free for personal use (it used to be called Trattatello, but is now listed as Operina). Maybe you purchased a license (in which case, ignore me!), but I know it's often listed on font sites without the license information, and most people don't pay any attention to the license. I don't really blame them; I doubt most companies check to see if people are using their fonts without a license because font licenses are pretty barbaric. I only know because I very recently swapped from Trattatello to Roman Antique (Italics) for that reason. I was using it in a solo RPG/card game I'm working on, even though most likely it would only get used as a prototype, it leaves the door open to self-publish. Anyway, great to see old RPGs getting a shout-out. I never played when I was young and really missed out on a golden age of great games and wonky experiments gone awry!
Great video! I will challenge you a bit and say that I think MERP is a fine "Middle Earth" roleplaying game, it's just not a "Lord of the Rings" roleplaying game. That is, I think MERP means to give you the opportunity to play your frp game (elfs and dwarfs and magic-users looting dungeons) in the glorious setting of Middle Earth. Middle Earth is more than just LotR though. Look at the Hobbit: in that, goblins are said to ally with evil dwarves and trolls have talking pockets! Can you imagine Aragorn or Boromir having to deal with a talking pocket? My point is that there are different kinds of stories that you can tell in that setting. MERP was just a somewhat different take on that extraordinary setting.
Nice series, nice digs and look - much nostalgia about MERP and Rolemaster/Chartmaster and still play it to this day on VTT Fantasy Grounds that does all the math and table lookups within seconds. Enjoy the trip down memory lane and you definitely have to get back into the game to tell us stories of your characters' experiences in the setting/system. What was a Most Memorable Moment for you, Sir? :)
This was my introduction to RPGs. We hated all the tables but we loved them as well. They were slowing things down but boy, did they also provide flavor! And even though this wasn't low-magic like LotR game arguably should be, casting spells was sufficiently dangerous to the caster (and the entire party) for this to feel very different from, say, Dragonlance. Too bad ICE today is a shell of its former self and even RM isn't managed well. But yeah, at least we've got Open00 and VsD. :)
In 1985 my father went on a business trip to Great Britain (we're Dutch). My brother and I tasked him to bring us back Dungeons&Dragons that we knew only by reputation. However, my father is a huge Tolkien nerd and brought back MERPS instead. My brother and I initially were a bit disappointed but quickly started to appreciate it. I had to learn English to read it though, so I took our Dutch to English dictionary and started looking up every word I didn't know (and there were a lot). MERPS is responsible for teaching me English to a level that now I can speak fluently. But it all started with MERPS!
That's great! RPGs expanded my vocabulary, during my youth, and English is my native language. I'll never forget the time in high school language class when everyone, including the teacher, thought I was some kind of genius because I was the only one who knew what "prestidigitation" meant. Heard some, "What the HELL? How do you know all these things?" I still get a chuckle. 😄
Red Bart - you must have got the Games Workshop distribution copy like me (before they went all Warhammer only): it had a purple cover, with a massive evil army issuing from a Dark Tower, and a Big Balrog figure in the background
"Shot through both ears! And any ear-wax is removed" - I cannot forget the Critical Hit tables, nor the Fumbles: "You trip over an imaginary deceased turtle..." or even "An incredibly inept move - your foe is stunned for 1 round laughing..."
I love the "trip on an imaginary deceased turtle" crit failure.
My experiences with MERPS equals the following:
Game 1 - spend hours rolling up a Dwarven fighter to be killed by a Worg wolf in the very first encounter.
Game 2 - Spend hours rolling up another character to take on Moria. Finding the grand staircase to the Balog’s Lair and saying “let’s go visit the Balrog” with a bunch of level 1 characters. You can guess how fast that encounter went...
That was my exact experience the one time we played it. I'd owned the book for years, finally convinced one of my group's DMs to run it, and we spent hours in creation.. only for my definitely-not-Legolas elven archer to die to a single goblin 10 minutes into the game. I wasn't even hit in the chest or head or anything cool, it was just a crit table death from a leg wound or some nonsense like that.
That book was very quickly traded off after that :^)
I loved MERP, grew up on MERP, and ultimately, all our other games were measured by MERP. We were definitely addicted to the critical tables.
In the late nineties last century, we played Rolemaster for about a year. It was in Würzburg, Bavaria (or specifically: Frankonia...). We were a bunch of computer science students - and we loved it! With a big affinity to tables it was easy for us to manage the complexity. Nowadays everybody in my roleplaying crowd only plays D&D because every other system is to complex. What a heck!
Man, such fond memories! It was 1987, I was 13, and my friend Simon had invited me over to his house for the weekend. Suddenly, out comes this magnificent red box, a great cover with all of my favourite characters. Would you like to play a game in Middle Earth says he. What, are you kidding, of course! The art was amazing, immersive, the system intriguing, so full of potential, so realistic in my eyes, in contrast to B/X and AD&D that we were playing at the time. MERP, to me and him, felt like the holy grail! We spent the evening creating and crafting my sindar ranger, carefully tweaking my skill ranks, picking my gear and fleshing out my background. The next day, he ran the intro adventure included in the box, an old keep, an orc lair, with a kraken at its heart if I remember correctly. I lost an eye to a slashing critical and barely got out alive, the kraken would have to wait for another day! Details are blurry, but I remember coming back to the keep a couple of week-ends later, accompanied by a beorning npc Simon had introduced forme to befriend. The Kraken was defeated and we went on to have many more great adventures together. Thanks for this video Trevor, nice walk down memory lane! Time to get my MERP supplements off the self, I still have a dozen or so of them in mint condition (Dark mage of Rhudaur, Thieves of Tharbad, Goblin Gate, Hillmen of the Trollshaw, Path of the Dead, Dagorlad and so on, so much content crammed into those books, and like you said, among the most evocative maps I’ve seen in 40 years of gaming!)
We loved MERP and Rolemaster after playing D&D for years. In fact our group never went back to D&D ever again. Now we are looking for Rolemaster Unified to come out sometime this year or next.
I love the Sage's Library series, Mr. Devall. Thank you so much for your insight on the systems that you covered in this series, Mr. Devall 👍
We were thrilled with this in 1984 too, a game set in a specific intellectual property? How novel!!! I see Smeagol peeking over your left shoulder :) We loved the crunch (of bones!) in this games crit tables and soon moved on to the king daddy of overblown systems and crit tables, Rolemaster. Would love to see you cover that here. The number of classes with the RM Companions was insane! And your smoking jacket. Would really love that.
Oh man. Brings back some memories.. Specifically a memory of having my character slaying orcs but being killed by a bear. I have the Swedish boxed version from 1986, which actually differs a bit from MERPS if I recall correctly. Anyhow, I do remember the damage tables fondly. 👍 Edit: I also really like the more recent "The One Ring" rpg from Cubicle 7 - check it out if you haven't already!
MERP (or MERS here in germany) what a game! Sixteen years ago, this was my introduction into the roleplaying hobby. Nowadays I usually lean towards "lighter" or more narrative games, but I have to say: MERP is still a solid "old school" fantasy game. The critical hit tables make every fight so vivid and impactful, great stuff. And if everybody has the charts in front of them, the game moves surprisingly quickly.
Another point for MERP: Even so the rules were a poor representation of the setting, the supplemental material they produced was just gold!
Oh, I have many good memories of MERP. Basically my high-school years had a single long running campaign where we played out the war of the 4th age of middle earth - going around collect old elven artifacts, stopping dark cultists who were trying to bring Morgroth back from the outer void - and eventually the Dagor Dagorath when the big bad returned...
It was an epic 5 year game that we played in various ways - by the rules, by notes passed in class, on weekend get togethers. Loved it.
Yesssss! MERP was my first RPG and definitely holds a special place in my heart. I'm also fairly positive we never played it right either, but for a group of 12-15 year olds it was close enough though.
MERP was cool. There was an elegance to its complexity. A truly awesome system and very collectable these days.
I love that game, always play in low Fantasy.
My first Roleplaying books were MERPS and the Shire sourcebook. I was very young and didn't play it right, but MERPS still has a special place in my heart.
I loved MERP back in the day! It was actually the first RPG I played consistently. We then moved on to Rolemaster, which is to this day one of my favorite games, because of its detailed approach to things. It's crunchy but it's easy to ignore the rules you don't feel like using. As for Against the Darkmaster, I actually got my copy last week, it's a monster of a book! It's exactly what you say, a streamlined approach to MERP. It's the OSR version of ICE's games, I'd say. Thanks for another fantastic video!
OMG you have an Aquelarre in the shelf!
Just missed picking up the bound book myself. Wonder if they'll ever do another run of the fancy ones.
I first picked up MERP as it's boxed set around the late 80s. The one with the miniscule 20-sided d10s (adorable, and a likely candidate for the future child choking warnings). Later picked up the revised 2nd Edition hardback and a couple splatbooks. The Dol Guldur megadungeon book was ridiculously packed full of content for it's size. Eventually sold 'em just a few years ago. Loved the system for the same reasons you do, but after owning The One Ring I decided to stick with TOR for something with more Middle Earth feel and would simply get HARP for the system since it's uses the same as MERP. Hadn't got around to that yet when Against The Dark Master was released. Had to get it, and glad I did! It not only streamlined things which needed it, but also provides some tools to easily custom mold the beginnings your own fantasy setting without too much fuss. Although the system has more magic in it than Middle Earth, it's still less so than high heroic fantasy such as D&D, darker and deadlier in many ways. Right down my lane. Grab the big hardback when you can!
I well remember those *tiny* d10s - we spent as much time hunting for them on the floor as we did checking the tables. I could have saved so much time if I'd only bought a couple of proper sized dice with the box set! I wished the system could have been as evocative of Middle Earth as the brilliant Angus McBride covers on the modules/books.
Ah, MERP (as we called it; no 's'). Far better than people remember it - great unified mechanic that had loads of flexibility to it; really underrated. But, yeah, the 'playing in Middle-earth' bit... erm... needed work, to put it diplomatically. It could be done though - those spell lists just needed limiting based upon knowledge of the source material but I could live with the deadly combat crits, etc.
Great commentary though Trevor, love your videos! And watch out for those imaginary deceased turtles. ;-)
EDIT: Recommend "Against the Darkmaster" too... I have a hankering to couple it up with the old Midnight supplements for d20 which were based on the Darklord winning.
This game was my first RPG love before merging it with RM for more spells, crits and weapons. I totally agree that it didn't do the low magic setting of Tolkien well but I GMed for my cousins, all of us teenagers, all of them fighters with boxes of potions and thousands of gold pieces from selling the loot from the official ICE modules. I realise how bad a GM I was then but we all had great fun where even now, 35 years later, we still swap stories about those adventures! If you ever want to drop in on a Darkmaster session Trevor, let me know. We play every other Sunday and are also bringing out a module for it. Cheers!
Thank you Trevor. This was most interesting.
I presume you have heard of / played 'The One Ring RPG' - which just got a brand new Second Edition with solo rules designed in part by Mr. Ironsworn, Shawn Tomkin.
Perhaps it could make an appearance in a future episode of The Sage's Library...
Loved this game, remarkably my own memory of it is very similar.
I've had this rulebook in spanish called "El Juego de Rol en la Tierra Media" since a friend gave it to me, back in high school. I never read it, but Angus McBride's art was very inspiring. I just learned that I have a copy of MERPS in spanish, although not in a very good state 😂 The things we learn from you! 🤩
As a Brit I find the intro to be insulting and demeaning and I can't get enough. Bravo dear boy!
I'd say that MERP for all it's High Fantasy elements is also quite the gritty system, where one open ended enemy roll can leave even a high level character severely wounded, crippled or dead on the ground. I really loved how that affected players and their perspective on and approach to combat.
Love your very clear and distinct english pronounciation
Seeing the Villains & Vigilantes boxed set on your shelf made me unashamedly giddy.
My experience was phenomenal! The first time I played it was in the back room of a video store after school (6th grade). I remember it fondly because I didn't know any of the other kids, but the owner of the store and GM asked me if I wanted to play. I had read LOTR and the Hobbit and he asked me what I wanted to be. I said a Hobbit Scout. All the kids laughed at me. I decided right then and there that I was going to burglar the party. So I would send notes to the GM and I would borrow things from the party.
In an abandoned troll hole I found a map. The GM gave me this homemade map, it was cut out from an old paper bag, wrinkled up and the edges were burned. He made the map with black chalk and I was hooked. I put it in my shirt so no one would see it. Then went to the bathroom to look at it.
I lied to everyone and told them there was treasure in the ruins ahead as the map guided me to it. Then when they went in, I stole all there horeses. They wouldn't play with me anymore.
Love your videos as they bring back so many memories. 😎 Despite having collected RoleMaster back in the days and that MERPS (the German translation of it) was one of my very first TTRPGs when I did run my first Campaign with 8 players, the setting was Forgotten Realms (The Dalelands), with some Rohirrim mixed in and with the Rules of Stormbringer (Chaosium BRP). Yes, already back then I couldn't leave it to mix and mash all up. The players loved it.
Shortly after I started to develop my own rules and a little later my own world, as none published did really satisfy me. And the rest is history.
What a badass attire, Mr. Devall. Truly befitting of such a gentleman sage. Hahaha.
My friends and I, no ones but inexperienced novices, are preparing to play The One Ring 2E by Free League Publishing ourselves.
Are you playing the newer editions and systems of LOTR RPGs too, sir?
Well, now this brought back memories. I remember already being a huge Tolkien fan and having some experience with D&D as well as having tried Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (first edition back then) and thinking I was an experienced roleplayer I was lent a copy of this by a classmate. The one and only session we ran was an unmitigated disaster!
None of us were native English speakers, the character stats were quite complicated and the combat tables were frankly incomprehensible to us. I remember wanting to like this game oh, so much, but giving up after that one first session. To be honest we probably didn't quite play WHFRP correctly either, and I know one lad who completely misunderstood some of the rules from the slightly more complicated (English, again) rules for D&D that we managed to get our mitts on, but MERPS stands out the one we really couldn't grasp at all.
Would love to get another copy and see how it lives up to the memories, though.
I love MERP. I even used it to run a session of Keep on the Borderlands a few years ago. I’m currently running Against the Darkmaster and it is truly a worthy successor to MERP.
I just came across this video. Yea, I had ALL the Merp in the 80's up unto the late 90's when ICE folded. Still do! The later stuff edited by Chris Seaman was particularly good. I ran a MERP game for my weekly group about ten years ago. Our "Power Gamer" had his hip crushed in the first combat round and had to be carried around on litter for weeks of game time. :)
Love Merps 1 and 2 both are good editions
Got MERP as well (have to look in the attic, if I can still find it). For me personally it was a little to complicated but hey, people grow with their challenges, right? One other success I would like to mention is The One Ring (2E) which was successfully funded on Kickstarter. Got the digital version already and - although it uses a different system than MERP - the Middle Earth feeling to it is amazing. Got the Deluxe Edition because it looks like the Red Book of Westmarch (aaarrrghhh... stop piling, start playing :) The jacket is very sophisticated by the way :)
I love this series.
It's like traveling back in time to when I either played all these games or knew people who did.
Lost whole weekends to this, the crit tables were indeed awesome.
By a quirk of distribution, MERP was pretty much the only game in town if you lived in Ireland in the mid- to late 80s (I think it had something to do with Irish company Prince August Miniatures, who later produced Mithral Miniatures, having the distribution rights). Such a fun game that had so little to do with its setting; the tables were always hilarious and the open ended rolls were a hoot.
Sir, you have pretty much encapsulated my junior high and high school years! Indeed, the system wasn't really a match to the ethos of Middle Earth, but did we care? No, we were just high on imagination actually running around in TA 1640 slaying orcs and finding randomly generated magic items that I rolled up on -- you guessed it -- a chart! For some reason, I kept rolling up +5 climbing pitons that (I kid you not) cast the elemental Cold Call spell. Like, seriously, I rolled up that same item at least 7 times. Ah, the glory days of our youth! Thanks for this video.
Your videos are excellent! I really enjoy the content and listening to you chat. Thank you!
Ahhhh, good ol' Chartmaster Jr. I remember it well, but not exactly fondly. ;D
I played Rolemaster but used the MERP sourcebooks and hence "Middle Earth" as our game world. I loved it but we often got bogged down with the plethora of options Rolmaster presented. It was tough to reconcile the tone of MIddle Earth with the magic present. Combined that with the bad reputation of it being Chartmaster/ROLLmaster and never could keep a group going for long. About 14 years ago a friend gave me a good copy of the 1st Edition MERP rulebook and I too have a pdf copy of Against the Darkmaster. Would love to give either a try. Mr. Devall, THANK YOU so much for doing this. I saw you had a copy of the Basic Roleplaying Gold Book; I know at least two people who would love to hear your take on it.
Okay, gamer story time!
I was running for 3 friends. Dragon appeared, they were supposed to be scared & run away, then advance in levels by adventuring then return to face the dragon.
1st level character, 1st round open-ends TWICE on one roll. 100 on his E crit. Kills the 25th level dragon. One round, one shot. It was soooooo epic.
I never even bothered trying D&D until 5e a couple of years ago, because a 1st level character can’t one shot a 25th level dragon.
I had the 2nd edition box set back in the day, never got to play it with other people (I think there may have been a short solo adventure in one of the books in the box?) but I remember being fascinated with the system. The box disappeared into my parents' attic some years ago, never to be seen again sadly.
Such fond memories, we were 12 yo I think. Of course we also played Rolemasyer and of course I am quite sure that we never got the rules right, either. We then proceeded to play Elric of Melnobone and then we upgraded to Call of Cthulhu. And I am still playing CoC as of this day, more than 30 years later...
Really enjoying this series. I've slowly been collecting MERP over the years, but never have been able to play it properly. Palantir Quest looks like it would be so much fun to play. I look for them whenever I go into a Half Price Books or other used book stores, but they are getting harder to come by. If you are willing to spend the money Noble Knight Games had been the best place otherwise to find them.
We're running through that adventure online and stream it via Twitch if wanting to have a laugh. Look us up either MajykFngrz or Adventures in Middle Earth, there. If able to share a link: www.twitch.tv/videos/1885997929
First roleplay game I ever tried and then I ran it for my friends in high school. Loved it, loved the system because it was brutal, tried Rulesmaster after it didn’t gel as well so we went and played West End Games Star Wars and AD&D. I’ve come back to it a few times since this days and I’ve been looking to play it again.
Can honestly say I had no idea it was set 1500 years before the Lord of the Rings, as we always did our own thing and mourned those who fell in battle or drowned in a river due to heavy armour.
I never actually played MERP but I spent hours and hours generating characters for it. I also bought two versions of the starter set (and several expansions) and made great use of the card standees. Herubar Gular, the ruined keep in the intro adventures is currently the floorplan of the PCs base of operations in my ongoing WFRP campaign.
This just showed up again in my autoplay. And I remember now: it's you I have to blame for VsD! 😆 I bought it 5 months ago and read it cover to cover after watching your awesome video and feeling nostalgic of MERP.
I should've known that it would suffer the same faith as my old MERP copies and gather dust, as none of my friends are really interested to try anything not D&D just for the sake of trying it. Who knows! Maybe I'll end up soloing it. Thanks again for the great content.
This was the first game I played, for me this was the door to RPG, I'm from a Spanish-speaking country so for us wasn't many alternatives for RPGs. I love this baby, even thought I don't think I get to play it again. Two months ago I find a first Spanish edition of MERP in a second hand book store, and it was in perfect condition.
When I arrived at University in the eighties we played a couple of sessions of D&D before switching to MERPs and then ICE role master. This video brought back many happy memories of my PC ‘Pete the Feet’ a hobbit thief and his friends Gaddafi the fire wizard and several others. 😃
Aw played merp in the 80's absolutely loved it.
i remember when we played this rpg, we were fiften years old, the first challenge was to understand the rules !!!!! and the firs encounter with a Troll was epic !!!!
I love the MERP setting. They are still some of the best source and adventure books I've owned. I've had watch lists for them on eBay for years, and occasionally get to pick up second hand items to add to my collection. I've spent between $10 and $150 Australian on good condition books - and occasionally have seen some of the rarer books sell for $300+. Cubicle 7 Entertainment released licensed 5e Middle Earth Books only a few years ago. I picked up a bunch of pdfs on a Humble Bundle for cheap last year, but have not read them closely. We quickly moved on from the MERP rules to Rolemaster. ICE was resurrected from bankruptcy and still sells Rolemaster products now.
MERP was out of print for decades since the publisher, ICE went under. ICE was revived and put out a polished version for generic fantasy and not Middle Earth in the 2000s. It was called HARP, or High Adventure Roleplaying. It might still be on drivethru.
Heard of it, but we never got around to playing it. Our gang was more into AD&D (1.0!), Traveller, Bushido, Gamma World, and Stormbringer. I'd love to hear your thought on Mork Borg.
Oh, man! Love the MERPS was a fun game. Like you, I don't believe we used the rules as explained in the books.
Thank you! Rewatching Season 2 Ironsworn today cuz I miss the content. So happy to see a new upload!!!
We didn't play it right (we upgraded it with Rolemaster), and I didn't even realize it was set in the past. And we ate up that lore. Crazy. Never heard it called MERPS with the S, a bit of a discussion about that on the facebook group ;)
Because of this video, I just picked up a 1st Ed copy. Let the 'E' Crits commence.
Love this series Trevor! I'm so excited for season 3. I already bought a hard copy of Dominion Rules to follow along.
Be the first to join the FB group! :-)
MERP one of my old favorites .. played in high school and a little beyond .. still have my 1st edition book and my revised 2nd edition book .. some adventures .. the Moria supplement .. the poster size map .. i dont know that we ever played it right with the phases either. lol
Same here, we never cared about the not so important details in between beers & classes, etc. in college. MERP was flexible, it was up to each player to bring some creativity to the arena!
I use to buy MERPS modules for the lore and maps.
Played in a very short campaign back in the day. A buddy played a Hobbit, that was just " I have become Death" with a sling.
Reminds me of conversations I've had with people who do not understand why Gandalf doesn't have an Instant Death spell. I just replied with he is not that kind of wizard and they walk off even more confused! Nice outfit. You would fit right in on the Antiques Roadshow!
I am trying to get my group into the successor game mentioned, Against the Darkmaster, which does allow me to recycle a boatload of MERP material I bought long ago because it was so pretty, particularly those maps, even if yes not really "middle earth" in the amount of magic and magical treasure.
By the way, I agree with your assessment that Tolkien's Middle Earth is a Low Fantasy setting.
I own just about all of the MERP campaign books and modules (some of different editions), and I, too, love the maps and presentation of this game. Looking forward to playing Against the Darkmaster some day (when I can get a hard copy). It's extremely well designed, and while it retains some of the flavor of MERPS, it really is a different game with a lot of unique mechanics that emphasize roleplaying over the chart consulting and record-keeping mania of RM. Well worth the purchase!
Not my thing but I'm glad you covered that piece of RPG history.
There was an add on, I think in the Mirkwood campaign book casting high level spells attracted attention from The Enemy.
I don't remember that from Merps... I seem to remember that was a rule in the "Darkening of Mirkwood" campaign for The One Ring 1st ed. (or it might have been in the ToR Adventurer's Companion). Either way, it's a great setting-appropriate concept.
@@MeMyselfandDieRPG Had to look it up as it was annoying me, it was in the Merp 2e hardback- a later 1990s product, not the first versions.
Just discovered your channel. Dominion Rules? MERP?? Instant subscription. Excellent videos.
Played this as our fantasy game instead of DnD. Also probably never ran the rules right. The first character we made for the game was WAY overpowered because we used the stat to add to skills instead of the stat bonus. Also (I may be wrong about this) my recollection is that they sold sourcebooks instead of adventures. What this meant is as a GM you had to write your own adventures since the sourcebooks just described a geographical area, people and events. It didn’t really lay out a scripted adventure.
My recollection is also that the magic system was……elusive. You had to roll well even to get any spells to learn (you may not get any). Also, a lot less spells; many were variations of the same theme and none of our players ever had a character that could survive on magic alone.
Still have my d100s from the MERP box. They roll the best and I'm making a set inspired by them!
Those two tiny little 20-siders, 0-9, were great! If you didn't lose them. I think Gamescience still makes some that size, and they would probably give me a kidney stone of comparable size if I were to look at the price.
About combat neither did makers of the rules. From Rolemaster Classic Arms Law "This system was originally introduced in early versions of Rolemaster, yet it was, according to many of the people I have talked with over the years, rarely used. In fact, the folks who originally created it rarely used it themselves."
When I first started role-playing, my GM wanted us to learn I.C.E. Rolemaster first. Then we transitioned to HERO System 5e Rev.
Learning Rolemaster definitely helped me appreciate the wealth of skills, but then also realize the amount of skill bloat.
I like Chaosium's Basic Role-Playing because it's got a wealth of skills, but not a huge bloat and you can even reduce those or get other abilities instead of being restricted to certain magic type lists like Rolemaster.
Love content with you sharing your knowledge and opinions on RPGs new and old. 👏
I realise this video is 2 years old, but I just watched it. Anyway, MERP is only available now second hand sadly, but I am planning a game with my current group as Roll20 has character sheets available. This will be the first time I have played it since the 80's and I am pretty excited.
lol, that into had me laughing for 5 minutes straight. If I'm going to be internet famous for anything, I think that was a good cause.
My memories of our MERPs game are a bit of a blur to this day (primarily as I was stoned out of my mind through most of it), but I do recall it being incredibly frustrating, though not sure how much of that was the system (which I suspect we were not doing correcty then either - didn't the GM get rid of to-hit rolls or something?) I recall getting obsessed with some Dire Wolf puppies at one point.
The supplement line for the game, despite the obvious liberties taken with Tolkien's canon (enough to make David Day blush) were a thing of beauty, essentially supporting a hexcrawl sandbox approach to the setting. Angus McBride's artwork still evokes instant nostalgia to this day.
Though it obviously is a bad fit for Tolkien, I always thought a fun campaign could be built around Tolkien's unfinished sequel to Lord of the Rings (the surviving chapters of which were published in the History of Middle Earth volume 12), which he abandoned for being "too dark", if you excised the magic entirely. A dark and gritty system seems like it might fit the world Middle Earth became after magic passed from the world and the Fourth Age led gradually into recorded history, with "Orc Cults" (in the story, not orcs, who had been wiped out, but humans playing at Orc culture and presumably worshipping Sauron or Morgoth in some form) as a sort of Lovecraftian nemesis. Incredibly rare survivors of the world-that-was could lend the whole thing a Berserk feeling.
I had been trying to concoct possibilities for playing in the fourth age for some time. Apart from Palantir quest module, i had thought about the fact that we are not sure if The Mouth of Sauron was really killed (therefore he might be an adversary given the fact that he knew much dark sorcery). Also, there was a really interesting character described in the Gorgoroth module (i can't recall the name now) who was basically an elf who met Annatar in the Second age (that is, Sauron in disguise) and who fell under his thralldom). If we take into account that elves live very long, this guy could still be around. Last but not least, how much do we know about Pallando, fir instance? What was his final fate? Is it not possible that he was not as strong as Gandalf in resisting the Shadow?
I slowed down my collecting of RM/MERP around the mid 90s... I still have my stock and only missing a handful of 1st edition modules
I too was in about 7th grade when this game came out, and it was a big hit for my gaming group at the time as well. I can guarantee that we probably didn't play it exactly right either, as it was a bit more complex for my mind at the time. My first character was a Hobbit Scout whom I played for quite a while before suffering the worst crit possible by a slashing weapon which was...
"Strike to head destroys brain and makes life difficult for the unfortunate fool. Expire in a heap immediately."
Yeah, that sucked, lol. Still, the game was a lot of fun, but while some of the supplements did a nice job trying to bring various locations of Middle Earth into the game... The core rules didn't feel much like the setting at all.
Wonderful video, as always. My group and I still play MERP (we call it MERP, not MERPS) regularly. It’s one of our go-to games and I have a good many fond memories of claiming victory with an open-ended E Crit at the right moment. I suppress memories of the many Fumbles that I’ve suffered over the years obviously. I’m afraid that, as far as I’m aware, this game is only available via eBay and such for second hand books, and they’re quite pricey. I, for one, would love to see a MERP(S) solo game in future but I guess that my love for this game isn’t that universal and it could be a short series seeing as how unforgiving the game is.
Yes, the fabled open-ended 'E' Crit is the stuff of legend.
Excellent!
Pretty sure we played combat the same, wrong, way, now that you mentioned it!
Still have a couple of yards of Merp sitting on my shelf. Best game I've ever played - though we did use the Rolemaster weapon tables. So much more variety...
Owned MERP twice over (first copies thrown by accident, thanks Mum!) but to my shame, I never played it
Trevor, what is your knowledge of the more recent (but now killed off) Adventures in Middle Earth RPG? I heard it was good and is expected to have a revival with similar rules under a new company soon. Could be another one for the Sage’s Library?
That was a 5E conversion of the vastly superior The One Ring rpg (which is getting a second edition). I ran a 6 year campaign in ToR - absolutely beautiful game, and pitch perfect for Middle Earth.
I own MERP box version and, hard back book.Its a skinny down version role master.
I and my friends started with this game. It was PERFECT for playing gonzo middle-earth! I ran a lot of 1st Age & 2nd Age.
My games were very gonzo. 😂
We moved onto RM2e because we wanted to go farther than 10th lvl
I haven't played Against the Darkmaster myself, but I definitely loved reading it. If I ever got to play it I hope I wouldn't bounce off it as hard as I did MERP once I got to play that (:
Love MERP!!!
I too have some fond memories of this from back in the day and I never cared how badly it represented playing in Middle Earth because I was totally addictived to anything to do with that setting 😎
Love the channel. It's been a genuine inspiration.
Weird side note, and maybe unnecessary, the font you used in the logo "The Sage's Library," it's only free for personal use (it used to be called Trattatello, but is now listed as Operina). Maybe you purchased a license (in which case, ignore me!), but I know it's often listed on font sites without the license information, and most people don't pay any attention to the license. I don't really blame them; I doubt most companies check to see if people are using their fonts without a license because font licenses are pretty barbaric.
I only know because I very recently swapped from Trattatello to Roman Antique (Italics) for that reason. I was using it in a solo RPG/card game I'm working on, even though most likely it would only get used as a prototype, it leaves the door open to self-publish.
Anyway, great to see old RPGs getting a shout-out. I never played when I was young and really missed out on a golden age of great games and wonky experiments gone awry!
Great video! I will challenge you a bit and say that I think MERP is a fine "Middle Earth" roleplaying game, it's just not a "Lord of the Rings" roleplaying game. That is, I think MERP means to give you the opportunity to play your frp game (elfs and dwarfs and magic-users looting dungeons) in the glorious setting of Middle Earth. Middle Earth is more than just LotR though. Look at the Hobbit: in that, goblins are said to ally with evil dwarves and trolls have talking pockets! Can you imagine Aragorn or Boromir having to deal with a talking pocket? My point is that there are different kinds of stories that you can tell in that setting. MERP was just a somewhat different take on that extraordinary setting.
Nice series, nice digs and look - much nostalgia about MERP and Rolemaster/Chartmaster and still play it to this day on VTT Fantasy Grounds that does all the math and table lookups within seconds.
Enjoy the trip down memory lane and you definitely have to get back into the game to tell us stories of your characters' experiences in the setting/system.
What was a Most Memorable Moment for you, Sir? :)
I have MERP and bought almost all of it.
This was my introduction to RPGs. We hated all the tables but we loved them as well. They were slowing things down but boy, did they also provide flavor! And even though this wasn't low-magic like LotR game arguably should be, casting spells was sufficiently dangerous to the caster (and the entire party) for this to feel very different from, say, Dragonlance. Too bad ICE today is a shell of its former self and even RM isn't managed well. But yeah, at least we've got Open00 and VsD. :)
That actually sounds like a good system to play Game of Thrones with! (Solely because of the critical hit tables.)
I share your love. It’s was flawed and great.
Still super excited for MMAD! (Me, myself, and die)
It’s coming!