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Post by geneweigel on Oct 10, 2016 9:02:40 GMT -5
What are others experience with ICE games? I've had people falling into my campaign in droves after bad experiences with the ROLEMASTER and MERP in campaigns around the late 1980's and early 1990's.
When I cherry picked certain modules/supplements they were always overwritten and baroque. In particular I recall the Moria and Minas Tirith ones that I had before they mysteriously disappeared. They seemed not Tolkien enough but the designers seemed to think they were.
I recall the Moria and Minas Tirith map feeling like they were somebody's take on how they would lay out these locales. The adventures that I vaguely recall seemed forced as if they would stay true to the books, ignore the detail that you would require and anything that was extra (magic or monster) was weak sauce.
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Post by GRWelsh on Oct 10, 2016 9:54:53 GMT -5
In high school I had some friends with ARMS LAW who were high on the critical injury charts and supposed 'realism' of the system. That might have been before it was associated with Middle-Earth. Since then, over the years, I've heard MERP horror stories, mostly around the same critical injury charts and how the system is a mismatch for the world setting (i.e., people breaking a leg while crossing a ford and slipping on a rock, that sort of thing). I've tried to check out their Middle-Earth stuff, but I also found it overwritten. Boring even. And I love the SILMARILLION and HoME series, so that should tell you something of my toleration for 'boring' text! I liked the Angus McBride paintings, but I seldom read the text and felt like "This author really gets Tolkien." I think the key is, like you say, whether MERP is true to the books in flavor. I didn't feel it was. To me it felt like reading someone else's fantasy campaign that had used Middle-Earth as a starting point but had its own character/flavor that was entirely different. A good example of what I'm talking about is THE COURT OF ARDOR which is set in the far south of Middle-Earth and had its own bizarre story line unrelated to almost anything else you recognize from the books. Evil jungle elves in a tropical setting?
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Post by grodog on Oct 11, 2016 0:13:06 GMT -5
A good example of what I'm talking about is THE COURT OF ARDOR which is set in the far south of Middle-Earth and had its own bizarre story line unrelated to almost anything else you recognize from the books. Evil jungle elves in a tropical setting? Ardor is one of my favorite modules of all time---it's a great adventure to adapt to AD&D and use for a drowic plot, IMO. (And I could buy the Second Age backstory connections in the module, FWIW ). Allan.
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Post by GRWelsh on Oct 11, 2016 8:30:31 GMT -5
Allan, did you run or play THE COURT OF ARDOR? When I was reading it, I kept wondering what sort of relatability it had to what most players would be familiar with, i.e. THE HOBBIT and THE LORD OF THE RINGS.
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Post by Scott on Oct 11, 2016 9:33:50 GMT -5
There's a good core to the system, but you have to have a god GM with an abundance of common sense that knows when to use the tables and when to ignore them. Unfortunately, I think the nature of the system attracts the very literal, tied to the word types.
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Post by geneweigel on Oct 11, 2016 10:03:17 GMT -5
I was wondering that as a trend Tolkien seems to make others want to utilize it as a vehicle. In the case of this new ONE RING game it seems as if the designers never even read the books and are just adapting it to a fantasy world of their own making and reflecting Tolkien rpg trend's design stagnation. Its just another ICE from my view at least pouring through it and trying to grok the system and picking up the flavor.
ICE products were popular based on nothing that was in them besides shit you could have got from the books even the Middle Earth Atlas or "a Tolkien Treasury" was more interesting than looking through the ICE books that I had. First of all they were scarce except if they were new almost like everything else that was non-D&D with the exception of Mayfair games they had a solid shelf presence at mall bookstores in the 1980's. I would go in and there would be an ICE Tolkien thing open on the shelf and I would flip through them but they never seemed exciting. Honestly? I think that I've read all of them just looking at the covers now.
In regards to COURT OF ARDOR (1983) I remember the ads in Dragon so it definitely had my attention but once perused it just seemed off base.
Specifically that bard pic in the back was the hardest thing for me to swallow it just seemed irksome and weird. Who was that designed for? Teeny bopper girls? It just seems like "Tolkien drag" over a really homegrown D&D campaign.
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Post by grodog on Oct 11, 2016 20:23:58 GMT -5
Allan, did you run or play THE COURT OF ARDOR? When I was reading it, I kept wondering what sort of relatability it had to what most players would be familiar with, i.e. THE HOBBIT and THE LORD OF THE RINGS. Yeah, I'd already read the Silmarillion a few times by the time I bought Ardor (at one of the North Jersey cons where I passed on the RPGA R1-4 modules because I didn't like the Holloway art at the time, alas ), so I was definitely relating it back to the LOTR appendices and Quenta Silmarillion rather than to The Hobbit or the Ring Trilogy plotlines. That was what excited me about the storyline---[spoilers] that it built upon First/Second Age lore, and I could easily see some of the Dark Elves who remained behind in Middle Earth being seduced by Morgoth and Sauron into a plot to destroy the sun. Plus it had Amber-like Tarot cards and a cool system of gates, which I was already enamored with by then....[/spoilers]---and I always loved the maps in the 1e MERP line, stealing them for use in my D&D games without shame! To answer your first Q, I ran bits and pieces of Ardor in my Greyhawk campaigns, but never got to run the full-on adaptation of it I've always wanted to do: [spoilers] to replace the Lords of Ardor and the Noldor/Sindar therein with drowic noble houses, and to steal their plot to snuff out the sun as a drowic machinations for the shadow/darkness wielding house of Noquar)[/spoilers]. Anyway, I bought it hook, line, and sinker: I liked the [spoilers] mysterious, intertwined backgrounds of the Lords, the sense of doom/prophecy at work in the plot, the high-level nature of the foes, the network of gates etc., etc[/spoilers]. I haven't re-read the module in ages, and imagine it wouldn't hold up to mature scrutiny as well as I recall it: I sense there being quite a bit of Elminsterism among the high-level coterie of NPCs.... Specifically that bard pic in the back was the hardest thing for me to swallow it just seemed irksome and weird. Who was that designed for? Teeny bopper girls? It just seems like "Tolkien drag" over a really homegrown D&D campaign. I think you're spot-on in the case of this module, Gene: that's definitely what it felt like to me too. And WRT the bard pic, it was the '80s, man---the haircut proves it! Allan.
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TimS
Prestidigitat
Posts: 10
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Post by TimS on Dec 18, 2018 7:38:13 GMT -5
I know I’m resurrecting a dead thread, but I did play weekly Rolemaster/MERP for a summer during a 1E Greyhawk hiatus. When 3E eventually came out it reminded me a lot of the ICE system, but with D20 instead of D100. Then I noticed that one of the 3rd edition designers used to work for ICE.
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