4e Core Rulebooks

[Midgardsormr]

and even for you DNDers, Iron Crown Enterprises has some amazing resources for RPing regaurdless of system...

Agreed. There was a book about building castles and fortresses that had loads of great information, down to the niggly details of how many square feet per diner should be available in the great hall. I'd provide the actual title, but it's packed away in my storage unit at the moment.

I enjoy the occasional D&D session, but people come into the game with so many preconceived notions that I generally avoid it, too.

[loogie]

Agreed. There was a book about building castles and fortresses that had loads of great information, down to the niggly details of how many square feet per diner should be available in the great hall. I'd provide the actual title, but it's packed away in my storage unit at the moment.

I enjoy the occasional D&D session, but people come into the game with so many preconceived notions that I generally avoid it, too.

its Castles and Ruins

i in fact have it as well... got it as a pdf... its just a scan of the old book but, you can find it at ICE's store. Its the amount of detail they put into their sourcebooks that makes me love them...

And as far as healing surges and such... i'm much more hardcore then dnd i guess... i KNOW not a lot of people are like i am when it comes to playing, so surges is a good idea... but for me, the much more terrifying possibility of you OR your opponent getting a simple lucky hit that crushes your pelvis, severs an artery, or just plain lops off a limb is where i like to be... HARP's attacks have several effects like - to actions, stunned, bleeding per round, broken bones, severed limbs etc... while i do edit my monsters attack results so that i don't kill or maim my players all the time, i often let broken bones, and such slip by... and without instant cure-all magical fixes, it makes people go into combat with a little hesitation, and a lot of planning... (i like tactics)... basically, i made any magical healing an out of combat option... usually by changing its cast time...

4th ed sounds interesting, and i'm sure i'll end up trying it some time... tho i've heard plenty of people talking about it... and they've been busy crunching numbers so that when their DM switches, they'll have the best possible character they can have... i'm sure it won't take long to find some loopholes to create the munchkin characters. its just how some people play... and in my experience, those players are almost always playing dnd... guess being the biggest and most popular rp system is a benefit and curse.

[torstan]

I had a go at MERP and was put off ICE products by the sheer mind-bending complexity of the system - but then we were only 14 at the time and D&D just fit better. Sounds like it might be worth revisiting some of their stuff from what you say.

I like the new wizards. We played a short test combat when we first picked up the books and one of my old players was whinging about how wizards looked vastly under-powered. At the end of the combat he said that was the first time he'd played a wizard that actually felt like a wizard in any game. That's the recommendation I have heard for trying the game anywhere.

As for the DMing side, it's definitely faster to build up adventures and monsters are a lot easier to run. I'm not enamoured by the skill-challenges though. They're a bit too simplistic at the moment - maybe they'll become a little more complex when I get my head designing them better.

[Midgardsormr]

I had a go at MERP and was put off ICE products by the sheer mind-bending complexity of the system - but then we were only 14 at the time and D&D just fit better. Sounds like it might be worth revisiting some of their stuff from what you say.

Heh. If you thought MERP was complex, you should see Rolemaster. MERP and HARP are essentially "Rolemaster Lite." RM includes an attack table for each and every weapon you can use. None of this weenie one-handed slashing table; the fighter with the bastard sword uses the Bastard Sword Table, and the ranger with the longsword uses the Longsword Table. It's insane.

On the other hand, the level of detail and attention to source material that went into their books is almost unparalleled. I still have tons of MERP books that I consider almost as good as the canon written by Tolkien himself.

As far as 4e goes, I do agree with Tancread; it was rather silly of them not to at least manufacture minis to support the core races and the first sourcebook. Fortunately, my current group has plenty of minis from dozens of games, so we get by just fine. And when I move to Denver, I'll be using Maptool in projector mode, so the need for minis will vanish entirely.

[Steel General]

Heh. If you thought MERP was complex, you should see Rolemaster. MERP and HARP are essentially "Rolemaster Lite." RM includes an attack table for each and every weapon you can use. None of this weenie one-handed slashing table; the fighter with the bastard sword uses the Bastard Sword Table, and the ranger with the longsword uses the Longsword Table. It's insane.

On the other hand, the level of detail and attention to source material that went into their books is almost unparalleled. I still have tons of MERP books that I consider almost as good as the canon written by Tolkien himself.

We played Rolemaster (or should I say ROLLmaster ) quite abit when I still lived in Western NY, and you're right its overly complex in some ways, but the supporting products were fantastic.

[jfrazierjr]

While I in no way play Rolemaster, I have dabbled in MERP a LONG time ago (18+ years??) I also was totally confounded by the shear number of tables. Personally, I rather like the generic vague nature of D&D's HP system. No thinking about "ok... last round, my arm was broken by the goblins hammer, now, whats my penalty to every action" ...

However, with that said with the proliferation and fairly ease of use in todays computers and software, you could easily automate tons of that if you so choose. Maptool has table support built in now, and with the latest dev build can now support table looks ups from within macros. I expect this would take any Rolemaster based game a one time set up and vastly increase the speed of combat resolution.

[ravells]

I think back in those days having lots of tables was seen as 'sexy'. These days (when I play at all which is rarely), I tend to go for freeform and abandon all rule systems.