Gone and almost forgotten

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Toadmaster said:
MERP was a fun Middle Earth inspired RPG, but it was very much D&D in set in ME, not an emulation of LotR or The Hobbit.

Personally I think that made it more popular than a more focused RPG would have been, particularly at the time.
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The MERP LotR supplements were pretty cool. I'd be interested in mining them for another system.
 
AsenRG said:
Not trying to take a side, but I'd like to point out that Tolkien was emulating Northern sagas. As such, both gritty, and darkly humorous wounds and punishments, have their definite place in a Middle Earth game!
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LotR is much lighter, even sentimental, than the sagas. This was a big part of Moorcock's critique of Tolkien that many pass over.

Notably absent for instance in the main text of LotR is any romance let alone sex or passion, whereas those are very prominent in the sagas.

The Silmarillion, which I really like btw, is the obvious exception with its consistent themes of incest, doomed love and tragic violence.

But when you have an rpg designed for Middle Earth that is a tiny percentage of fans who would even know that material (is there a less read but well known book than The Silmarillion?), let alone wanting to play in it. Tonally, LotR and The Silmarillion couldn't be more different.
 
TheoryofGame said:
And that one game: Apocalypse World. Sheesh. There's a segment of the hobby that cannot stop ranting and raving about how AW is the best of all things rpg and how Mistah Vincent Baker's gonna save all our souls one playbook at a time.

No one can deny the game made a significant splash, right? People are always talking about it, right?

But who's playing it? I mean anytime I see a list of "Most Popular Tabletop RPGs" guess what isn't on there anymore? Apocalypse World. I get the influence and creativity of it. How AW's impacted the hobby and all. But. How many 5e players are like "Hey guys for our next game we have to play Apocalypse World!" And everyone's like "Yaaaaaaay!!" How often is that really happening?

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A few years ago a younger friend of mine started with 5e and then was introduced to AW and was really taken with it. So it happens.

I'd say that AW's influence these days is more just through the many PbtA hacks of it.

Which from every indication from Vincent Baker he's fine with. He even came out with a stripped down, less 'edgy' version of AW subtitled 'Burned Over' so even he had moved on. Not every game needs to be evergreen.
 
Voros said:
LotR is much lighter, even sentimental, than the sagas. This was a big part of Moorcock's critique of Tolkien that many pass over.

Notably absent for instance in the main text of LotR is any romance let alone sex or passion, whereas those are very prominent in the sagas.

The Silmarillion, which I really like btw, is the obvious exception with its consistent themes of incest, doomed love and tragic violence.
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Yeah, my personal pet theory is that the Silmarillion were the parts that JRR Tolkien didn't want to publish due to prudishness, but felt they complete the resemblance to the sagas, so he wrote them as part of his own Middle Earth:tongue:.

Basically, that means that LotR is "Middle Earth Sagas for Catholics", Silmarillion is "Middle Earth Sagas for people not worried about sex and violence", and the Hobbit is "Middle Earth Sagas for putting kids to sleep":shade:.

Luckily, his son didn't share his father's prudishness (or at least not to such an extent::honkhonk:).
Voros said:
But when you have an rpg designed for Middle Earth that is a tiny percentage of fans who would even know that material (is there a less read but well known book than The Silmarillion?), let alone wanting to play in it. Tonally, LotR and The Silmarillion couldn't be more different.
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Yes, but it's still Middle Earth material. And it means you can pick which one to follow, tonally.

MERP would fit right in with the Silmarillion (and to a lesser extent, with the Hobbit), is my point. It's not a great fit for LotR, true:thumbsup:.
After all, the system that uses MERP is titled "Middle Earth Roleplaying", not "The One Ring RPG". That one also exists, as we all know, but it doesn't use Rolemaster.
 
TheoryofGame said:
And that one game: Apocalypse World. Sheesh. There's a segment of the hobby that cannot stop ranting and raving about how AW is the best of all things rpg and how Mistah Vincent Baker's gonna save all our souls one playbook at a time.

No one can deny the game made a significant splash, right? People are always talking about it, right?

But who's playing it? I mean anytime I see a list of "Most Popular Tabletop RPGs" guess what isn't on there anymore? Apocalypse World. I get the influence and creativity of it. How AW's impacted the hobby and all. But. How many 5e players are like "Hey guys for our next game we have to play Apocalypse World!" And everyone's like "Yaaaaaaay!!" How often is that really happening?

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That’s largely what happened with my group. It wasn’t Apocalypse World specifically, but Pbta and FitD games that got us off of 5e (mostly).

The impact that Apocalypse World has had on the hobby is pretty hard to argue against.
 
hawkeyefan said:
That’s largely what happened with my group. It wasn’t Apocalypse World specifically, but Pbta and FitD games that got us off of 5e (mostly).

The impact that Apocalypse World has had on the hobby is pretty hard to argue against.
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I personally feel a bit "done" with PbtA in general but I'd certainly be up for another AW campaign and some of my extended play-group(s) did one last year so it certainly still gets play. It stands far above most of the other PbtA games in my opinion.

I'd suggest that PbtA games in general (like OSR) get a lot of play relative to the level of chatter on the Internet compared to more trad games because they are so easy to setup/prep and have no player-side theory-crafting, lore debates or builds possible. (Of course GMs and designers can talk about them, but that is only a fraction of the audience).
 
robb said:
I personally feel a bit "done" with PbtA in general but I'd certainly be up for another AW campaign and some of my extended play-group(s) did one last year so it certainly still gets play. It stands far above most of the other PbtA games in my opinion.
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I don't think I'll ever play one again but I do enjoy reading them. Some of them are very clever and the Playbooks are usually something where I'll always think "Oh, I'm totally stealing that"
 
robb said:
I personally feel a bit "done" with PbtA in general but I'd certainly be up for another AW campaign and some of my extended play-group(s) did one last year so it certainly still gets play. It stands far above most of the other PbtA games in my opinion.
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Yeah, Apocalypse World is a game I’d like to actually play or run at some point.

I think that PbtA games are, like most categories, a mixed bag. But I think there are some that are absolutely worth playing, and there continue to be interesting things done with the design.

robb said:
I'd suggest that PbtA games in general (like OSR) get a lot of play relative to the level of chatter on the Internet compared to more trad games because they are so easy to setup/prep and have no player-side theory-crafting, lore debates or builds possible. (Of course GMs and designers can talk about them, but that is only a fraction of the audience).
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I think it depends on the game. Some games have more lore than others, or more player options than others. But even in those instances, I think you’re generally right… not as many people into these games are concerned about character builds and the like.
 
Mankcam said:
Heh heh yes and no

Both MERP and Against The Darkmaster certainly are not emulating the tone of The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings
But the tone of The Histories of Middle Earth perhaps it is a bit closer to the mark, well, sort of.

I definately agree the MERP magic system was a completely poor fit for Middle Earth.
The divine magic class being described as an Animist is actually not entirely out of place, although MERP didn't know where to go with that other than use it as a replacement for D&D's Cleric Class - in a setting which has no hierarchical priesthood. Also having a Magician Class was entirely out of place and at odds with the lore as well. Nothing Tolkienesque here at all.

But the Critical Injuries are not that far off, given some of the dark tragedy and violent events described in the Histories of Middle Earth and whatnot.
Tolkien was quite bloodthirsty in detailing many of those events - an example is when Sauron captured Celebrimbor.
Sauron tortured Celebrimbor's family in front of him, cruelly killing them before finally bludgeoning Celebrimbror to death with his own mithril hammer. Then to add fuel to the fire, Sauron impaled Celebrimbor's body on a pike and used it as a banner for one of his armies.

The grim tone of Against The Dark Master and nature of gritty injuries - from MERP and Against The Darkmaster's Critical Injury tables - don't seem entirely out of place, given the situations Tolkien describes in the earlier eras of Middle Earth.

(Some of those old Critical Injury tables had a wry humour to them that were definately not in Tolkien's writings however, such as the ones that had entries like 'Try A Spatula', for instance, heh heh)
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First time I played MERP in highschool my party was fighting 3 orcs in a partially ruined tower with a spiral staircase running up the inside exterior wall with landings with doors at each level. I tried doing the cool musketeer thing kept from an upper landing swinging on a loose rope to plow onto an orc on a lower one. Missed the orc and dumped my landing. Crit Table said "Pulled groin -70 to activity, opponent stunned 2 rounds laughing. " I loved them crit tables.
 
That's a fair call.
Our games weren't rollicking, if you know what I mean.
Probably why I prefered to GM the BRP games, and left the ICE games for my mate to GM.
But I still have good memories of them, and we all loved those Crit Tables, heh heh
 
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As a lifelong Tolkien and MERP fan, I've never seen the problem with the system for the setting. My favorite MERP campaign was slow paced and sporadic but a lot of fun. We all made ourselves, giving ourselves ranks only in what we agreed we had actual practice in, and transported ourselves to the Brandywine carrying only the things we actually owned and could carry: which included replica weapons and SCA armor so we were kitted out for combat, and thankfully someone had multiple ALICE packs and another had Tolkien dictionaries, otherwise things would have been difficult indeed.

From there it was just a collaborative jaunt across the ICE maps, in any way that seemed interesting, using all the travel & weather rules from MERP and GM Law, and since there wasn't a traditional GM role we used Hard Knocks activity tables and liberal use of other games' encounter charts to figure out what happened during encounters, when necessary.

Definitely in the "fun but rarely rollicking" category, to be sure, though it did generate a higher than usual dosage of good stories.
 
Moonglum said:
99% of my (substantial) use of the MERP supplements has been using other game systems. I had a 2-3 year crush on RM/MERP, but found it tiresome in real play.
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Yup, it's always been a rather top heavy system for the GM. More so if your players can't be bothered to understand how their characters work and the basic mechanics. I ran into this with a group even though we played it for around 10 months. It was a total PITA in the long run to run for me as a GM. At the end of the 10 or so months I stated that RM would be awesome if it was run via computer software. A few years later someone did indeed use a version of it for an online MUD which I played for many a year.

MERP was much easier to run as an aside. Unfortunately in the 1980s I suffered from " Tolkien Perfection Syndrome". I just always worried about getting it wrong. lol. I got over TPS though. And yeah I hear TPS in this guys voice...

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EmperorNorton said:
They are super pushing the generic Cypher system more so than Numenera.

Which is funny to me as a person who likes the system specifically for how it fits Numenera, but thinks it makes a terrible generic system.

Also, holy crap so much of the recent advertising is just the most cringe-ass memes about how easy the system is or whatever.
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Cypher System was the one that occurred to me - the (revamped) rulebook was released Sept 2019 according to drivethru, so maybe just fits the thread...

But then I see there is a Bestiary in the top 10 on drivethru as I write, so maybe not so dead after all.

Never seems to get much discussion anywhere I hang out though.
 
Acmegamer said:
Yup, it's always been a rather top heavy system for the GM. More so if your players can't be bothered to understand how their characters work and the basic mechanics. I ran into this with a group even though we played it for around 10 months. It was a total PITA in the long run to run for me as a GM. At the end of the 10 or so months I stated that RM would be awesome if it was run via computer software. A few years later someone did indeed use a version of it for an online MUD which I played for many a year.

MERP was much easier to run as an aside. Unfortunately in the 1980s I suffered from " Tolkien Perfection Syndrome". I just always worried about getting it wrong. lol. I got over TPS though. And yeah I hear TPS in this guys voice...

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All this is pretty key. As with most-but-not-all 80s games, everyone present needs more investment than "What do I roll?" otherwise it won't really work. And, also like most-but-not-all 80s games, everyone has to be on board with it being a game with a setting, not a game of a setting. You can have all the fun of exploring your favorite aspects of ME, so long as you understand that it's a game first, and the game is not going to look much like reading LOTR.
 
hawkeyefan said:
That’s largely what happened with my group. It wasn’t Apocalypse World specifically, but Pbta and FitD games that got us off of 5e (mostly).

The impact that Apocalypse World has had on the hobby is pretty hard to argue against.
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Yeah, I think these days AW isn't seeing much play, but PbTa games are. (Blades still gets a fair bit of attention from what I can tell).

For better or worse, I think AW has has a very similar effect on the narrative end of the indie scene that you saw d20 having on trad games in the early 00s.
 
Triumvir said:
I remember a big splash around Wil Wheaton's Ashes of Valkana setting for Fantasy AGE. But I think it only got 1 book plus a 10-page short adventure in the end.

Maybe a bit early for the OP's question, and anyway a setting not a game, but it was a noticeable fizzle.
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Def Fantasy AGE's biggest push outside of Dragon Age. I think it fits in the overarching idea, though obv not recent by some standards. I consider "recent' relative. For me, 2012 is fairily recent.
 
It seems to me most Kickstarters go this way by default. I could easily be wrong about that, since I live mostly under a rock, but hovering around boards and Youtube, I feel like there's always lots of hype for every Kickstarter under the sun—I mean, "Funded in 8 microseconds!!" doesn't even sound impressive these days—and then as soon as it closes, total silence. Maybe a couple of reviews down the road once it ships, but for the most part nobody seems to remember or mention it having ever happened at all. Unless of course the project gets delayed, then it's all hands on deck for years to rip it apart.
 
Starbeard said:
It seems to me most Kickstarters go this way by default. I could easily be wrong about that, since I live mostly under a rock, but hovering around boards and Youtube, I feel like there's always lots of hype for every Kickstarter under the sun—I mean, "Funded in 8 microseconds!!" doesn't even sound impressive these days—and then as soon as it closes, total silence. Maybe a couple of reviews down the road once it ships, but for the most part nobody seems to remember or mention it having ever happened at all. Unless of course the project gets delayed, then it's all hands on deck for years to rip it apart.
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As a fraction, sure. For every KS that gets traction there are probably 10 that quickly fade away, maybe even 50-1 if you added up every KS, not just the ones that generate some hype when announced.

However there are plenty of KS that don't fall into this pattern, Free League has used KS for most of their big releases, SJGs The Fantasy Trip, Old School Essentials, Dungeon Crawl Classics and Shadow Dark are currently pretty popular following their KS intro.
 
SJB said:
I think I’m right in saying that backers get a D&D 5e version with the Kickstarter.
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No, there was the option of either the TOR2e or the 5e version.
 
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Toadmaster said:
As a fraction, sure. For every KS that gets traction there are probably 10 that quickly fade away, maybe even 50-1 if you added up every KS, not just the ones that generate some hype when announced.

However there are plenty of KS that don't fall into this pattern, Free League has used KS for most of their big releases, SJGs The Fantasy Trip, Old School Essentials, Dungeon Crawl Classics and Shadow Dark are currently pretty popular following their KS intro.
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Wait, TFT is currently pretty popular? That was one of the ones I was thinking of as being pretty much disappearing from all talk after the first round of unboxing reviews. I suppose I really do live under a rock.
 
Starbeard said:
Wait, TFT is currently pretty popular? That was one of the ones I was thinking of as being pretty much disappearing from all talk after the first round of unboxing reviews. I suppose I really do live under a rock.
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Define popular. It gets more support than many but I don't see it getting played a ton.
 
Bunch said:
Define popular. It gets more support than many but I don't see it getting played a ton.
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That is a good point but I would submit if people are buying supplements for it that is enough to consider it popular as a RPG. Heck how often do we read posts on forums, I especially see it on Big Purple, where people say they only read RPGs now and don't play.
 
Hmm. I'd say some significant portion of the industry is based on sales primarily for reading rather than play. Christ, I own hundreds and hundred of RPGs that I have only actually played a fraction of, and played for some time a fraction of that. I probably mean to play more of them than I do, but deep down I think I know how that really works.
 
Fenris-77 said:
Hmm. I'd say some significant portion of the industry is based on sales primarily for reading rather than play. Christ, I own hundreds and hundred of RPGs that I have only actually played a fraction of, and played for some time a fraction of that. I probably mean to play more of them than I do, but deep down I think I know how that really works.
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I own quite a few that I’m completely certain none of my friends will ever want to play.
 
Starbeard said:
Wait, TFT is currently pretty popular? That was one of the ones I was thinking of as being pretty much disappearing from all talk after the first round of unboxing reviews. I suppose I really do live under a rock.
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It is being played and it has supported multiple KSs.

I guess popular needs to be defined. 5E or Pathfinder popular? No, but there are enough people on this site using it that it pops up in discussion regularly. On the SJG's own forums I expect it generates discussion.

It could very well be invisible on other forums, but I wouldn't know since I'm not on those.
 
AsenRG said:
Yeah, my personal pet theory is that the Silmarillion were the parts that JRR Tolkien didn't want to publish due to prudishness, but felt they complete the resemblance to the sagas, so he wrote them as part of his own Middle Earth:tongue:.

Basically, that means that LotR is "Middle Earth Sagas for Catholics", Silmarillion is "Middle Earth Sagas for people not worried about sex and violence", and the Hobbit is "Middle Earth Sagas for putting kids to sleep":shade:.

Luckily, his son didn't share his father's prudishness (or at least not to such an extent::honkhonk:).

Yes, but it's still Middle Earth material. And it means you can pick which one to follow, tonally.

MERP would fit right in with the Silmarillion (and to a lesser extent, with the Hobbit), is my point. It's not a great fit for LotR, true:thumbsup:.
After all, the system that uses MERP is titled "Middle Earth Roleplaying", not "The One Ring RPG". That one also exists, as we all know, but it doesn't use Rolemaster.
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I suspect Tolkien's prudishness is less to do with his Catholicism imo and more to do with his uber-Englishness.

Modern Catholic writers, the French, South American and Spanish in particular, tended to have a fair bit of sex and violence in their writing. Graham Greene comes to mind here among the English Catholic writers. As does the hilarious ending of the Every Sperm is Sacred skit in The Meaning of Life.

 
Toadmaster said:
It is being played and it has supported multiple KSs.

I guess popular needs to be defined. 5E or Pathfinder popular? No, but there are enough people on this site using it that it pops up in discussion regularly. On the SJG's own forums I expect it generates discussion.

It could very well be invisible on other forums, but I wouldn't know since I'm not on those.
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That's the kicker, isn't it. A solid portion of RPG companies have always survived on hardcore customers, and communities for those games have always sunk into niche corners of the web, but with today's plethora of social media options it seems especially true now. A game might have an incredibly active life and you'd never know it unless you stumbled onto their platform.
 
Was thinking about this. I was the only one of my gaming group who bought outside of the top 5 at the time (D&D, CoC, Runequest, MERP, Traveller). And it was hard to get people to consider Bushido, Jorune, Golden Heroes, Delta Force.

Thinking about now: we have a regular friday night group and I'm the one with the whackjob suggestions and homebrews
 
lategamer said:
Was thinking about this. I was the only one of my gaming group who bought outside of the top 5 at the time (D&D, CoC, Runequest, MERP, Traveller). And it was hard to get people to consider Bushido, Jorune, Golden Heroes, Delta Force.

Thinking about now: we have a regular friday night group and I'm the one with the whackjob suggestions and homebrews
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Very much a thing I've experienced myself. I've run across people who play a game, one game and that is it. I played with people "back in the day" who played AD&D and even OD&D, or B/X was too foreign, and a no go for them.

Most of my friends in high school were more like me being game promiscuous. We had our favorites that we would circle back to, but we tried anything we could get our hands on. I'm still that way. Even games I'm not that interested in playing may be interesting just to see how they approach something.
 
Toadmaster said:
Very much a thing I've experienced myself. I've run across people who play a game, one game and that is it. I played with people "back in the day" who played AD&D and even OD&D, or B/X was too foreign, and a no go for them.

Most of my friends in high school were more like me being game promiscuous. We had our favorites that we would circle back to, but we tried anything we could get our hands on. I'm still that way. Even games I'm not that interested in playing may be interesting just to see how they approach something.
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That was my experience as well. In high school and at the local game shop(s) I hung out in during 1978-1982, we were into trying new games. We'd circle back to our ongoing campaigns but were definitely game promiscuous. (Love that term btw lol)

Once I joined the military and was stationed in other areas of the USA and Europe I had more trouble and would have to first gain a foothold and prove myself to the local group by running AD&D 1st Edition usually. (which usually caused wait lists into my on going game)

Once I'd done that, I'd start bringing up other games, first by getting them to play board games/war games like Star Fleet Battles, Car Wars, Battletech etc. After that they'd get curious about the other ttrpgs on my bookshelves. (hooked and then I reel em in, bait and switch. Trojan Horse baby!)
 
Spire and Heart were two games that had mostly fallen under the radar, but Quinns Quest's review of the latter has brought them to attention again. I've seen it show up in a handful of recommendation threads over the past couple of weeks.

And Fallout, of course. So many D&D players sound surprised that there is an official Fallout rulebook from Modiphius. It seems the show has lifted all post-apocalyptic boats, though.
 
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