If anyone wants the old MERP modules you can find them here

http://merp1.free.fr

And here

http://merp2.free.fr

We played Rolemaster for nearly a decade and a half, I think, before we switched to D&D 3.XX which did what we'd bashed RM into but out the box, and a lot more simply... That said, my RM campaign world is s till going strong, now for another group in another era - this time about five hundred years prior to the first time it was run, and a thousand years before the furthest advanced period I ran I use it to dip in and out of "history" depending what I feel like - so it's been "classic" Medieval high fantasy, a bit of Arabian Knights (sic), some pseudo-Fall of Rome, Pirates (yaaaar!) and some "Monkey Magic meets Zero and Apaches"

If you & Peter keep on I'll have to ask for the 5e starter set for Xmas to plunder

Quote from: toxicpixie on 04 October 2016, 12:23:09 PM
If you & Peter keep on I'll have to ask for the 5e starter set for Xmas to plunder

You could do far worse - you know like the usual stuff from last year: socks (dull but practical); a garden rake (interesting wrapping challenge though so credit for that), alcohol free whiskey (that one really sucked!) and an handy vacuum for the car (so basically an extra Sunday chore then).

It's small wonder I have to buy mystery Santa gifts for myself 

I'm horrified to realise how many different game systems I've GM'd or played.

In roughly chronological order and allowing for the vagaries of memory - Empire of the Petal Throne, D&D, Dragonquest, Tunnels and Trolls, Powers & Perils, Heroquest, GURPS, Paranoia, Amber Diceless, Everway, Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, Star Wars, MERP, Rolemaster, Harnmaster, Firefly

I've probably forgotten several!

Had several superb GURPS adventures at Sixth Form, never too powerful, always a challenge, with great players.

Quote from: Zippee on 04 October 2016, 04:49:29 PM
You could do far worse - you know like the usual stuff from last year: socks (dull but practical); a garden rake (interesting wrapping challenge though so credit for that), alcohol free whiskey (that one really sucked!) and an handy vacuum for the car (so basically an extra Sunday chore then).

It's small wonder I have to buy mystery Santa gifts for myself 

Wow, that's great stuff! For Fathers Day Ms. Pixie got me a car clean, as she was fed up of the mess in my motor. Which I then had to pay for as she had no money when he arrived!

For Xmas we have a Snowman after dinner who brings presents. The traditional one has a hole in his bum they come out of, the one I made for us delivers them via c-section - who says Xmas isn't fun?! Last year he got me some Austrian Napoleonic generals and grenzer. He knows me well

Quote from: Ithoriel on 04 October 2016, 05:20:18 PM
I'm horrified to realise how many different game systems I've GM'd or played.

In roughly chronological order and allowing for the vagaries of memory - Empire of the Petal Throne, D&D, Dragonquest, Tunnels and Trolls, Powers & Perils, Heroquest, GURPS, Paranoia, Amber Diceless, Everway, Cyberpunk, Shadowrun, Star Wars, MERP, Rolemaster, Harnmaster, Firefly

I've probably forgotten several!

My running & playing of games dropped off rather post house buying and then toddler wrangling, but yeah. It's a very silly list...

I always wanted to try GURPS, but no one I gamed with ever ran or even owned it (though I do have several interesting supplements, mainly Car Wars and alt-earth ones).

Quote from: toxicpixie on 05 October 2016, 08:24:29 AM
I always wanted to try GURPS, but no one I gamed with ever ran or even owned it.

Yes, oddly it's the one I've never played. A great friend, always spoke highly of it and wanted to play it - so I have a copy, sadly he never volunteered to run a game, so it has languished on the shelf ever since.

These days we just seem to rotate through D&D and Cthulhu - now with added SW.

There's a chap at the club runs it, but sadly the games he runs haven't appealed. Doubly so as it usually crosses with me running D&D At the club it's d20 D&D and d20 Star Wars, with a dash of Golden Heroes thrown in. I fancy running a bit of Traveller (old school Cepheus Engine, basically "LBB 1-3 with a couple of extra bits") next though, so I might put D&D on hiatus post current campaign arc.

And toy soldiers when I can actually inveigle people into it

Ooh! Traveller! Said I'd probably forgotten some!

I preferred HeroQuest (the rpg not the boardgame) to GURPS though there are lots of similarities.

I always wanted to play the post-RuneQuest, HeroQuest stuff, always sounded really good. That's another I missed, but it's a maybe in a year or so unless we go with 13th Age for Gloranthan ramblings.

I can recommend The One Ring, as well - really neat system for Tolkein, simple and really, really atmospheric. Get the second edition though, the first has "shotgun editing" and is virtually impossible to piece together!

Tried a new RPG last night at the club, 'One for All, System Diabolique'  sort of Musketeers with the possibility of unnatural things.

The character generation is quite complex and like nothing I've ever played but the overall feel was for a very enjoyable swashbuckling evening's gaming. 

What was most amusing was the mission and its reward...

King "Ah my Brave Musketeers, go to the border of the Spanish Netherlands [with whom France is currently at war] and meet my agent who is brining me a most valuable treasure."

Musketeers "Yes Sire!!!"

So one very long ride later we ended up in an enjoyable skirmish which resulted in eight dead Spaniards (hooray), one crippled courier (boo), the loss of a very valuable horse (oops) one wounded Musketeer recruit (ouch) and the box of treasure.

Returning to the Palace we tripped over a couple of future plot lines and avoided the Cardinal's Guards to deliver the box to the King

King: 'Well done my Brave Musketeers, only men as brave as you could have managed such a heroic task!  Now let us look on what you have brought me...'

King opens the box in front of whole court to display..... Eight tulip bulbs!

King, "Marvelous, Priceless, a treasure worth more than their weight in gold!  And for your reward my bold Musketeers, you shall be the guests of honour at this evenings masked ball!"

Needless to say we'd created our characters with an eye to adventuring and heroic swashbuckling, not leading some sort of seventeenth century square dance.... to say it didn't go well would be an understatement, my attempt was particularly poor.

Overall though the rules and background were excellent with a good heroic feel to the weapons and fencing and we'll definitely be going back for more.  Now all I've got to do is decide if it's worth investing some hard earned experience in dancing lessons and if I can possibly start the revolution 150 years early!

Sounds cracking, Dan!

Always like a bit of swashbuckling musketeering

Although reviews for AFO suggest character creation should be quick?!

Sounds like a great game.

Tulip bulbs were treasure!

When tulip bulbs cost the equivalent of several years worth of a craftsman's pay!

There WA a great d&d adventure in one old Dungeon issue - "The trouble with tulips". It was a corker, and the macgiffin was totally useless to the PCs - it was much the same reveal if memory serves

Awesome idea!

QuoteAlthough reviews for AFO suggest character creation should be quick

If you know what you're doing and what sort of character you want to create, then yes; if you're starting from scratch with just the PDF players guide it takes several tries and a few hours.

But then that's probably true for most systems.

Yes 5th ed is very good.  The Tyranny of Dragons campaign is well worth it and just for sheer content and options, i recommend Storm Kings Thunder.

I enjoyed the simplicity of the original books (two if I remember) that we played at school. It allowed our imginations ample room to creat stories etc. We moved onto the next edition fiarly quickly, but can't remember if it was any better or not. I think with all of these sorts of games, an awful lot depends upon the DM and the group you play with.

Never got into D&D but started off playing Empire of the Petal Throne in 1976 then moved on to Chivalry and Sorcery 1st Ed in 1978 and never looked back. While C&S was complex it suited our group down to the ground, and with extensive "house rules" we played on and off for some 20 years till about 2007 when various members moved on or stopped playing.

Pann, Cra and Glorfindel (very original name - yes he was an elf  ) were our three core characters for many years and they lived through many adventures, while eventually becoming quite high level.   

We discovered Harn in the mid 90's and like others here moved to that background world with new characters though we kept using C&S for all our game mechanics. Luke and Auric fought against the Order of the Copper Hook (IIRC) over several years and we put some serious dents in their evil plans 

Tim H, Erwin N, Rob C, Phil S and myself spent more than a few hours roleplaying in that time...we had a lot of fun, very few arguements and after one epic episode Glorfindel finally got what he wanted - a vorpal blade, the "ultimate" sword in C&S