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There is, to my knowledge, three English-language editions of this game. The first was published in 1984 (note the copyright to Tolkien Enterprises), was 104pp and featured cover by Chris White. A second edition, at least according to the insider cover page, was published in 1986 and now featured improved layout (including an index!) and artwork by Angus McBride. It now was expanded to 128pp and was bound rather than saddle-stapled. A third edition, confusingly with "Second Edition" emblazoned on Angus McBride's different cover, was released in 1993 and weight in at a whopping 268pp. There was also a 1985 first edition published under license by Games Workshop and several foreign language editions; I was particularly impressed by the cover art by Chris Archielleos on the GW edition featuring the Witch-King leading a horde out of Mordor.
Despite these various editions the game remained pretty much the same. The massive increase in the 1993 edition was nearly entirely expanded background material and character templates, with the exceptions of optional 'Corruption Points' invoked during spell failure for impure reasons and an expanded secondary skills list. For purposes of this review I'll be primarily referring to the second edition (1986).
Characters and Character Creation
The book starts with a pretty standard introduction to "What is roleplaying", "What is Middle-Earth", a sample narration (which includes, perhaps as warning, a levitating Elf), and a glossary of MERP terms. Straight into character creation is the game's caveat that it is only designed for character's level 1 to 10 after which you are supposed to graduate to Rolemaster. Characteristics are range from 1 to 100 for Strength, Agility, Constitution, Presence, and Intuition with stat bonuses (the important part) derived from both this raw roll (which represents distribution within your social group) and modified by race and with background based on culture. Some twenty-seven race/culture combinations are available derived primarily from western Middle-Earth. Abbreviated descriptions of skills are also provided, along with an explanation of skill rank bonuses (-25 for 0 ranks, +5 for rank 1, then an additional +5 for ranks 2-10, +2 for ranks 11-20 and +1 for ranks above 20).
There was twenty-four primary skills plus spell lists and languages. Primary skills were broken up into categories; Movement & Maneuver, Weapon Skills, General Skills, Subterfuge Skills, Magic Skills and two "others", Perception and Body Development (1-10 concussion hits per rank). Spell list ranks gave the character a 20% chance of learning the list per level; language ranks were based on conversational ability graded from 1 to 5. The combined "weapon proficiency" skills were welcome (e.g., if you knew how to use a longsword, you also knew how to use a shortsword; both under "One Handed Edged"), whereas the Movement & Maneuver skills distinguished by armour type (none, soft leather, hard leather, chain, plate) was a little more unusual. There were also twenty-seven secondary skills, usually described in a sentence.
In addition to stats and skills, the game also provided six adventuring professions with extremely terse descriptions; Scouts, Warriors, Rangers, Bards, Mages and Animists, each of which came with a prime stat and bonuses per level for skill categories and restrictions on magic. For example, the Warrior had a prime stat of Strength, gained +3 per level on weapon skills, +2 per level on body development (concussion hit points) and +1 per level on general skills. If they bothered to learn magic, they would be restricted to the open list for one realm and can only cast 1st, 2nd and 3rd level spells.
Also character creation included Background Options, which were a variety of special benefits, items, money, bonus languages, stat increases, hobby ranks and so forth that the character started their career with. These vary significantly with Race/Culture with poor ol' Trolls receiving but 1 Background Point, and Hobbits receiving 5. Experience points are also described in this section with experience gained from combative actions, casting spells, engaging in maneuvers, ideas, and travel. The experience point table assumes 10,000 per level to 5th level then 20,000 thereafter. Progression could be quite slow - and dangerous. If in an evening's play a character is responsible for felling half a dozen opponents of equal ability to themselves after travelling fifty miles through dangerous territory and contributing many of the ideas for the group they could expect perhaps 2000 ep.
After explaining the mechanics of character design and experience it is not until the third chapter than one actual gets an example of character creation. As mentioned stat bonuses are derived from raw stats, a variation from -25 to +25 with a normal score between 1 and 100, along with the number of Power Points for magic per level (0 to 3). Despite this range, only rolls of greater than 20 are counted in character generation and one of those can be replaced by a 90 for the character's primary stat. In addition to this is the racial stat bonus, for example Hobbits get -20 to Strength, but +15 to Agility.
Skills a coupled with stats, so the total bonus for a skill equates to the rank bonus, plus the total stat bonus, plus any special or item bonuses. A character may have six ranks in the Directed Spells skill (+30), an Agility bonus (+10), giving a total bonus of +40. Each character starts with skills ranks from their adolescence, determined by a table, plus skills learned for their first level apprenticeship which allows a distribution (and limited transfer) between skill categories. Thus a Warrior gets three ranks in Movement & Maneuver, 5 in Weapon Skills, 2 in General, 2 in Subterfuge, and 3 in Body Development. I recollect with some fondness a first level Dwarf I rolled up who had maximum Constitution (+25), racial bonus (+15), gained the "Resistant to Pain" +3 per die background option, gained 3 ranks in Body Development in Adolescence, 3 ranks in his Apprenticeship and thus started the game with over 100 hit points!
Finally, before the character sets off there is an encumbrance chart which effects penalties for Movement & Maneuver skills; the penalty is based on cross-referencing the character's weight by the weight carried and is reduced by the character's Strength bonus.
Character Activity
Four chapters are dedicated to character activity and they start somewhat strangely with The World System, which is basically GMs advice on how to populate the environment and adventure sites, including some notes on plot (hey, ICE were pretty advanced in those days) and the supposedly subtle and secret use of magic. These notes follow with casting time requirements for magic and sample magic items and a pricing chart. In addition there is some comment on religion and worship in Middle Earth, injuries and healing, and a weather chart.
The chapter on strategic action is extremely brief; a mere three pages. It pretty much explains movement rates and the prospects of encounters. In contrast eight pages are spent on tactical activity, which of course translates as combat. Combat is fought in ten-second rounds, sequenced by (a) spell preparation or casting (b) missile preparation or firing/throwing (c) movement maneuvers (d) melee attacks and parrying (e) movement and (f) static actions. There are rules for opportunity action and cancelling action as well.
The basic attack procedure is, in order of Movement & Maneuver bonus, roll d100 ("open-ended", if 96 or more, roll again and sum), add bonuses, subtract the opponent's agility-derived defensive bonus (DB), parrying value and cross-reference the result according to the total and the armour worn. Parrying value is determined by how much the character is prepared to subtract from their own attack bonus. The combat tables will either determine a fumble (roll d100 on the fumble table), a miss (0), hits (x points) or hits and a critical (x points plus A - E). Criticals are rolled on a single chart and modified by the severity. Like Rolemaster's critical charts they are graphic and extremely deadly, although unlike that game there is far less variation which reduces some of the excitement. The charts also suffer from some of the wonkiness evident in the parent game with 'No Armour' being superior in a number of cases to 'Soft Leather'.
Twelve pages are dedicated to various spell lists which are distinguished as "Essence" magic (for Mages and Bards) and "Channelling" magic (for Animists and Rangers) along with "Open Lists" for the same. Each list is a general group of similar spells, for example "Fire Law", "Path Mastery", "Spell Defense" etc. There are forty spells lists in total each limited to 10th level as per the game's scope. Whilst the spell system and range is more than acceptable and plays out well, it is completely at odds with the suggestions of the subtle expressions found in Tolkien's own works. In this case the system is fair, but the workmanship is poor; the magic system is well-suited for environment's like ICE's Shadow World, but not for Middle Earth.
Basic spells are resolved by a simple d100 roll, modified by the target's armour type, range, time of preparation etc which creates a value for the resistance roll table which effectively gives a 50/50 chance for a spell to succeed if the caster's level is equal to the attacker's level. Could this have been rolled into a single chart? Yes, of course. Directed spells (such as fireballs, lightning bolts and the like) have their own attack tables are are treated much more like missile weapons with the target's DB playing a more important role.
Supplementary Material
There are three chapters of supplementary material; the first consists of a number of essential charts and tables, including combat charts (weapons, spells, criticals, resistance rolls), static action table, movement & maneuver table, equipment, standard characters by profession and level 1 through to 10, herbs and poisons, treasure, creature statistics and the obligatory character record sheet. Normal creatures are not to be taken lightly in MERP; this is a game where a housecat can potentially disembowl a person with a swipe of its paw, and wolves are positively terrifying!
The second chapter of supplementary material is the race/culture and creature descriptions. The races and cultures take up fifteen pages and, often in reduced font, provide a fairly comprehensive description of the cultural and physical characteristics of humans, elves, dwarves, hobbits, orcs and trolls. Likewise a good job is done with the creature descriptions as well, with some attention paid to the more important beasts (and only a few lines for those oddities that appear in Hobbit fairy-tales).
Finally there is a sample adventure environment which consists of an a reasonably described inn on the outskirts of civilisation, a ruined castle, and the home of some hill trolls. The castle is a little weird; although there are orcs who have made their home there (of course) the lower levels are packed full of creepy-crawlies (with no apparent food source) and some pretty impressive treasures. In comparison the hill-troll lair consists of trolls and stuff they've accumulated. As a whole, there's not really much to it.
In Retrospect
There are some impressive elements to MERP; the fact they managed to pack an entire game within 128 pages is commendable, and the attention to races/cultures is probably a high point. There is nothing terribly wrong with the game system as such, it's perhaps a little crunchy, it can be quite buggy at places, but is fundamentally fairly sound.
The scope however is quite limited however which is somewhat surprising as it wouldn't required much really to open it up from the self-imposed limit of 10th level which, as ICE's own modules acknowledge, is the upper range of a mid-level character. Some greater variation in the critical charts would have been of significant benefit to the game as well.
The organisation of the text could certainly be improved, but apart from that the product makes no major errors on stylistics and indeed, does have some moments of fairly good art.
Overall, MERP is a just-above-average game and that's even considering contemporary criteria. Indeed, it's about as average as one could get. What is particularly notable however is that it included many elements that were superior to Rolemaster, which was supposed to be its more advanced elder brother.
Style: 1 + .4 (layout) + .6 (art) + .6 (coolness) + .5 (readability) + .5 (product) = 3.6
Substance: 1 + .4 (content) + .7 (text) + .7 (fun) + .4 (workmanship) + .4 (system) = 3.6
