MERP review

Source: Swan, Rick. The Complete Guide to Role-Playing Games. (St. Martin's Press, 1990).

Middle Earth Role Playing **1/2 (out of 4)
Complexity: Medium/High
Iron Crown Enterprises, 1984

	Virtually every fantasy RPG owes a debt of gratitude to _Lord of the Rings_: what could be more natural than a game based entirely on J. R. R. Tolkien's classic books? Middle Earth Role Playing attempts just that, and if it's not entirely successful, blame it on the difficulty of duplicating the charm of the novels in a set of role-playing rules.
	The game mechanics basically streamline those in Iron Crown's Rolemaster game. Where Rolemaster is awkward and chart-heavy, MERP is smooth and ... well, it's still chart-heavy, but not excessively so. Players roll up Strength, Agility, Constitution, and the rest of the usual attributes, then choose racial types from a selection that includes dwarves, elves, half-elves, and hobbits. PCs choose from a variety of skills, such as Riding, Public Speaking, and Disarming Traps, and each has a specific profession, such as Scout, Ranger or Mage. Nearly every profession has access to spells, which are cast by expending Power Points. When a PC has spent his Power Points, he's finished casting spells for the day, but he recovers them again after eight hours of rest. The game drags a bit during combat encounters, since combat resolution involves quite a few modifications and a fair amount of table checking, but it's nothing an experienced referee can't handle.
	MERP is more likely to find favor with casual Tolkien fans than Middle Earth fanatics, because even though it's a pretty good fantasy game, it doesn't measure up to the novels. Combat plays a much larger role in the game than it does in the books, and where magic was a phenomenal even in _Lord of the Rings_, it's commonplace here. More troubling, the Middle Earth of the game isn't all that different from any other fantasy setting based on medieval Europe. Designer S. Coleman Charlton did a commendable job overall, but I suspect that it's impossible to capture the essence of Tolkien in an RPG.
	_Buyer's Notes:_ Trade paperback. There's also a boxed version that includes all of the rules from the paperback, along with an introductory adventure and other supplementary materials. Players on a budget can get by with the paperback.
	_Suggested Supplements:_ Nearly all of the MERP supplements are first-rate products, well presented and crisply written. As each focuses on a specific aspect of the Middle Earth mythos, they're closer in spirit to the source material than the game itself and are recommended to Tolkien fans as well as gamers. The best: _Mirkwood, Moria, Lorien_, and _Isengard_.