Post Halcyon

I am old enough to warrant a two-part introduction! A dubious honor...

I fell out of gaming for many years. I'd keep reading, but playing just never happened. Then a friend introduced me to the Magic card game, and I liked it and played it, and it pushed some of the same buttons, but it is no RPG.

Skipping ahead many years of the real world: D&D 3e was released. I went to the local game shop and played a few times. I liked Monte Cook's work in Rolemaster, and was curious to see what his input would produce. Not bad, in my opinion, but not for me. The other players were min-maxing,
arguing that their particular combination of feats allowed them to run roughshod over the DM's rulings and it looked like the books backed them up. It turned me off, and I retreated again to the real world.

A couple of years ago I decided I was going to run a Rolemaster campaign with a couple of friends. It was to be the first game I had tried to run in ~15 years,

We had three sessions. We drowned in rules and gave up.

Now, reading the fantastic blogs that proliferate, I have realized that rules-lite is my play style. I'll use Rolemaster materials for development, ideas, building, etc (still want to graft the crit tables in somehow...) - but keeping table/book bloat to a minimum is important to me.

This said, I've been inspired by all these Grogs and Gamethinkers to start running again. It's ending up a variant on Tunnels and Trolls. Have two players (who are stil friends with me after the Rolemaster debacle - what loyalty!) and we're hacking the details as the need arises. I'll start posting the details as they develop.