To be clear: I only provided the above example as a demonstration of how ICE could have revised in a manner that updated the rules a bit while not playing right into the hands of the 30+ years of bias from gamers that endlessly refer to RM as chartmaster etc.

Agreed - no system is perfect. RM & HARP have their strengths, just like D&D does, and Novus. I quite enjoyed RMSS actually as I found it at a time in life where I really wanted to go all in with characters and stories so the skill category system was appealing...at the time. I think a fully developed HARP/MERP hybrid (which I have poked at for my own purposes) would have been close to the ideal system (IMO) as it would been immediately more digestible than RMSS/RMFRP & ultimately RMU.

The problem with ICE is that they are, seemingly, not savvy to the fact that you have to actually have a product to sell. It's clearly being run by hobbyists, not people trying to make a living off of it, so there is this air of acceptability to the projects just dragging on forever.

It disappoints me to hear/see the direction RM is being take in. Most of my really great early gaming memories are from RM2, then later RMSS.

I play with some newer players pretty regularly and they are absolutely shocked when I introduce them to RM or HARP and follow it up with something along the lines of "don't even bother going to the website" because it will only aggravate you. Which I think is fair after many many many years of revision for a game that was never broken - just misrepresented.

A truncated RM version could have been produced in a matter of months using bits and pieces of existing versions - my preference:
-the armor & Spell Casting/Lists from MERP (up to level 10 fully populated like in MERP)
-the Base Hit Points/Power Points, spell aquisition & stat averaging from RMX
-Critical Charts from MERP/RMX
-the background options, Primary Skills & professional level bonuses from RM2/RMC
-5 professions - fighter, thief, ranger, mentalist, mage
-5 races - the core 4 plus either a half elf or half orc or high man
-6 cultures  (rural, 2x urban, sylvan, nomad, hillock
This is all basically cut/paste

The only thing I might have done "differently" is use 1 melee attack chart & 1 missile attack chart - plus the directed spell chart - and have them with the damage caps built in like RMFRP did (I think)  and relied on OB mods based on AT on the character sheet to create a little more separation....

I also would have rebalanced the SM & MM tables to actually be based on TN100 or used the HARP table because it is very diverse in what it lets you do.

This could have been to market quickly and been compatible with almost all, if  not all, existing material. I would have spent resources on making the books beautiful and developing adventures and actual intellectual property. A system is incredibly hard to protect from piracy (I'm looking at Against the Dark Master).

So, almost like a conversion doc =

Hit Points = Hit Points

DEF (Defense) = The number that an attack must equal or exceed to land a blow in combat

AR (Armor Rating) = The number that is subtracted from the total Damage, etc.

Excellent - I'll move it tonight or tomorrow.

If I may recommend, I have always liked the idea of a section for players & GMs and a section for GMs. As an expansion on that - I think an Anwyn players guide derived from a portion of this available for pay what you want would be a cool idea too.

Found a short adventure i built many months back so I figured I'd upload it. Could easily be used for 2.0 as well as all I used is TNs in it.

Revisiting this because it is going to become relevant to my current Novus game. I think you're right Fidoric. Use the same TN system as the time scale per person to collect resources. This would include covering ground to scavenge or locate resources. I think a Craft skill roll would be most appropriate?  Also, so I don't forget, Boon points can reduce the time or increase the yield of the roll too.

Anwyn. I think modern players are more attracted to the setting than the system and it's a good opportunity to use the setting to flog the system