According to gamer legend, back in 1974 Pete Fenlon was playing a new game with friends at the University of Virginia. I am told that in those days White Box came in a wood-grain box with a white sticker on the front describing the "Rules for Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns Playable with Paper and Pencil and Miniature Figures". Maybe taking his cue from the implied setting of the new rules, my understanding is that Mr. Fenlon ran a campaign set in his version of Tolkien's Middle Earth. Like many early gamers, Mr. Fenlon seemed to have a strong background with paper map wargames (he was an officer in the University Simulations Club according to Wikipedia) and having considerable talent as a map maker, he produced some very nice Middle Earth maps that stand up well to this day.
Being a bit younger, I was a mere high school student in 1974, I had no knowledge yet of White Box. I had discovered wargames, however. Having started my hobby with the boxed map wargames of the Avalon Hill Co. and Simulations Publications Incorporated (SPI) a few years earlier. I met several like-minded hobbyists thanks to the efforts of a local hobby shop owner who took pains to connect us (and thereby increase his sales, no doubt) and in addition to paper map wargames, we played historical wargames with miniature figures, WWII micro-armor, Mini-Figs Napoleonics and Panzerschiffe warships. It would not be until after I entered college that I would discover White Box.
Mr. Fenlon, together with some of his gaming friends at the University of Virginia, decided to form a company and publish some of the "house-rules" that had developed from their play sessions. In 1980 Pete Fenlon, S. Coleman Charlton, Kurt Fischer and maybe a few others, formed Iron Crown Enterprises, better known as I.C.E., and published Arms Law, the first of their alternative systems that could conceivably be used with games like White Box. It was at this point that I had my introduction to I.C.E. and Arms Law by a fellow college student and gamer who was from Maryland. He brought the new zip-lock packet of charts back to school with him and we gave it a try. I had some experience using an alternative combat system, Steve Jackson's Microgame Melee published by Metagaming. While Melee had seemed a simplification in many ways, Arms Law seemed rather more complicated than white box as I recall. Looking at the product today I am not sure why as it is fairly straightforward.
I.C.E. continued to release products including those Middle Earth maps that Mr. Fenlon drew which were published starting in 1982 when I.C.E. acquired a license to produce game materials with the Middle Earth label. The company also published Rolemaster that year which was a boxed system combining Arms Law, Claw Law, Spell Law and Character Law. A somewhat simplified version of the Rolemaster system was released with the Middle Earth label and called Middle Earth Role Playing or M.E.R.P. for short.
Having graduated from college, joining the "real world" (reluctantly, I might add) and looking for more "realism" in my role-playing, I recall giving both Rolemaster and M.E.R.P. a go. Of the two I prefer Rolemaster as it is a bit more detailed and complete in my view. Game system choice is a group endeavor if one is part of a regular gaming group and our group eventually settled on RuneQuest as our preferred more "realistic" system. I continued to lobby for White Box and throughout the years the group has agreed I could run my occasional White Box games. Compromise is an important aspect of group dynamics as well.
The Rolemaster system created by Pete Fenlon, S. Coleman Charlton and friends grew to be one of the major rule systems in the hobby, has arguably influenced later systems such as 3rd Edition, and remains relevant as I still draw upon my Rolemaster and M.E.R.P. materials to this day. Rolemaster, like many games, has gone through several editions and is still available in electronic form, although the original I.C.E. fell victim to bankruptcy about the time the Lord of the Rings film franchise took off. I.C.E. published a number of Companions and other supplements for Rolemaster during the peak years and the system acquired a reputation for complexity.
As with many games, my favorite version of Rolemaster is the 1st edition originally released in 1982 (pictured above). There are a number of reasons for this, nostalgia no doubt being one of them. The components, charts and booklets, in the original boxed set are high quality and not yet combined into single volumes as was done in later editions. Arms Law and Claw Law are on several separate charts, all printed on good quality parchment card stock. Spell Law consists of more such charts and three individual parchment spell books, one each for Channeling, Mentalism and Essence. Character Law is a more conventional staple bound book. The 1st edition system itself seems straight-forward and easy to understand. There is a lot of detail, supplying the illusion of "realism" many of us desired in the '80s, but it is mostly a logical and intuitive rules system with (to my knowledge) the first universal maneuver mechanic (a maneuver chart, of course). I have always found Rolemaster in this edition to be quite manageable. The proliferation of skills and subsystems would come later during the era of the Companions. Like many gamers, I bought the newer editions as they came out and in the spirit of White Box, I added what I liked to "my version", but really for me the later editions seem to lack some of the appeal of the original.
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