Does anyone remember MERP?

[Rumil]

Ah, MERP, I've still got it somewhere. The things I particularly remember were the really pretty maps (which can be downloaded somewhere on t'internet), the inevitability of serious left leg wounds (and subsequent short life expectancy of the victim) and the parachuting hippo.

It was always fairly hairy for a low level party, especially if you ran any of the MERP-produced adventures which specialised in lots of really tricky traps. At higher level things generally went more smoothly.

They were forced to make a lot of stuff up to produce a playable D+D style adventure game and if I remember, weren't authorised to use info from some of the books due to a copyright issue. They also invented lots of strange things in the East and South of Middle Earth, such as evil elves etc, but you could happily ignore all that.

Has anyone played the recently-released Middle Earth RPG? (Don't know the name but I've seen the box in passing)