The Culture: What Is The Implied Setting Of That Game?

A while back I took a look at AD&D1e's three core rulebooks, read the rules and so on, and deduced what the world implied by those that core ruleset is.

I think it is time to do this for another product. First to see if it is a full and complete game, and second to see what the setting implied by its core rules is, so (again) I am excluding products sold with explicit settings (that filters out Palladium Fantasy, Legend of the Five Rings, etc.) and adaptations from outside the hobby (so no, not looking at Pendragon (et. al.), Star Wars, Conan, Call of Cthulhu, etc. either).

I'm also going to look at something that's not been talked about much, but deserves the attention nonetheless, as it will also be used to compare to the licensed game that got made out of it shortly thereafter.

The game:

Iron Crown tried very hard to make a fantasy adventure game that was sufficiently familiar to AD&D1e users that they could transfer over with little difficulty, but different enough to not only avoid being sued, but that the experience of play itself would be different and thus interesting for those dissatisfied or seeking a palette-cleanser.

Which means that, of course, the licensed game is obvious if you know ICE's history.

Why the second edition? Because that edition fixed oversights that the first missed, starting with some rather obvious ones of "Why not throw around those lightning bolts?"

Why juxtapose them? Because, believe it or not, you could--and it is heavily implied, were--meant to use the former as the full system for playing the latter; what was there was meant to used partially as training wheels and partially as component replacements.

The result? A clear intent that the experience of play in the former would not be the same as the latter, despite using 99% of the same rules, mechanics, and procedures of play. As this is not Palladium Books, that could be the case. I am curious to see if this bears out or, like Palladium, it does not.

Don't expect anything imminent; got to track down materials and spend time doing hardcore academic reading and research. Findings will go up at the Clubhouse, as Rolemaster and especially MERP are obvious cornerstones to build a Clubhouse upon.

As for the question I use as the title for this post, I may use it for later posts where I do attempt to answer it for certain unspecified products.