Following Brian’s suggestion I have taken the haunted house from The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh as the basis of my haunted house. We are going to play this on the 16th so it is time to finalise my prep.
You can see, but probably not read my hand writing, that I am doing my usual sprinkling of post-it notes.
I stand corrected on a previous news item.
Are these the Yinka/Y’kin?
Changramai Warrioress? Followers of Inis? Female Warrior Monks Kick Ass.
Iuraic has no words for empathy.
20 ranks in Rolemaster Herb Lore?
What are the Kulthean Dark Gods up to?
Now that’s an Essaence Storm!
Nature, nurture, skill bonus, stat bonus, talents, professions…the DEBATE is endless.
Shadow World Chegains are now the new Cool.
Real life cool treasure. Ancient craftsmanship. Here, here and here and last…here.
I have had an incredibly busy week, so much so that I missed blogging on Monday completely! What I should have been doing is working on the D&D 5th Edition conversion to a D100 system. I am doing this conversion very much with a Rolemaster hat on and it is interesting to see what D&D has that Rolemaster doesn’t and what it does very differently. One of those are the Demons and Devils.
“Rules for rules”. To me one of the biggest drivers of system complexity and bloat is “rules for rules” ie—new mechanisms to modify original rules or to make work-arounds to disliked rule restrictions.
Let’s use “Transcend Armor” as a perfect example. Why do we have “TA” as a skill? Because the addition of Paladins and other new professions in RM Companions required a mechanism for Channelers to cast spells. Why? Because the common trope of Paladins is that they are armored knights that cast clerical style spells. The solution? A new skill and a whole bunch of arbitrary new rules so Channelers (or Essence casters) could safely cast spells while wearing metal armor. Let’s ignore the fact that many fundamental rules that we don’t question are really just a result of acceptance to early D&D standards. Why is there a restriction on armor? Because in D&D magic users weren’t allowed to wear armor. Period.
As part of our efforts to create a viable “no profession” Rolemaster rule set we’ve focused on distilling skills down to as few as possible meta-skills. I think I’m down to 45 or so total skills in our S.W.A.R.M. rules but after reading some of Peter’s ideas I think I can get it down further. Part of the goal is to just stop skill bloat, increase game simplicity and to create more parity between skill utility.
Today I want to talk about consolidating a number of power/channeling skills down to one meta-skill: specifically Power Points, Channeling, Power Projection and Power Perception. Let’s explore them individually:
Magical gem with a mysterious inscription?
Re-writing textile history again.
Do not try this at home. These are trained professionals.
Or just cast a Mentalism spell.
Chronagenic sleep around the corner?
I can’t resist…bring out the clowns!
The ancients collected ancient things.
And more clowns.
Death’s Tale spell?
Good GM advice.
Monte is at it again.
Workplace self-defense or Elvish hand crosswbow?
In the past I wrote a fist full of posts about character creation and advancement in Rolemaster Classic without professions or levels.
Rather than leaving these as a scattered collection of posts spread over two months I have brought them all together in a single PDF. I have stripped out every mention of RMU for two reasons. Firstly, the RMU I know is the beta version and is liable to change before publication and secondly I agreed to a non disclosure agreement to get access to the beta documents. It is not right to then disclose any of the RMU rules in this case.
That sounds like a terrible B movie but right now I am preparing to spend a lot of time on Nagademon, or more correctly NaGaDeMon, and having never heard the words Franken Game until recently I have found myself using it twice this week.
What is a Franken Game?
A Franken Game is a game put together our of parts of other games. Originally Character Law was a bolt on replacement for must of the Players Handbook, Arms Law was a replacement combat system and Spell Law a drop in magic system. If you decided to take HARPs scalar spells and dropped it into RMC then you are now playing a Franken Game.
I have had quite an intersting day today working as part of a two person team converting all of the D&D 5th Edition SRD over to D100. The project is called 5ex5 as in 5th Edition x5, th emost obvious way to get from d20 to d100.
What is interesting from the Rolemaster perspective is that it will make any future products based upon it very easy to convert to Rolemaster and many will pretty much be able to be used off the shelf.
You how some days you just know it is going to be a long grind and that is just the preparation for the next game session? i have one of those weeks in front of me. I have discovered a new task to hate and that is equipment lists.
I remember the days of not worrying about emcumberance and buying 200 torches for a gold piece. This week I am having to prepare custom equipment lists and lists of things that can be bought at a particular location.
