This past Tuesday, the group ran through the final chapter of Legends of Shadow World. Unlike the back to back nature of the first four chapters, the group was able to return to Eidolon, rest, heal and gather resources for the final task. They felt prepared and more optimistic…until the mission briefing. Apparently even a group of 50th level PCs can feel apprehension!
I am having a frustrating week this week. I had so many plans, my wife is away at the Edinburgh Fringe so I could really dedicate loads of time to just writing (and horse riding whenever I get stuck). As it happens I have spent the week mostly in the car going from one place to another and have achieved very little and I have the same in store all weekend! This was supposed to be the week I tackled my Rolemaster for young players project (GameMaster Kids). For a bit of light relief I was going to put some more meat on the bones of my HARP/FATE hybrid under the working title of FART. I am way behind with my 50 in 50 adventures and that just about sums up my week.
In last weeks BLOG POST, I discussed issues I had with high level Essence spells; specifically combat oriented spells from the Open and Closed List. These posts are a result of the intersection of two projects: BASil (my rewrite of spell law) and 5 of 50 (50th lvl adventure series). This puts me in a position of familiarity with spell law and creating and testing high level adventures.
So I am continuing with the #RPGaDAY but I have more exciting news!
The August issue of the Rolemaster Fanzine is now for sale on RPGNow and this is the Shadow World special.
This issue has a reprint of two of my favourite BriH Shadow World articles from the blog, the interview with Terry and chapter one of the Loremaster Legacy, Terry’s novel.
Whilst not RM related I am really pleased to be able to link to my game on Amazon. This is my latest achievement and it is really nice to see the book in print. The PDF and print version should be on OneBookShelf this week and the Kindle edition the week after.
Von l’edor, First Secretary to the High Scion hastily adjusted his robes and consulted his schedule book once again. This meeting was highly unusual; unscheduled with no information provided to his office. He hoped his last-minute apologies to the Delgaran Trade Delegation would suffice; the Laan merchants were generally insufferable and easy to offend. He made a notation to provide them with a cask of Vermillion House Red—a rare vintage that should appease their egos.
So this is my third instalment of #RPGaDAY. Most of the questions this week seem to be about different systems so it will be hard to relate them Rolemaster.
This depends on how you read the question. I think RM is a good candidate for this. One of the cool things about RM character sheets (booklets?) is that they hold just about everything you need to play. This is especially true if you include combat tables and spell lists in the character sheets. Bolt on things like Combat Minion and you get a game that you can get into and start playing very quickly. If you need to create characters in that 2hrs then having the first session exclusively dedicated to character creation will get all the characters made with time to spare. So my answer is RMC.
My last post mused on the impossible goal of designing balance into a high level adventure. Among one of the issues I touched upon was the lack of effective buffs in RM Spell Law. But the problem is much broader than that–there is a breakdown of spell design at higher levels. Perhaps the original designers didn’t see much game play use for high level spells?
This is the next instalment of my RPGaDAY month.
For me it has to be the original Call of Cthulu from way back in 1981. For someone whos entire experience of RPGs at about that time had been D&D and a bit of Boot Hill CoC was like nothing else!
I am a big fan of ‘bitesize’ rpgs. When my PBP game was running I would dip in an out of that two or three times a day updating players posts and in the game I was playing in updating my actions.
I was tempted to try and post every day for August but that would have crashed a lot of other people’s posts so instead I am going to do a few days at a time in my normal, regular slots.
So here goes.
I have had a hankering for a while now to play Car Wars, the Steve Jackson Games game from the 80s. I know it wasn’t released as a RPG we we always played it as one. The original rules are available for free. All I am lacking is another player or 5. It is one of those games where you could while away a lot of down time just designing and building cars. Fast and simple mechanics, what not to love?
This coming Tuesday (last night when this post is published) I’ll be running the final chapter to my 5 part series: Legends of Shadow World. The last chapter could be a stand alone adventure but is the denouement to the adventure path, typing up a lot of loose threads and presenting the group with an incredibly powerful adversary.
I’ve been parsing some data from the previous 4 sessions and feedback from the other 2 test groups (chapter 1) and will probably run my group through the series again. It won’t have the surprise/reveal elements from their first iteration, but we’ll be able to have a more open analysis during game play.
