The Rolemaster Blog

I’ve been reviewing my conversations with Terry Amthor as part of my interview and found a few pieces of unpublished items. None of them are inappropriate, but don’t seem relevant. Now however, I appreciate every interaction I had with him! Without editing or commentary I would offer the following, although it was only a few excerpts….

Hi Matt, 

(Answers below, but first a question: is this mainly about SW or me and ICE in general? I’m answering below assuming the latter.)

Terry, this is fantastic!  First, this is Brian, (Matt is my younger brother.)  My intent is more a focus on you and your journey, creative process and perception of the industry rather than ICE itself.

Oops, sorry Brian, I knew it was you, but for some reason typed Matt! 

Non Published Side Bar  (And oh yes the Court of Ardor. I once sold one of my few copies on Ebay for $425! I think later on that Pete was less than thrilled about it, because it was not very ‘Middle-earth.’ He once referred to it in an interview as a ‘Rogue module.’ It’s a real pity that his campaign in eastern Middle-earth will never be published. It wasn’t all that ‘Middle-earth’ either, but it was fantastic and so imaginative. And oh, yes, ‘Spy in Isengard!’ The story of our ‘choose your own adventure books at ICE was a tragedy that almost banrkrupted us, because our licensor got in a fight with the Tolkien estate over whether they were ‘books’ or ‘games’)

(fyi. The Parking Lot Movie is a documentary about the Corner Parking Lot in Charlottesville. I think it’s available on netflix DVD)

Really! Well, I have been familiar with parking on the Corner since 1976… sounds interesting!

It’s not much, I wanted to include almost everything Terry had to say. The take away, is that everyone confuses Matt and I, and Charlottesville is a great place (I’ve been visiting there since 1987 and wandered into Pete and Terry’s office!!!

I want to use JDales NPC generator to create all the NPCs for this adventure. If you have not seen this already it gives output like this.

The nice thing is that it will do down to 0th level.

The above NPC will just be one of the pirates on the ship. If the characters are 1st or 2nd level then 0th and 1st level pirates should be a fair challenge.

I would like to include a variety of NPCs, such as a scholar as the ship’s quartermaster, thieves as basic pirates, and laborers as deck hands.

Then add in a couple of named NPCs as the captain and first mate.

However the players decide to approach this, the GM should be able to pick out some suitable NPC stats.

I have one really minor sticking point. If you look at the example above, that 1st level laborer is a child of 11. This is because Core Law ties level to age. What I want is low level threats, not a kindergarten pop-up pirate ship.

The solution is simple, I just write my own descriptions. The players should never know the villains level or stats.

What I want is a fun and interesting first experience of Rolemaster. I also want the player characters to win. It would be a really crappy session if you died before you have even finished creating your character. This is Rolemaster not Traveler!

Following on from my last post…

I am thinking of an adventure for 1st or 2nd level characters. The intention is that you run this before you finish your character creation. If you are going to start at 2nd level, run this at 1st. If you are starting at 3rd, then run this at 2nd level.

An adventurous interlude will give new players a chance to use some skills before they have spent their last round of DPs, so they can make some last-minute changes or improvements before starting for real.

It also means that if anyone takes a nasty injury that is going to take weeks or months to get over, that time period can be glossed over as they will be starting the campaign for real long after, and one experience level, after the end of this training wheels adventure.

My initial idea is for this:

Someone/wealthy merchant/relative of a character hires the characters to retrieve a stolen item.

The item is now aboard a merchant ship in the harbor.

The ship will leave on the dawn tide tomorrow.

The characters need only retrieve the item to claim their reward.

On board the ‘merchant’ ship the characters can discover a disproportionate amount of weaponry.

There is no cargo.

The crew will be outwardly respectable, but below decks they are rough and ready.

I will create the crew from the Reaver culture.

The item will be found in the captain’s quarters, in the captain’s possession.

This little adventure can be solved by stealth, sneak in, steal the item back, and sneak out.

It can be achieved by force, if you are extremely lucky, by storming the boat and taking the item.

The expected route will be an attempt at stealth that will only get them so far, a confrontation with the captain and some of the crew. A fight on the deck of the ship, allowing movement over different levels of deck, rigging, ropes for swinging on, and gang plank.

A chase scene as part of the getaway.

The merchant ship is obviously really a pirate here in disguise, which will give the new GM a chance of a recurring villain, as this ship can turn up in docks and ports repeatedly through the characters’ careers.

If they are successful, it also gives the GM a potential quest giver in the initial merchant.

All of this can be done just using Core Law.

I will also put together a rag tag crew of several different player races, to help differentiate the crew and showcase some of their strengths and weaknesses.

With no monsters or magic, I think pirates is a good source of ‘obviously the bad guys’.

I confess that I haven’t so much as read Core Lore yet. I started to, I read the first dozen pages, but I have no one to play it with at the moment, we have an ongoing 5e campaign, and one of my main RM players is busy with other stuff, so my game is on hiatus again.

I then decided that I would wait for Spell Law to arrive, hoping that it would be before Christmas and I could then read and make characters and maybe run a one-shot in this odd week between Christmas and new year.

No Spell Law, and my reading goals have gone awry as I had books for Christmas which have been taking my attention.

I am impressed that RMu is still the No.1 best selling title on DTRPG nearly a month after its release. That is no mean feat. It has been momentarily displaced by War Hammer and Traveler, but to take the top spot back again is even more impressive. It is much more common for titles that lost that top spot to start to slide down the rankings.

So far the book has sold between 500 and 1000 copies. I hadn’t realised that the RM community was that big, and I am assuming that the magic here is that old Rolemaster was such an iconic game system that there are a lot of people that played it decades ago and are curious about the new edition.

We, as a hobby, are terrible for buying games that we will probably never get to play. I hope that those people that are not Rolemaster die-hards are not just buying Core Law just to collect it.

This is where ICE struggles a little. There is no introductory adventure included in Core Law, and with all attention focused on the core books and getting them published, there is not likely to be an official introductory adventure coming any time soon.

I think that is a real pity.

I think that I will use this idea to make a Core Law only introductory adventure issue of the fanzine and kick that back into life.

But, for that to happen I will really have to read the rules and make some characters. Maybe this is the motivation I need?

Ongoing issue, but since ICE has moved to to a .co.uk site all of my previous links are now defunct.

Therefore, my Master Spell List blog, Master SW blog etc the links may not be useable.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/2576550882/permalink/10160089414675883/?mibextid=S66gvF

Hi. You can now download some of the maps of Shadow World for free.
OBS: They are NOT behind any pay wall. This is my way of honor the crator for all wonderful years he gave us all.
You can get to the files in 2 different ways.

1. go to my FB page. https://www.facebook.com/groups/2198307846888743
2. Go to the patron page and search for “shadow world”
   https://www.patreon.com/user?u=31775885

I will update info on the maps on my facebookpage, so be sure to check in on that from time to time.
i probably have a 10-15 maps so far. Not all is up yet.